I’ve been checking every day to see if any rooms become available for Dec 1–5 at Pop Century—currently sold out.
I would imagine that 5 days before, and 30 days before, and several days before those points in time, would be good times to check for new availability, because those are the deadlines for full-refund cancellation for room-only and package deals. Is this actually the case? And are there any other times when I’d have a better-than-average chance of finding availability?
Daily.
I’m already doing that! But I’m just wondering if anyone has any intel about, say, “drop times” during the day for room availability.
No it’s very random and incredibly dynamic. I would say you’ve honed in on two important milestones though. But otherwise just keep checking
Also check for after 60 for leading reservation drops.
When I search, I always get this:
I assume the “2 offers” refers to specific guest categories like AP holders or military. So it seems Disney is holding room availability for those categories, and maybe those rooms will be released to the gen pop at some point? I wonder if there’s an unpublicized schedule or pattern to that.
I don’t believe that has anything to do with availability…only that there are various offers and discounts available which it is simply suggesting you might be eligible for. (I find it odd they suggest it when you are obviously already logged in though…which is just a idiosyncracy of their software…I often see the same type of message.)
What happened to ryan1 ??
Oh that’s strange! That’s the second name change I’ve seen today.
No, it just means you can’t see it. That availability is already out there.
As a TA I can see all availability including special offers like this
Oh Bother! That makes me mad. Reveals my full name, which I prefer not to be public.
Oh wow that’s weird
I would email the admins stat. I can understand being angry about that.
So do you see rooms available for the special offers? Or do you see special offers but no associated availability?
All rooms that are available show up for everyone.
If you’re logged in as an AP holder the radio button to see the pricing for the AP offer is there. If you click on that it will tell you the pricing for that offer, if any rooms qualify for it
But all rooms available for rack rate are viewable to all - even you. You just can’t see the AP pricing.
There are no rooms held out of inventory for special offers, only rooms to which the offer can be applied. Does that make sense?
Yes, thanks!
As I have constantly been refreshing two sites the past few days…do these same ideas apply to UOR hotels? (sorry to slightly derail)
Frequently and often.
Yes… I’ve been checking UOR twice daily. I’ve seen a few things pop up but they weren’t what I wanted.
A few years ago I was stalking rooms at CBR because I needed to add one more day to the end of a reservation - in general as everyone else said availability opening is pretty random. Probably based on discounted room blocks and people booking/cancelling as you suspect.
But, one other tip: Even if you don’t want to change your dates, try moving your start and end dates around as you search and you might find something open up. In my case, I eventually found that if I searched for dates starting a day earlier, I also saw availability for the day after that I needed.
I ended up booking the larger window and then calling to cancel the first day. 
