LakeAriel said:If they book a room at 11 months out that fits my request (of course it's available it's 11 months in advance!) they should black it out as "booked". If I don't show up or show up at midnight it is my loss not theirs. They are going to charge me ANYWAY, same price as everyone else!!!! There is no refund the day of arrival so they should honor first reservation made gets first choice and so on. We all know when we can book a DVC home resort. If we aren't owners or hop in for a last minute trip we are happy to get anything that's left.
If you're implying that physical rooms should be booked at the time of the reservation like cabins on a cruise ship, that absolutely would not work. It works on a cruise line because you have a group of people all with the same itinerary--they all arrive and depart on the same days.
If you tried to do that with hotel rooms, you'd have orphaned blocks of rooms all over the resort that people would be unable or unwilling to utilize.
"OK, we have you confirmed for a Studio with check-in 12/1 and check-out 12/10. For 12/1 to 12/3, you will be in unit 2001. But someone else has that room reserved starting on 12/4, so we will move you over to 1090. You can stay in that room through 12/9. On 12/10, we will move you to room 5001."
Room maintenance isn't the only reason that rooms couldn't be pre-assigned.
For this same reason, I think it would be a mistake to assume (as is implied in the original post) that the Room Ready system is used 100% of the time. My guess is that Room Ready (getting guests into rooms upon arrival) is used when a resort is operating at a less-than-100% occupancy level. When occupancy is lower, there is more "wiggle room" to accommodate current guests, departing guests and incoming guests.
But, when the resort is near 100% occupancy, all of the pieces need to be assembled much more carefully to attempt to accommodate things like handicapped room requests and medical needs. In this case, pre-assignments are necessary to minimize the possibility that someone will arrive at 10pm and discover that their "non smoking for medical reasons" request was not met.