I’m a Disney Vacation Club member myself, so I’ve booked DVC trips and have spent time evaluating whether DVC was going to be worth it for my family.
When your family decides to book a vacation, checking for flights and hotels can be a stressful experience.
The same is true of booking a DVC stay (or even worse: deciding whether to take the plunge and pay for the cost of a DVC membership) You want to know your DVC membership will give you access to the vacation you want when you want it.
In this post we’ll walk through how to check availability, leading tools, and some specific things related to availability to keep in mind.
How to Check for DVC Availability (Tools)
The easiest way to check for DVC availability is to use DVC Vacations’ availability tool or check on Disney’s DVC website.
The layout of the DVC Vacations tool is actually a little nicer and faster to check for what you have (Disney’s tool layers in a lot of pretty pictures and disclaimers you don’t really need):
Lots of quick utility to see which rooms are available for your entire stay or partial, versus a big image and some disclaimers in the same space from Disney’s own tool:
Beyond tools, there are some other tools to help you quickly find out about DVC availability.
DVC Availability Charts & Calendars
The best approach to determining availability generally will be to use the tools that have up to date info listed above.
If you’re planning something a ways out (beyond the 7 month booking window for all Disney Vacation Club resorts that aren’t your home resort, for instance) you can also check out the DVC availability charts (different from Disney Vacation Club points charts) from DVC Help which show availability based on the last 12 months (which can be helpful for predicting what availability is likely to be like as you get closer to a specific month you may want to book).
DVC Help also has additional handy DVC tools, including a calculator to help you keep track of your points if you’re booking multiple trips (or you gifted or rented some of your DVC points).
The best DVC availability calendar is one of the dynamic tools listed above.
DVC Availability Alerts
You are no longer able to get availability alerts for DVC.
In the past there were tools that would send you a message when DVC availability opened up for a specific resort within a specific range (as multiple tools do for restaurants at Disney currently) but Disney updated their own availability tool making that data impossible to scrape so those tools have shut down.
Time of Day to Make DVC Reservations
If you’re looking to book something just a the edge of your 11 or 7 month DVC booking window, you can start to make reservations at 8am for a new day.
DVC Availability at 7 Months & 11 Months
You can book any DVC resort up to 7 months out as a DVC member, and you can book your home resort up to 11 months out. You may see people or tools or sites reference the 7 month or 11 month window when booking or looking at availability: this is what they’re referencing.
DVC Availability FAQs
How can I check DVC availability?
The easiest way to check for DVC availability is:
- Use DVC Vacations’ availability tool OR
- Check on Disney’s DVC website.
Is the DVC availability tool accurate?
Disney’s own tool is updated dynamically and will be accurate. Tools like DVC Vacation’s tool will be updated periodically, so is likely to be accurate but not guaranteed (it’s worth checking against Disney’s own results).
