"GUARANTEED" connecting rooms

[canadianmom2three]

Hi all,
When I called to book our rooms for free dining, my first choice for our family of 5 was ASMu suites. I was told by the CM that this was unavailable for me during free dining (I have seen that some people got it, some didn't) but that he could offer me "GUARANTEED" connecting rooms at ASmo. I asked if guaranteed meant that there was 100% certainty that we would have rooms connected by a door, and he assured me up and down that would be the case, without a doubt. He said that because we had 3 under 12, and wouldn't fit into one room, and had first requested the suite, he could offer the "guarantee". He did say that he couldn't guarantee where our 3rd room would be (for my parents) but that he would note that we wanted it close as possible. I am now reading on the other threads that "guaranteed" doesn't always end up being the reality.......Just wanted to get a sense of how often that has ACTUALLY happened to people, vs. how often people speculate that it might not work out. Our second option was POR, which would be tight quarters, but if we don't really get connecting rooms at ASMo, the second room will be useless anyway, since DH and I have no desire to split up and stay in seperate rooms, we would probably be so bitter that we would cancel the second room right then, and stuff one of the kids in with my parents. So anyway, please, if you have requested connecting rooms and gotten them, I would love to hear.....if you have requested connecting rooms and NOT gotten them, I would love to hear.....if you want to speculate about our chances, I've even given an option for that. TIA for any input!!!!!

 

[TDC Nala]

I don't book like this. But from what I have read on these boards, connecting rooms are guaranteed only for parties consisting of one adult and several minor children. The reasoning is that a party with more than one adult could work it so that there are no minors alone in a room. Their main concern is not that the adults are together in one room, but that the kids aren't alone in one.

I don't know whether there is an option for those who requested the family suites when they are unavailable.

If they are going to guarantee you a connecting room with more than one adult in your party I'd try to make sure I got that in writing on the confirmation.

 

[Wife2Grumpy]

We last traveled in December 2006. I booked 2 "connecting rooms" at Pop Century because we were traveling with 3 children and my elderly mother. I was told this was guaranteed. We checked in with no trouble and headed out for our rooms. Unfortunately, they were not connecting. (I forgot to mention this to the CM at check in again, so it was partially my own fault.) We made a quick call down to the desk from the rooms and the CM that answered said he would fix it immediately and send up someone to move our bags. Very shortly after a gentleman came to the door with a cart. He piled on all the bags and walked us to our new rooms. He personally opened the doors with the keys he brought and checked to make sure the rooms were connecting. A tiny bump in the road, but it turned out just fine.

 

[EltonJohn]

That doesn't sound right to me. Nothing is GUARANTEED in the hotel industry.

 

[divawife]

Forget it-we asked for it, we faxed for it, we asked again. No luck we got adjoining rooms at ASMu-and...one of the rooms did have a connecting door but just not to our other room.
We were told it was because of our time frame of reservations Saturday through Thursday.
Good luck-they can always tell you that one adult in each room with 2 kids with one adult and 1 kid in the other.

 

[gardenia]

CRO will swear up and down it's guaranteed. They want you to book.

The front desk is a different matter. They will tell you "Sorry, there are no connecting rooms available, and we never guarantee it. You'll have to take what we have." This happened to me.

 

[Bev J]

We have requested and received connecting rooms each time we asked (3X) at POFQ. Not once did we have any problems. It could be that we generally travel during off peak times, don't know for sure. I don't make a bunch of requests regarding the room other than the connecting. I have found most disney resorts to be very accomodating with requests.
Since our kids rarley travel with us anymore we make more requests because we are picky adults...LOL
Of course they can only hand out so many connecting rooms, since not every room has this- Good luck!

Bev

 

[Allison]

I was told our connecting rooms were guaranteed at POFQ-2 adults, 3 kids. We arrived on the morning of December 26 during the busiest week of the year and had the connecting rooms that were promised to us.

 

[gigi1313]

we had a similar situation w/"guaranteed" connecting rooms, and were given two rooms NOT connecting because we had two adults... so dh and i spent our week sleeping in separate rooms... and to add insult to injury, neither kid wanted to share a room w/dh (he snores, he watched "boring" tv, and well, i'm MOM!) so he had a room to himself and i had the kids w/me... it was great... NOT!

 

[tinaluis]

My paperwork says "Guaranteed connecting rooms" and I will politely insist that they put us in connecting rooms or move us to a WDW resort that has connecting rooms.

 

[Kira G.]

I have requested and gotten connecting rooms three times - at ASMo, POP & POR. Sometimes I was checking in early, sometimes late, and it has always worked out.

While nothing is really "guaranteed" I think that this does work out the vast majority of times. I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it.

 

[rie'smom]

On one of our trips, I requested connecting rooms and the CM told me that if there were kids under 12, it was guaranteed.

 

[minnie61650]

Disney tries hard but Disney does not book connecting rooms as a separate category. They do NOT block off certain connecting rooms ahead of time.
That means they fill the connecting rooms as the families check in. It is petty much first come first serve until they run out of connecting rooms.

A lot of connecting rooms have a handicapped accessible rooms as one the rooms. If a guest needs a HA room than that guest takes priority over a family who needs connecting rooms.

----------------------------------------------

As a mother of 4 (All grown now. My oldest is in her 30's and my youngest is 22) I often wished Disney had more options for larger families.
When the children were younger and we would go to Disney they did not have DVC or the family suites. In fact Disney did not have a Moderate until CBR opened in the late 1980's so if we wanted to stay onsite we either rented 2 rooms at a deluxe or stayed in the cabins.

I wrote to Disney many times over the years asking for more options for families so when I heard they were building the New Family Suites at All Star Music it just made me so happy!

In the late 80's I booked 2 connecting rooms at CBR for my family.
When we checked in there were no connecting rooms left but we were able to get rooms next to each other on the second floor.
Our two oldest were teens so I put them in one room and the 2 little ones who were 5 and 7 stayed with us. It worked for us because our older children were able to stay in a room without us but if they were younger DH and I would have had to split up.

Disney may say they guarantee connecting rooms but in reality Disney does not guarantee connecting rooms.

If there are 2 adults Disney can split the adults and children into two rooms that are not connecting. They try hard not to do this but it can and does happen sometimes. If however it is one adult with 5 children Disney should try harder to find connecting rooms since some of the children cannot be left in a room without an adult. But if you look at the threads posted below you will see that sometimes even Disney mixes up.


It does happen. Far too often IMHO.

From this recent thread:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1816160&page=2

People will tell you that they will guarantee connecting rooms if one room is for the kids... don't trust that! A DISer friend of mine requested connecting rooms for that very reason. She was given 2 rooms in TOTALLY SEPARATE BUILDINGS for the first night. The following day, they were able to move 1/2 of the family so they were in the same building for the remainder of the trip, but they were still on different floors. She has 3 kids ages 7-13, so sharing a single room was not an option.

Just want you to be aware that connecting rooms are not guaranteed.

From this thread;

http://disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1145289

Just wanted to re-iterate what others have said:

We requesting connecting rooms at CBR in January--not really a busy time & we were early for check-in. They did not have us in connecting rooms. They said they could accommodate us, but it would be smoking rooms--which was our #1 request non-smoking.

We were side-by-side, so we just went outside to go next door, so it wasn't a huge deal for us. But if you definitely want to be together--I would go with a suite. You could also look into renting DVC points for a villa.

Here are a couple more threads about guests not getting connecting rooms:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1095679

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=785797&page=1&pp=15

From this thread:

http://disboards.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=13528958

One of the threads that Linda posted a link to was my experience last March. I had many conversations with the higher-ups at Guest Services and was told that even if it says "guaranteed" it is not truly "guaranteed." It just has higher priority over the "requests." Because on a given day, there might only be 25 connecting room sets opening up, but 27 "guaranteed connecting rooms for families" ressies checking in. 2 of those families are not going to get their "guarantee."

I know, I was shocked that we had to fight so hard to get put in rooms that had just been fumigated for lice (they were taken out of the inventory, but re-opened because we insisted we needed rooms.) I sort of assumed that if they didn't have the rooms for us, they'd find rooms elsewhere on Disney property. For that stay, we were sometimes 2 adults and sometimes only 1. Now we will book offsite if we need to do that again. If there are 2 of us adults, we book connecting and hope for the best. Otherwise, we'll split the kids.

My point is to make backup plans if you are depending on connecting rooms.

That is one of the main reasons if my family were young I would choose a Suite over 2 connecting rooms or I would be prepared that I may need to split the family up and sleep in a different room than DH.

 

[mbanks21]

The only way Disney guarantees connecting rooms is for ONE or TWO adults and ANY numbers of kids. Once you hit the 3rd adult it is a request for connecting rooms.

 

[kaytieeldr]

Forget it-we asked for it, we faxed for it, we asked again. No luck we got adjoining rooms at ASMu-and...one of the rooms did have a connecting door but just not to our other room.

That's almost comical - not only do Guests need to request connecting rooms, they need to request rooms that connect to each other!

My paperwork says "Guaranteed connecting rooms" and I will politely insist that they put us in connecting rooms or move us to a WDW resort that has connecting rooms.

You may certain insist, politely or otherwise - but all you have actually reserved is X number of rooms at a given resort. As long as that number of rooms is available, the resort has met its obligation and will not move you (although you'll be welcome to find and move to a resort that can meet your needs - keeping in mind that by the time you get to it, all connecting rooms might be full).

The only way Disney guarantees connecting rooms is for ONE or TWO adults and ANY numbers of kids. Once you hit the 3rd adult it is a request for connecting rooms.

As evidenced in post # 13 and the threads to which it links, this is not fact.

 

[gigi1313]

The only way Disney guarantees connecting rooms is for ONE or TWO adults and ANY numbers of kids. Once you hit the 3rd adult it is a request for connecting rooms.

not true! we had two adults and were unable to get connecting rooms...

we could have asked to move to a diff't resort but we were part of a grand gathering and had eight rooms booked... i did not see the likelihood of having 8 rooms full of people (some arriving diff't days) moved and it was easier for dh/i to be separated than to have our family separate from the rest of the crowd!

another time we had reserved/paid for preferred connecting rooms (written "guaranteed") and when we checked in (early in the morning) we were unable to get rooms in the preferred section so we had to take connecting rooms in the back of the resort... our $ was refunded...

 

[WL Fan]

No connecting room for us, but we did have an adult in each room. It was a bummer, though, since not only were our rooms not connecting, they weren't even on the same hallway! Same floor yes, but the second room was around the corner and down a hall.

 

[BamaFan121s]

My suggestion is that you realize there could be issues accomodating your request, but more than likely you won't have the slightest problem. We've managed to get connecting rooms EVERY time without any issues. They are generally able to accomodate your requests--the instances when they cannot are not that common. Be positive and don't let some of the 'your out of luck' mentality stress you out and take the fun out of planning yoru trip.