Mira Costa booking experience

As a self proclaimed semi-professional MiraCosta booker (I made several "practice" bookings, tried getting through almost nightly for about 2 months, and finally booked Harbor View Alcove rooms for three consecutive nights in late May) I feel obligated to chime in.
This is so useful, thank you!

I'd like a harbour view, so unfortunately that sounds like a lot of 3am mornings for me here in the UK!!

Any more advice on the weird credit card payment bit?
 
Any more advice on the weird credit card payment bit?

The screen that pops up will have fields in it that look like you should fill them out, but you can skip these. There is a button on the bottom of the form that says something like "I'll do this later".
 
As a self proclaimed semi-professional MiraCosta booker (I made several "practice" bookings, tried getting through almost nightly for about 2 months, and finally booked Harbor View Alcove rooms for three consecutive nights in late May) I feel obligated to chime in. BTW if you think doing all this is nuts you should see the embarrassingly elaborate spreadsheet I've created for this trip.

MiraCosta Rooms become available at 11am Japan time for rooms 5 months out. Japan does not have daylight savings so right now they are 13 hours ahead of east coast time so you need to be ready at 10pm on the east coast and 7 pm on the west coast. You can only book one night at a time for harbor view rooms and above; other rooms you can get I think up to 5 consecutive nights. If you book one night at a time you need to make sure you book the exact same room type each night or you'll have to change rooms. You will be charged 30k yen each night. This is refundable - I made and cancelled reservations a couple times and it worked fine. The deposit was charged and refunded in the same day. I used a Citi MasterCard and it worked every time and I didn't tell Citi in advance. I highly recommend making a trial reservation. I learned a lot. For example your card will go through a weird approval screen I've never seen on another site before and if you're not expecting it you might screw something up.

Things I learned through practice: refreshing your browser when the clock turns 10 will not work fast enough every time. A practically fool proof way of getting through in the first few seconds while every room type is available is to bookmark the URL for the night you need. I went to a day that was available, chose my room type and whatnot, then in the URL box I changed the date to the date I needed and hit enter. Then I bookmarked that URL. At 10pm 5 months ahead of my dates I clicked on that bookmark and boom, all room types available, including concierge level. I did this three nights in a row and it worked out great.

Another thing - every night about 30-35 minutes after rooms became available another set of rooms would be freed up. Every single night. I could have booked harbor view rooms at 9:30 (this was before DST kicked in) virtually every night I tried. Not sure if this is from people's cards rejecting or what but it happens every night.

So that's my 2 cents. Any questions I'd be happy to answer!

This is so useful! My window opens in 2 weeks and as I'm determined to do a Miracosta / DH Character room split stay I've also been testing out the system. Miracosta rooms seem to go so quickly!
 
This is so useful! My window opens in 2 weeks and as I'm determined to do a Miracosta / DH Character room split stay I've also been testing out the system. Miracosta rooms seem to go so quickly!

Good luck! Despite all my trial runs I was pretty nervous on the three nights I actually needed to book rooms. I was afraid the internet would go out, or I'd have an aneurism, or who knows what. But if you follow my advice and bookmark the dates you need you WILL get through fast. Know exactly where the room type is that you want and scroll down to it and click it as fast as you can - you've probably got 45 seconds depending on the day of the week. Make sure when you do your initial search for setting the bookmark that you enter all the other info correctly - number of kids, their ages, etc, and be sure to click only the Mira Costa so that those are the only rooms that display. And log in early so that you don't have to worry about that step once the window opens. Remember too that if things go haywire keep clicking your bookmark at 30 minutes past the hour because rooms will open up somewhere between 30-40 minutes after the hour.

As I mentioned in my prior post, I was able to book the room I wanted (harbor view with alcove) three nights in a row with no issue. I was also very lucky that the yen exchange rate was 117 per dollar when I booked. A few weeks ago we moved our arrival date up and booked a night at the Disneyland hotel and that was super easy. We got a concierge level park view room with a balcony a month after booking started. We have to mortgage our house, but we're going to be living it up in TDR!

Someone asked about credit cards. I honestly had no trouble at all with my Mastercard on any of the bookings I did. I put in my info and was taken to some verification screen where I had to verify the last 4 of my SSN and zip code, but then everything went very smoothly.

Good luck to everyone trying to book! We've got 70 days until we leave and now we're studying the park maps. We're going to Shanghai and HK too (plus Beijing) so we've got lots of planning still to do.
 


Last 4 SSN digits - is that front or back?

My MasterCard normally asks for the last 3 digits on the back, the only time I use 4 digits is with Amex and that's from the front?

BTW, how does an alcove room differ to a standard harbour view room?
 
SSN is social security number. :)

I booked before all these changes, so it surprised me to read about that level of authentication.
We don't have that in the UK - I'm assuming it asks for that based on your address? I hope!!
 


If you're booking below harbour view, I think you mentioned you can book multiple nights - so for 5 nights, could all 5 be booked once the first date is open?
 
I have a correction to make - in previous posts I called the MiraCosta room I have booked a "harbor view with alcove" - I don't know what I was talking about, that's not what it is (that's not even a real category - sorry, it's been nearly three months since I booked)- what we have is a harbor view room with a cruise bed, which I suspect is not in an alcove. Technically, on the site it is noted as "twin bed + trundle + cruise bed" and it is the second of the two harbor view room types that show up on a search, the other being "twin bed + trundle". Our room type is 3 square meters larger than the other type of harbor view room, so there's that.

As far as what can be booked for 5 nights - Harbor view rooms can only be booked one night at a time. Porto Paradiso non-harbor view and Tuscany and Venice sides can be booked for 5 nights once the first night is in the booking window. (Caveat - this was the case in late December when I made my reservations - I don't think anything has changed but YMMV). So when my booking window opened I immediately made two reservations - one for one night in a harbor view room, and one for three nights in a piazza view room. I did this in case I was unable to get the same room type I wanted three nights in a row - then at least I would have a decent room booked without having to change rooms nightly. As it is we're staying on Odaiba island the first night in Tokyo, TDH the second night, and then we move to the Conrad Tokyo after 3 nights at the MC. That's (more than) enough moving around.

As far as providing the last 4 of my social - I believe that was a Citi-specific thing. It was I believe a Citi verification screen that popped up when I used my card. But frankly I've booked so many things for this trip at so many sites I can't be 100% sure it was TDR where I had to do this. But I know for sure that each of my TDR transactions went through like butter and that I used a Citi Mastercard for payment every time. Oddly all three nights deposits plus the deposit for the three night reservation posted on the same day at the same exchange rate of 117.49.

Hope that clarifies things a little.
 
Good advice, so I should book my 1 night harbour view first, then a back up 5 night non-harbour view room in case the next 4 bookings don't work out?
Do you think I'll be able to do all of that straight away, or might I miss the back up availability and have to wait for the half hour to roll around?
 
Good advice, so I should book my 1 night harbour view first, then a back up 5 night non-harbour view room in case the next 4 bookings don't work out?
Do you think I'll be able to do all of that straight away, or might I miss the back up availability and have to wait for the half hour to roll around?

So this may sound bananas but this is what I did...in a nutshell I did the reservations concurrently.

First, I set up two different accounts with TDR so that I could be logged into both at the same time, in two different browsers, Chrome and IE. (I'm not sure this is necessary but abundance of caution, you know...). When my laptop clicked from 8:59 to 9pm, I immediately clicked my harbour view bookmark on Chrome then went over to IE and clicked on the 3 night stay piazza view bookmark - it takes a few seconds for the rooms to display so you have plenty of time for this (and I found Chrome to be faster than IE so I used Chrome for the more important reservation). Then I went back to Chrome, put the harbour view room in my cart, clicked back over to IE and put the piazza view room for three nights in that cart, then went back to Chrome to finish that transaction.

Once the room is in your cart you're pretty much golden barring some sort of technical snafu, so you can afford to be very careful inputting your card info and whatnot. There's no time limit to complete the transaction that I ever ran across though it's probably like 25 -30 minutes since that would jibe with the release of additional rooms at that time. In any case, you have plenty of time to complete the main reservation before going back to do the backup one.

You could probably get away with doing the main reservation first then going back and doing the backup rather than doing them at the same time, but that has some risk in it. It was pretty easy to do both at the same time- but I highly recommend practicing it. You need to be fast and accurate with your mouse.

Writing this all down makes me realize just how ridiculous this whole process is, but I viewed it as a challenge and was pretty happy on the third night when I managed to book the third of the three one-night reservations. Made all of the preparation worth it, maybe. Honestly I would have been happy with a Venice side room but my wife was pretty excited about the idea of looking down on the harbour and kept playing the we're-only-doing-this-once card.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help! And please notice I've added u's to "harbor" just for you, Meryll83!
 
Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help! And please notice I've added u's to "harbor" just for you, Meryll83!

Haha! Much appreciated! :goodvibes

Seriously though, all this advice is so useful when there's some crazy levels of popularity!
 
Is the harbour view room worth the investment?

I don't expect we'll spend a lot of time in the room, so I'm wondering whether to just go with whatever the cheapest room is... and partly so I don't have to get up at 3am 5 nights on the trot to try and secure the harbour view!!

Are there public areas in the hotel where you can experience the view of the harbour?
 
Are there public areas in the hotel where you can experience the view of the harbour?

Some of the restaurants in the MiraCosta have views of the harbor. The Bella Vista Lounge has a full view centered to the volcano. Oceano will invite you out to their balcony during shows. We did the buffet there, but only the short end of the long balcony is facing the harbor. There is a 3 level platform on the balcony, so it kind of depends where you end up if the view is good (mine was not good). I think the table service side of the restaurant has a different balcony with the long side facing the harbor.

We stayed in a Venice room (loved the view), so I can't say if the harbor view is worth it. With the way it's in demand, apparently a lot of people think so. :)
 
Is the harbour view room worth the investment?

I don't expect we'll spend a lot of time in the room, so I'm wondering whether to just go with whatever the cheapest room is... and partly so I don't have to get up at 3am 5 nights on the trot to try and secure the harbour view!!

Are there public areas in the hotel where you can experience the view of the harbour?

I'm not sure yet but we will be in one April 10th & 11th and I will report back! I keep stalking the site trying to downgrade to a room for 3 from the one I snagged for 4 (we are only two people so we really don't need that extra bed! :sad2:) I also ended up booking our third night over at the DLH with a grand park view... i could not for the life of me find pictures of the differences in floor so ended up going big there as well and booked the highest floor I could before concierge. The way they are making booking so much more complicated I assume I will never want to go through any of this again (and it might be impossible next time..) The Hilton or Sheraton for us next time I bet.
 
Is the harbour view room worth the investment?

I don't expect we'll spend a lot of time in the room, so I'm wondering whether to just go with whatever the cheapest room is... and partly so I don't have to get up at 3am 5 nights on the trot to try and secure the harbour view!!

Are there public areas in the hotel where you can experience the view of the harbour?

We are paying like $600 per night for our harbor view room and I spent a crazy amount of time trying to secure the room so I can almost guarantee it's not going to be worth it. But you only live once and we're treating this as a once-in-a-lifetime trip so...harbour view it is. If we ever go back we can go back knowing we stayed there before and can happily stay at the Hilton or Sheraton...if we stayed at the Hilton or Sheraton this trip or even booked a lower cost MC room we would have crazy hotel/room envy and would be left wondering what we were missing. I concur with aquadame though - if there is a next time we will probably stay at the Hilton or Sheraton and for free using points, plus free breakfast since I have status with both. But this time we're living it up!
 
When I stayed in a harbor view room (in 2002), I saw them rehearsing something the park below my window before it opened the last day I was there. It was totally worth it for me.
 
Several of the posts mentioned using MasterCard. Is this required or will they take Visa too?
 
Several of the posts mentioned using MasterCard. Is this required or will they take Visa too?

The website says they only take MasterCard but I managed to book last Sunday with a Visa. There's no mention of them changing their policy so it's a bit of a risk
 
FWIW, I had zero issues using visa that was rejected online in the parks and at the hotel also. I was able to charge our park tickets to the room account and cashed out at the end of our stay. :)
 

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