Disney Vacation Club quietly made a pretty significant change to its reservation modification rules this week, and if you’re a DVC Member who has ever heard someone talking about “walking” a reservation and wondered what on earth they meant, you’re certainly not alone.
The change immediately kicked off a huge discussion on our Disney Vacation Club forum on DISboards, particularly because it appears to shut down the traditional way some Members have used DVC’s booking system to secure extremely difficult reservations before their actual vacation dates become available. As I write this, the discussion has already stretched across dozens of pages, with Members working through what the new language means and some of the unintended consequences it could have.
So, what actually changed, and what exactly is “walking” a DVC reservation? Let’s try to make this as painless as possible.
First, Here’s the DVC Rule Change
DVC Members generally have an 11-month booking window at their Home Resort, with reservations at other DVC resorts opening at seven months. At the opening of the Home Resort window, Members can currently book a stay beginning on their eligible check-in date for up to seven consecutive nights.
The important change involves what happens after that reservation has been made.
Under DVC’s newly published modification rule, changes to the travel dates or room type of a confirmed reservation at the 11-month window can only be made once the reservation’s original check-out date falls within 11 months of the day you’re making the modification. Guest information can still be changed, and the reservation can still be canceled.
That sounds like a tiny procedural change. It’s anything but.
Okay, So What Is “Walking” a DVC Reservation?
Here’s where my brain initially needed a minute, because I’ve never walked a reservation myself.
Let’s say the DVC room you desperately want for your vacation is incredibly difficult to book. Instead of waiting until 11 months before your actual desired check-in date, under the previous system you could begin your reservation earlier. Once you had secured that room, you could repeatedly modify the reservation, dropping nights from the beginning and adding nights to the end as the booking window moved forward.
In other words, you would essentially walk your reservation forward on the calendar until it eventually landed on the dates you really wanted.
The big advantage was that once those future nights were already attached to your existing reservation, another Member couldn’t book them out from underneath you when their own 11-month window arrived. That’s why walking became particularly attractive for extremely difficult room categories and high-demand travel periods. A recent DISboards discussion specifically cited rooms such as BoardWalk Resort View, Animal Kingdom Villas Value and Club Level accommodations, and Copper Creek studios as examples where availability can be particularly difficult.
And yes, walking has been controversial among DVC Members for years.
Some Members see it as gaming the system and effectively jumping ahead of everyone who waits until their legitimate vacation dates reach the 11-month window. Others have argued that because DVC’s reservation system allowed those modifications, Members were simply using the tools available to them. In previous discussions with DVC, one of our DISboards moderators said DVC itself did not consider walking a violation of the rules at the time, although Disney recognized that the practice went against their spirit and had considered booking changes that could curb it.
That’s an important distinction. This wasn’t a secret computer hack or somebody breaking into DVC’s reservation system. Members were using functionality Disney made available, even though plenty of other Members absolutely hated the practice.
Why the New Rule Makes Walking Much Harder
Here’s the clever part of Disney’s change.
Suppose you make a seven-night Home Resort reservation the instant your 11-month booking window opens. Your check-in date is now 11 months away, but your check-out date is 11 months plus seven days away.
Under the new rule, you can’t immediately modify that reservation’s dates because its original check-out date isn’t yet within the 11-month window. You have to wait until that original check-out date reaches 11 months.
And during those seven days, the normal booking window keeps moving forward for everybody else.
That takes away the protection walkers previously enjoyed. Instead of continuously moving the reservation ahead while staying in front of other Members, the reservation is effectively stuck until its original check-out date becomes eligible for modification. DISboards Members quickly recognized the significance, with the first responses to the announcement calling it the likely end of traditional 11-month walking.
But There’s a Catch for Longer DVC Vacations
This is where things get interesting, because not everyone affected by this change was walking a reservation.
What if you legitimately want to spend 10, 12, or 14 consecutive nights in the same DVC villa?
Under the current booking rules, you’re still initially limited to seven nights when that 11-month window opens. Previously, Members could modify the reservation as additional dates became available, allowing them to extend a longer vacation.
Under the new rule, it appears they may now have to wait until the original check-out date enters the 11-month window before modifying that reservation. By then, other Members have also had an opportunity to book those subsequent nights.
That’s exactly what has some DISboards Members concerned. Several people who routinely book vacations longer than seven nights said they support stopping reservation walking but don’t want Members booking perfectly legitimate extended stays to become collateral damage. Others have wondered whether DVC might eventually increase the number of nights that can initially be booked at the 11-month window to compensate. As of the discussion we’re following, DVC’s FAQs continued to reflect the seven-night initial booking limit.
There’s also an important limitation to all of this: the new restriction specifically addresses modifications at the 11-month Home Resort window. According to the discussion and the wording Members are working through, ordinary modifications to reservations booked at other times, including the seven-month window, have not been changed by this particular rule.
This Could Be a Big Win for Members Chasing Hard-to-Get Rooms
I’ve been a DVC Member for many years and have never walked a reservation, so watching everyone dissect this change has been fascinating. Once you understand how walking worked, though, it’s easy to see why Disney’s seemingly tiny modification rule could have such a big impact.
For the Member who gets online exactly 11 months before their vacation and discovers that the room they want is somehow already unavailable, this change could level the playing field considerably. Nobody can manufacture additional BoardWalk studios, Animal Kingdom Value rooms, or other highly sought-after accommodations, but preventing someone from continually carrying a reservation forward from an earlier date should give more Members a genuine shot when their booking window opens.
The unanswered question is what happens to those Members simply trying to take a vacation longer than seven nights. That’s the part I’ll be watching closely as DVC updates its rules and Members begin seeing how the new system actually behaves in practice.
And judging by the hundreds of replies already piling up on the DISboards, I don’t think the DVC community is going to run out of things to say about this one anytime soon.
