Predicted DVC booking patterns - Studios/ some 1-bedrooms (Prepared 2015)

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skier_pete

DIsney-holics Anon
Joined
Aug 17, 2006
Edit: An updated set of Tables from 2018 is now available at THIS LINK.

Over the last year since I became a DVC member, I have surveyed the resort availability tool and put together the following charts to show availability at various resorts over the period of May 2014 to June 2015. What I would do is check the availability tool roughly every two weeks looking at a variety of two week windows from 1 month out to 11 months out in the future. I did this primarily for my own use, but realized that this is something that a lot of people would like access to, so I thought I would post a thread on the boards. Hopefully a moderator will be nice enough to sticky it.


Because of the effort involved and the goal was primarily to help myself, I focused almost entirely on Studios, since this is really what I am interested in. However, for resorts with only ONE booking category (WLV, BCV, SSR, OKW & VGC) I included the 1-bedroom as part of the survey. I didn’t look at 2-bedrooms or GVs. The amount of effort involved was pretty staggering as it is. (I’d say it took me 2-3 hours every two weeks.)


A bit of information to understand the tables. The year in each table is broken into ½ month blocks, meaning about 24 different time periods are reviewed for each resort. I considered each segment to be available as part of FOUR possible categories:


1) OPEN – means that all dates in that span were available. Because of that, I used the color GREEN to indicate it should be easy to book at this time of year.

2) MOSTLY – means that of the dates in that span, at least ONE of the days but less than HALF of the days were unavailable. This is indicated by the color YELLOW, and means you are likely to be able to find availability here with a bit of flexibility and maybe a partial wait list.

3) SPOTTY – means that at least HALF the days are unavailable. However, there is at least one 2-3 day block available during that time. This is indicated by the color RED, and with some flexibility you might be able to find a block at this resort that would suit your purposes.

4) NONE – doesn’t actually mean none. It means there are only a few individual days left, and no blocks of days. (If there were more than 5 days left, even as individual days, it would bump up into SPOTTY.) This is indicated by the color RED and it is extremely unlikely you would be able to find the availability you want in that window.

I do NOT look at how available the resorts are at EXACTLY 11-months or at 7-months TO THE DAY. What I tried for the 11-month and 7-month window to look at a few times across the 2-week window, and look at the reality of booking a room without the special effort of “8 AM the day of”. For instance, if a room shows OPEN at 8-months and MOSTLY at 7-months, there’s probably a good chance you can get into the resort on “7-month DAY OF” If it’s yellow at 8-months, and RED at 7-months, that likelyhood is much less. (VGC is a good example of this, the resort is frequently green or yellow at the 8-month mark, but rooms are snatched up there almost immediately at the 7-month mark, making all the 7-month blocks show RED. BCV shows this trend as well.)

Likewise when looking at the 11-month window, I tried to look more at how would someone not really stalking the site see it. If you look though – you’ll notice that really only the “special” room categories and VGF show ANY red at the 11-month mark. Generally if you book at 11-months, you can get in whatever resort you own in if it’s not the VGF.

I want to point out specific events that factor heavily on the trends. The Disney marathon (early January) the Princess Marathon (late February), Easter (in the case of this survey early April) and 4th of July are really the only events in the first nine months of the year that show significant variations that really cover only a few days, causing these times to often show in the YELLOW category much earlier than 7-months, even though all the dates surrounding them remain available for much longer. Memorial day and Labor day don’t seem to be affected in the same way. Not surprisingly, there is a HUGE shift that occurs in late-September and continues through the end of the year. It even shows up in the trends for SSR. This coincides with Food and Wine, and except for the week before Thanksgiving and maybe the week right before Christmas continues through the holidays until the end of the year.

It should be noted that at pretty much every date on the calendar there was availability at least at SSR at the 7-month mark EXCEPT for two times (1) Wine & Dine Marathon/Veterans day weekend and (2) the first weekend of December. These two periods are clearly the most popular with DVC, so if you are going at this time in the studio, you better book your home resort.

I will talk about some specific trends I noticed within the posts on the individual resorts in the posts below as I have time to edit them below.

FAQ – If I see repeated questions being asked about these tables – I will try and post answers to them here:

Why didn’t you include the PVB?


Well, with the PVB having just come on line with a few months to go of this, I felt that any trend I tracked would be meaningless as they continue to open rooms and sell units. I may in a year or two do the Poly and add it to one of the posts, but for now it doesn’t make sense.

Why didn’t you include Aulani?

It was a big project, and again it was primarily for my personal use and I have no plans to go to Aulani. There’s also a pile of different room categories and I just didn’t feel like the added effort was worth it to me.

Where is OKW Hospitality House booking Category?

OK – I got lazy. I figured it was better to do the general resort category at studio and 1-bedroom instead of HH. Suffice it to say HH will book faster than what these tables show.

What about AKV Concierge?

Doing a table for this didn’t make sense. Concierge is basically at “Spotty” to “None” at the 11-month window.

Your chart showed that X resort was open at 7-months, but when I tried to book it, it couldn’t get in. What’s the big idea?

There are no guarantees here. The idea is to make a simple tool showing trends. Those trends will shift from year to year, and more as new resorts come on-line. (For instance, I think the VGF has become harder to get over the last year as I’ve been doing the survey, I suspect if I redid it the next 12 months I would see it booking up even earlier.)

Can you do the same thing for 1- and 2-bedrooms?

Nope. You are welcome to take the time. What I will tell you is 1- and 2-bedrooms will almost always be MORE available than studios. You can look at the WLV and BCV data to see the difference.

How does this help with waitlists?

In short: It doesn’t.
 
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AKV - Jambo - Value.jpg

AKV - Jambo - Standard.jpg

AKV - Jambo - Savannah.jpg

AKV - Kidani - Standard.jpg

AKV - Kidani - Savannah.jpg

A few observations - Jambo is slightly harder to get into than Kidani. Standard View and Savannah View are roughly the same at Jambo. Kidani Savannah View is a little easier to get than Standard View - I think this is because a lot more of the resort is Savannah View. Not surprisingly, Value is never an easy get unless you own there.
 
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Edited 10/21/2015: Data has been completed a few months after the rest of the sites. As can be seen, availability drops to near zero right at seven months. I had my own problems with this trying to get a 1-bedroom in mid February where the availability disappeared right at 8 AM at the 7-month mark for several days in a row.

VGC - Studio.jpg

VGC - 1 bed.jpg
 
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VGF - Studio - Standard.jpg

VGF - Studio - Lake.jpg

VGF is definitely the hardest to get in resort. It may be even harder now than when I started doing this in May 2014. Basically if you don't own there, don't count on getting a studio. If you do own there, you better still book early.
 
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The below is for WL - BRV (Boulder Ridge). Back when I made it, there was only WLV.
WLV - Studio.jpg

WLV - 1 bedroom.jpg

I was surprised how available this resort is, especially the 1-bedrooms, which are often open less than 3 months out. Studios are much harder, and seem to have a higher spike in popularity around the Christmas holidays than most of the resorts.
 
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Um, I think someone had way too much time on their hands, lol. But thank you, it is interesting info.
 
Thanks everyone for all the positive feedback! I'm glad to have other folks using this!

Um, I think someone had way too much time on their hands, lol. But thank you, it is interesting info.

Too much time on my hands? No way. I did it in bits and pieces when I found the time. I wish I had more time and could do the whole gamut of room styles, but towards the end it just got tedious.

I hardly remember now why I started working on it, but I think it really was to understand how difficult each resort was to get into at the 7-month mark. I started out doing just the 7-month table, but then the new resort availability tool came out, and I decided to go back to the 11-month point for each resort, which made it take longer than a year. The information that really surprised me is how easy it is to get into most of the resorts at 7-months from January - September. Even relatively new resorts like BLT.
 
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