Sold Out Hotels at Disney World in Late 2022
Walt Disney World resort availability is extremely limited for this Christmas season through early January 2023, prompting reader questions and concerns. This post addresses what’s going on with the sold out hotels, lack of discounts, and commentary about what you can expect later next year. (Updated October 10, 2022.)
A couple of months ago, we warned that resorts were already selling out for the holiday season in our post, Don’t Wait for Discounts to Book Fall & Christmas 2022 Trips to Walt Disney World. The title pretty much says it all. Despite a temporary reprieve, pent-up demand appears to still be going strong for the most popular time of year to stay at Walt Disney World.
This essentially serves as a “heads up” to those thinking about last minute holiday trips or anyone wondering why many or most hotels are showing up as unavailable when searching for rooms. With some hotels already having limited available through early 2023, we’d strongly recommend booking your resort and other vacation components ASAP. Get something flexible and refundable locked-in now so you aren’t shut out or paying higher prices later. Additionally, we now have explanations as to why this is happening.
This appears to be history repeating itself, with a similar trend to what we saw last year around the start of Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary and Christmas, as well as earlier this year. With October through December being the busiest stretch of the year at Walt Disney World, you might want to book now if you’re already looking ahead to 2023.
One of the biggest changes on the limited hotel availability front since this time last year is that all previously-closed resorts have reopened. Port Orleans Riverside and French Quarter, plus All Star Music and Sports, as well as Animal Kingdom Lodge – Jambo House all reopened since last fall.
That’s over 15% of Walt Disney World’s total room inventory that’s now available for booking but was not earlier in the year–and that’s even before taking into account maximum occupancy thresholds, which have almost certainly increased as compared to last fall due to staffing strides.
Despite this inventory spike, many Walt Disney World hotels are sold out for a range of dates in the next several months. The simplest and most straightforward explanation for sold out resorts at Walt Disney World is demand. We’ve been warning ad nauseam of “Revenge Travel” at Walt Disney World. You’re probably sick of hearing about this, but the travel industry continues to see strong bookings due to consumers shifting their spending from goods to services to make up for lost time.
Last year, the expectation was that the start of the World’s Most Magical Celebration would be incredibly busy. Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary would take years-in-the-making “homecoming” trips last October through December, adding another wrinkle to pent-up demand. The Delta variant had other ideas, and October ended up being one of the slowest months of the year, with crowds not really recovering. The weeks of Thanksgiving and Christmas were still busy, but otherwise, crowds were relatively muted.
However, demand does not account for the “fully booked” hotels at Walt Disney World, at least not entirely. While Walt Disney World is not capping park attendance as before, this is occurring at the resorts.
This is not as a vestige of physical distancing. Instead, it’s due to staffing shortages. These persist in key roles that disproportionately impact the resorts at this point.
As a whole, Walt Disney World has turned a corner on its staffing shortages. The College Program’s accelerated resumption and Walt Disney World’s aggressive hiring blitz are now paying off. Tons of new employees have gone through Traditions training and been assigned to locations around Walt Disney World.
Consequently, Walt Disney World’s theme parks are mostly fine. Attractions, retail, and most other areas are adequately staffed.
However, this is not true across the board. Walt Disney World continues to hold job fairs, and is offering hiring bonuses and higher pay for certain roles. In particular, Walt Disney World has had ongoing and significant shortages for housekeeping, cooks, and bus drivers.
To remedy the bus driver shortage, Walt Disney World has contracted with a third party coach bus company (hence all of the Academy buses around the complex for the last several months). Not having much success, Disney recently increased hiring bonuses–some are now up to $6,000 depending on the position and location of the applicant! The company is also offering referral bonuses to current Cast Members who recruit new hires.
In an attempt to take pressure off the housekeeper shortage, Walt Disney World unofficially “banned” 1-night stays for peak holiday season travel dates. This restriction was never publicly announced, but if you tried to book a single night reservation, no availability would’ve shown via the online booking engine. If you expanded that to 2-nights encompassing the exact same dates, viola, there was availability.
That limitation on 1-night bookings is now gone, but don’t be surprised if Walt Disney World brings it back should demand exceed supply (of housekeepers) again. If this does happen, it’s likely to occur from late November through early 2023. (It’s worth noting that we are still encountering similar 3-night minimum stays for certain Hilton and Marriott hotels in the Flamingo Crossings area.)
During several quarterly earnings calls this year, CEO Bob Chapek addressed how staffing is impacting Walt Disney World operations. He has said that the company has “self-imposed capacity constraints” as a form of “mitigation” due to problems with staffing shortages for several positions that are integral to the guest experience.
Even before Chapek spoke about this issue, we addressed Walt Disney World’s housekeeper shortage. The causes of the current labor shortages are multifaceted, and the analysis in the above post applies to both housekeepers and cooks. By and large, it’s something that won’t be remedied by hiring bonuses–it has gotten better, but will likely continue to be an issue in 2023 and beyond.
These staffing woes directly impact operations, occupancy, and the guest loads that resorts can accommodate. In particular, Disney can’t fill every resort room every night if there aren’t enough housekeepers to turn them all over by check-in time. Insufficient dining capacity at restaurants and food courts likewise means Disney can’t fully book all rooms at a resort without causing issues at peak meal times.
Prior to Chapek confirming this, we had heard rumblings about these issues for months and of room inventory being held back as a result. Rumors of Port Orleans Riverside operating with only a handful of its buildings filled with guests, Contemporary Resort having minimal issues relocating guests when undertaking a last-minute refurbishment of half its rooms, and many more anecdotes. The totality of these stories strongly suggested that the hotels were leaving a large percentage of their rooms unfilled to reduce other pressures around Walt Disney World related to the staffing shortages.
In searching for room options in November and December 2022, we are once again seeing many or most resorts sold out. While it’s normal for some resorts to be sold out, usually most have at least some options. It’s also worth noting that the above date range for Veterans’ Day is particularly bad–worse than Thanksgiving, Christmas, or other busy weeks.
Even in searching other dates during the holiday season with better availability, it’s difficult to find anything for Pop Century, Caribbean Beach, Yacht Club, Beach Club, Wilderness Lodge, and the Polynesian. All are difficult to score for full trips, as are other hotels from time to time.
When trying to assess “real” demand levels, it’s also worth point out that the lack of availability often does not extend to third party resorts to nearly the same degree. Sure, there are the dates when the price of the Swan & Dolphin or Four Seasons randomly skyrockets to absurd territory, but that’s not all that abnormal.
Many other times, there’s no availability at Disney-owned hotels but there’s no shortage of reasonably priced third party alternatives. Suffice to say, if Walt Disney World doesn’t have hotel availability or the rack rates you’re seeing are too pricey or beyond your comfort zone, consider booking a refundable rate at third party properties.
We’re seeing availability at the Swan & Dolphin, Bonnet Creek, Disney Springs, Grand Cypress, Universal, and Flamingo Crossing hotels. If you haven’t had Flamingo Crossings on your radar before, it might be worth considering. Several hotels have opened in the last year, including Target, Walgreens, and multiple other retail, dining, and grocery locations.
Ultimately, that should help explain what’s going on with unavailable rooms at Walt Disney World. Pent-up demand and revenge travel are playing a huge part, and will likely continue to do so due to international visitors even as domestic demand fizzles out. That’s not the full story, though.
There’s also the reality that “fully booked” hotels at Walt Disney World are not even close to 100% occupancy and are not actually sold out of all rooms. They’re capped at lower levels due to staffing shortages, in particular housekeepers, bus drivers, and kitchen staff. As Walt Disney World continues to undertake hiring initiatives and as demand normalizes, this problem should start working itself out.
The availability–or lack thereof–that we’re currently seeing for this holiday season through January 2023 indicates that, once again, pent-up demand is posing a problem for Walt Disney World resort availability. While things had gotten better earlier this year, it’s clear the problem isn’t totally resolved. Here’s hoping Christmas 2023 plays out differently, but you may want to book something sooner rather than later even for next holiday season. We’ll keep you posted as this situation continues to change.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think is driving the availability issue at Walt Disney World? Do you think pent-up demand is the big issue, with people making up for lost time traveling and not caring how much they’re paying? Think the housekeeping, dining, bus driver, or other staffing shortages help explain the problem? How do you expect the hotel inventory problem to play out? Do you agree or disagree with our commentary? Do you agree or disagree with our advice? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
When are 2023 resort reservations likely to open up? Or at the very least, how would one find out they had opened up without needing to call them every morning?
Discounts have been such a feature of Disney trips in the past, that we budgeted it into our Feb/March trip. Now it seems like no discounts are coming out, not even for Disney Visa cardholders, and it leaves me wondering if we should postpone. It’s a big chunk of change over budget. Hard to do that this late, but it’s pretty disappointing. If they’re holding back room inventory, that’s particularly annoying, but at least that might mean lower crowds than would otherwise be the case. Idk.
I wouldn’t bet on unfilled rooms meaning lower crowds. The majority of WDW guests come from off-site, so even ~30% of on-site rooms sitting empty might only result in a 5-10% reduction in crowds.
Be mindful that the late February/early March timeframe is also Mardi Gras in 2022. I normally would like that week, but not this coming year.
Confused on what you say about using park pass availability as an indicator. Since right before Thanksgiving I’ve noticed park reservations selling out regularly. Expected for Thanksgiving week, of course, but not for Dec 1-11, for example. Take today, December 11: Touring Plans rates it a 3 (so maybe it will be end up a 4 or 5 at most). Yet there is no park pass availability in MK, Epcot, or AK – only HS is available. How can MK sell out on a Saturday with crowd level 3 to 5 if they aren’t still artificially limiting attendance?
Today won’t be a 3/10–it’ll be an 7/10 or higher. (My guess is around 8.5/10, but it’s still early.)
Park Pass availability isn’t a great indicator when it’s green, which was most of the time between late July up until Thanksgiving. Even when it’s yellow or grey, it’s still not an solid proxy for crowds because Disney is also limiting attendance due to staffing and other variables that won’t be reflected in wait times.
We had to cancel our December trip to Fort Wilderness at the last minute. [crying emoji here] We tried to rebook for January or February, but there is absolutely nothing available! These have always been months when there is plenty of open sites. In fact, there is still availability over Christmas at the Fort. I can’t figure out why this is … unless they are holding back inventory like they did for December.
I think it’s a mix of Christmas rate charts being really expensive, deterring some guests from visiting (there’s a reason Dec 12-24 are the only dates with discounts for the holiday season), winter rates being much more attraction, and postponed trips–basically, everything discussed above.
I suspect a lot of people have targeted January and February 2022 as times of year with low crowds–and they’re going to be in for a rude awakening next month. I hope I’m wrong.
We stayed at Beach Club Villas over the runDisney Wine and Dine weekend, and everytime we walked by the hotel side, there were multiple empty made up rooms on the ground floor that we could see, even though all resorts were showing as sold out prior to our trip.
We are booked at the allstar sports. We have reservations from January 4-24 2022. As of today we still haven’t been told which resort we will be staying in. I need to make reservations for transportation from the airport to the resort . I am waiting.
We just stayed 4 nights at Pop! Got a room on the corner on the floor/building we requested. Mousekeeping was attentive. No one was next to our room. We were close to the pool and skyliner.
Parks were packed even on the weekdays. I’ve always felt Disney had too many hotels on site. We did not go early we went late and stayed late which was perfect. Didn’t use Genie+ And watched Peter Pan’s flight go from a 120 minute wait all day to a 25 minute wait at night.
We definitely planned more trips this year than usual we had 2 stays at the Hilton Orlando Palace, 1 at the Dolphin and 1 at Pop! But we couldn’t reschedule those trips to a cascade of reasons. We had to renew our Gold and Silver passes before the passes were no longer sold, we won’t be able to travel part of next year etc etc.
I would still say we got good deals (same rate as last year for APs, generous HH point conversion when travel was still slow, a little bit of an AP discount)
I also see in a lot of my groups people planning first trips to Disney over Christmas. I’m scratching my head thinking they are going to leave just hating Disney. But I guess after 2 years people want to go big for Christmas.
I called Saturday to add two more nights to our stay next week. The cast member had no problem doing this. I could’ve done it online but it would be under a different reservation number.
We just did a one night at All Star Music last weekend and again this weekend. Our room was ready this morning before 11.
The 2-nt min stay definitely makes sense with staffing shortages. It looks to me that they are also limiting/closed to departures implying that they are capping the number of departures at what they know they can accommodate. If you search 12/6-12/11 Pop Century is not an option but if you search 12/6-12/12 it’s available. The only explanation I can think of is that they do not have the resources to handle any additional departures on 12/11 but are more than happy to take someone staying over those days. Art of Animation appears to be in the same boat.
When international travel resumes Brazilian tour groups and UK tourists will overwhelm the already short staffed resort.
Getting rid of annual passes was their only shot at containing it, but they blew it.
We have been doing 500 days out reservations for pretty much every major holiday starting the 4th of July 2022. Thanksgiving and Christmas to New Years have hit hard limits on reservations for two nights or less for those periods. To the point that I have overlaps with nights in more than one place that I’ll have to call in to change – no availability shows up when I try to modify.
I’ll probably be canceling lots of these if I can get DVC rentals on someone else’s points- but I always reserve back ups.
Travel restrictions from other countries to USA are supposed to end nov 8th I think. Maybe they’re holding out for that?
The theory of making a longer stay and modifying does NOT work. I attempted this and it shows that the reservation cannot be changed as unavailable which makes no sense as I Already have the two nights on the reservation I am modifying down….. will probably have to endure a very long Disney hold.
So, I’m travelling from the UK and have booked a refundable two week stay at Poly in Feb. After reading the recent blogs I’m just wondering if there is any point in staying on-site. With the jetlag I don’t think the early morning starts and late nights will be an option for our two young-ish kids. Looking at prices I can get somewhere for a fraction of the cost with better rooms/facilities. Can anyone let me know if I’m missing something?? It’s a shame because we have stayed on site before and loved the immersive experience but without fast pass and Disney dining I can’t justify the additional cost. I think I would be better off staying off-site and paying extra for the genie+, lightening passes and parking fees. Would love your opinion.
I have a 13 day vacation booked for 12 people in February and had to split resorts between pop century and AofA because no available rooms at one resort. There were actually no available rooms for 2 days of our stay but our travel agent called and somehow got them added. February is supposed to be a slow month so it will be interesting to see how full it is when we get there.
We have been at Caribbean Beach all week and I have to say it does not feel full at all, yet you could not book a room here this week if you wanted. I tried for months to extend our stay by one day. We’ve been walking past rooms with the lights on that are obviously not occupied and haven’t been occupied this whole time. You can tell that there’s no one in that room. The buses are a quarter fall the pool is never full, you can always find a chair. Same thing with the dining the quick service you can always get a quick meal and find a place to sit. It’s honestly really really nice, but there Hass to be a lot of them sold hotel rooms right now at this resort. We did one night at Port Orleans last Saturday and the cast members there told me that they were only at 30% capacity. As far as the way it feels for the number of people here compared to the number of staff it feels perfect. My theory is yes when the Covid cases spiked there was no way of knowing how long that would go on and the staffing was continuing to be a problem and they basically just didn’t open all the inventory up. Which I think is pretty smart because it takes pressure off of the employees and it helps all of the guests have a great “magical” stay without tons of headaches. The crowds at Magic Kingdom have been pretty heavy and Epcot has been pretty heavy in the evening as well, but that’s obviously a lot of annual passholders and offsite guest as well. The only crowded infrastructure problem we ran into was taking the skyliner home after harmonious. we’ve done a lot of sit down dining and all of our restaurants I’ve had multiple tables open that never got filled. Sebastian seems to be running at about 50% capacity I would say Cinderella‘s Royal table is running at about 75%… teppan Edo seems to be back to 75%. None of them are running at full capacity like they used to with every table taken. But yet you definitely can’t get a reservation last minute either. So to me it’s a lot of pieces of the puzzle that indicate they’re artificially holding back inventory on dining tables and rooms. I think it works as no one wants to be at an over run hotel with limited staff.
We have dolphin cancellable reservations for dec 8 and 9 which we made a few weeks ago for $297 per night including taxes but not resort fees. I see that now the rates at dolphin for the same nights start at $569 per night ( NON cancelable , not including taxes or resort fees). The rate for swan is $450. For some reason the rate was lower for 1 night on Saturday.
I definitely agree about the housekeeping problem. I wonder if there is also a fear about people booking 1 night stays to get the 2 hour advantage in booking the paid lightning lanes especially at ROR. We will be keeping the dolphin for that reason since the only Disney hotel we could find for those nights were much more expensive suites an AofA.
I fear that swan and dolphin will stop being as reasonable an alternative now that they offer distinct advantages for extended evening hours at Epcot andMK and also an advantage for paid lightning lanes.
We just returned from a split stay at Yacht Club and Ft. Wilderness Cabins. Yacht Club did not seem to be very busy compared to Ft. Wilderness. The parks didn’t seem any busier to us compared to any other October but maybe that changes when international travel opens up. We ate at Boma one night and there were quite a few tables not in use. Overall, it was a great trip in regards to wait times in the parks and the dining options seem to be improving every day. I tend to lean towards the theory of staffing shortages affecting resort and dining “unavailability” based on what we saw this past week. Can’t wait for our return trip to Wilderness Lodge in December.
Reducing hotel availability makes sense if there isn’t staffing to clean the rooms. I’ve traveled for work to different areas in Alabama using various hotel chains. They say they are booked, but the parking lots won’t be full late at night or early in the morning. Rooms aren’t available at check in because they aren’t cleaned yet. Conference hotels at the beach in our state are also having similar staffing issues. We realized this during our organization’s annual conference. Hotel availability had to be capped because they couldn’t handle the capacity. Not sure really where all the workers are now. Alabama reduced Federal unemployment money because we have such a critical need for workers in supply chain jobs. I hope staffing improves at DW and elsewhere for the sake of our country.