With DVC, sometimes you can’t find the reservation you want, whether it’s a particular resort, date, or villa type. When that happens, you can request to be placed on a waitlist. If your desired reservation becomes available, the waitlist will be confirmed.
How to Create a Waitlist
Creating a waitlist is very similar to booking a reservation. From the DVC website, you’ll go to the Plan a Vacation tab and select “Book a Vacation.” Enter your search parameters (number of people in your travel party, dates, room type, and resorts). Then hit “Check Availability.” When the room you want is not available, you’ll see the “Waitlist Only” note. Click on the room you want and then “Continue to Waitlist.” You can set the waitlist to expire 7 days out or 31 days out, and you can choose to have the waitlisted trip replace an existing booking or not. Finally, if the trip requires more points than you have available, you can authorize the waitlist to borrow points from the next Use Year. If you choose to borrow, you can specify which contract to use if you have more than one.
Waitlists Expiring 7 Days Out vs. 31 Days Out
When you create a waitlist, you can set it to expire 7 days prior to your desired check-in date or 31 days prior to your desired check-in date. While you may automatically think that 7 days out makes the most sense to increase your chances of the waitlist coming through, it can get tricky if the waitlist requires fewer points than the reservation it is replacing. Should that waitlist come through, the difference in points would go unused. If that occurs under 31 days prior to your check-in date, those points would go into a holding account. Points in holding can only be used to book trips 60 days out or less, so they can be hard to use. Moreover, they expire at the end of the Use Year and cannot be banked or borrowed.
How to Improve Your Odds of Getting Your Waitlist
The odds of your waitlist coming through heavily depend upon inventory and availability, but there are a few things you can do to increase your odds of getting what you want:
- Set a waitlist for a short stay. Shorter stays are more likely to come through than those that are several days long.
- If the resort you are waitlisting has more than one booking category, pick the one that has greater availability. For example, the BoardWalk Villas has three different booking categories, but the Garden/Pool View has the most rooms. If you need to set a waitlist for the BoardWalk, you are more likely to have it come through if you waitlist the Garden/Pool View.
- Set up your waitlist as soon as possible, so there are fewer people ahead of you. This can even mean as early as 8am ET at the 11-month mark for a home resort or 7-month mark for a non-home resort.
- Don’t forget to stalk the DVC website, and keep searching for your desired reservation. Sometimes you can catch your reservation before the waitlist fills.
Important Things to Note
- There is no guarantee that your waitlist will come through, so it’s always a good idea to have an alternative reservation.
- You can modify or cancel a waitlist from your dashboard. This is also where you can check the status of your waitlist.
- If you create more than one waitlist for the same dates, and one comes through, the other waitlist will be canceled.
- You can have up to two active waitlists at a time per DVC membership per Use Year.
- Waitlists follow the same rules when it comes to home resort advantage. That is, you have to wait until the 7-month mark to create any waitlist requests for a non-home resort.
- Waitlists are only available up to 7 days prior to your desired check-in date. You can’t set a waitlist after that point.
- Sometimes when a waitlist comes through and replaces an existing reservation, you may only receive an email notifying you about the cancelation of your existing reservation. Don’t panic! Check your dashboard to confirm.
- DVC members who are not in good standing are not able to create waitlists.
Comment below if you have any other waitlist tips to share with fellow DVC Fans!
Diana Warburton
January 2, 2024When I create a “waitlist”, I also stalk the website. Sometimes I call if I see that a few days are available but not the entire trip. A few times, Member Services was able to do their magic. Also….when your waitlist comes through, be sure to change your transportation from MCO if you are taking a bus or private car and any grocery delivery service. Sometimes it is so exciting when your waitlist comes through that you forget these important components of your vacation.
Russell savarese
January 2, 2024You should still check it youself regularly I found what I was waiting for and I was still on waitlist and it didnt pickup what I had found so I called member services and secured the room.
lizfwall
January 2, 2024First of all, thank you for explaining the difference between the 31 days out vs 7! I had misunderstood, thinking it simply meant whether you had the flexibility to cancel your reservation without penalty or not.
Question: When points are placed in a holding account, can you still book online, or do you have to call member services? Also, can those points be used in conjunction with your regular points? So, if I had 30 in holding and the new reservation I wanted was for 50, could I combine my points?
JC
January 2, 2024If I set a waitlist to replace an existing reservation and then I modify the original reservation, will the waitlist still cancel the original reservation? I’m trying to avoid modifying my waitlist because I think that sends you to the end of the line, is that correct?