Skirted the 7 month window by 1 hour.

[luckyman_apd]

I've read complaints about people "walking" their reservations in order to get in ahead of time with the 7 day rule. So if you wanted a reservation on say November 8th for 5 nights, you could reserve 7 nights on December 6th, even though you have no plans to stay on November 6th & 7th, and then cancel them a few days later. I thought to myself that would take a lot of planning, and you'd have to have the points available in your account in order to do this so I figured it would be rare.

Well today I sort of did this (not quite the same and I also got lucky). I've posted about an upcoming trip, and a certain night not available, so I needed a split stay. I went online to check the availability of the the Friday and Saturday night I needed. All week I've been checking the availablity even though I couldn't book them until the actual 7 month date, but because you can view up to 7 days of a trip, I've know these dates have been open for 5 days now. I woke up early today to book them (only to have confused the 8 am online 7 month window for 7 am).

When I selected the dates I got the error message I was outside the window. So instead of selecting Nov 9th - Nov 11th, I selected Nov 8th - Nov 11th, just to confirm one last time that the dates were available. Well, they were but the 8th was not. I don't need the 8th, but since the 9th and 10th were open, I had the option to book just those 2 dates. So I did.

So because the 8th was unavailable, I was able to get the 9th & 10th an hour earlier than I technically was supposed to be able to, I I'm guessing I COULD have done this 2 days ago as the 7th is also unavailable.

 

[triciari]

Lucky you! That's great!

 

[maburke]

Very interesting. They may fix this "bug" at any time, though.

 

[Sammie]

Since you only needed 2 days you were will still within the booking window, you could have done the same thing at 8am on the 8th. However if you had wanted to book 7 nights, then no you would not have been able to do that.

I am surprised it did not wait list the 8th for you though.

 

[dbs1228]

I agree with PP check your account to make sure you do not have a WL for the 1st night. I have seen the same thing and I thought the wording indicated to book available dates and WL the rest. Congrats on the ressie!

 

[Sammie]

Must have been a glitch because i got this message

We're sorry. The services required to complete your transaction are unavailable.
If you are attempting to book an arrival date beyond your 7- or 11-month booking window, please try again when the first available date is within your booking window.

It would not let me book because the first date was not available and the second date was but it was not within my booking window.

 

[palhockeymomof2]

Must have been a glitch because i got this message



It would not let me book because the first date was not available and the second date was but it was not within my booking window.

Yep I got the same message you did

 

[Bainzy28]

Must have been a glitch because i got this message



It would not let me book because the first date was not available and the second date was but it was not within my booking window.

I had the same message when I tried to do that 2 days ago but a week ago it worked even though it was outside my booking window!! It might just be you get lucky sometimes???

 

[disneymomjcs]

I may need to do this for our Christmas trip we have planned. We booked our home resort and want to move to a different one at seven months out. We'll thats if we don't have to cancel altogether. We are hoping we will be able to go!!!!!!