Handled Grand Californian differently than I would have WDW DVC

This might be well-known to many DVC owners, but I just wanted to pass this along in case it could help out anyone else.

We're planning a trip to Disneyland this year (yay!) but only made the final decision days ago for a trip in early August. So we obviously missed the 7-month mark for the Grand Californian, which I knew was almost impossible to get unless you call on that date.

So of course when I checked today for our dates, there were no VGC rooms available at all. I put our dates on the VGC waitlist, then decided to try to reserve the dates through the Disney Collection. Well, I didn't realize, since we never use our points this way, that once those points are moved, they stay reservation points (non-DVC), even if you cancel the original reservation. That's what I was hoping to do if the waitlist came through.

Normally what I would do, if we were going to WDW, is waitlist the resort and not bother with the non-DVC resorts. But in this case, with VGC having so few rooms, there being so little chance for the waitlist to come through, AND with the regular room not costing that many more points than DVC, I decided to reserve the regular room and cancel the waitlist.

Again, just FYI about the reservation points. It's something that's obviously spelled out in all of the paraphernalia, but not having been in this situation before, I learned something new.

Thanks for the tip. We are looking to go there in a year so this will help.

We did the same thing (missed the 7 month mark and booked a regular hotel room) when we went to Disneyland last year.

We ended up booking Paradise Pier with our points. We did a room request and ended up with a room facing California Adventure so we could see World of Color.

We really found that while we missed some of the amenities of our DVC (washer/dryer especially), we liked pretty much everything about Paradise Pier and would gladly stay there again.

I stayed there when they were building the villas, so I stayed in a regular room but used my points to do so. I want to say that the usual $95 charge to convert the points are waved for DLR for some reason - that might have been a heads up for you when you were asked to pay the $95 fee (I paid this when I stayed at DLP). enjoy your stay!