Glad you worked it out!! I posted your question on another board where the is a CM in the know on ressies because I was curious also. Thought I would share his response:
"When you make a reservation, the reservations agent is always supposed to tell you that "any changes or cancellations are subjected to availability at your next call." What this means is that the NEXT time you call back, even if you've already made a reservation, there may be changes to rates and rooms may not be available.
AP Rates are VERY limited. There are only a certain amount of rooms that are available for booking these. Once all these available AP Rates are gone, they usually do NOT come back up on the computer ever again. So even though this person had booked a room under the AP discount and then cancel it, the AP rates would not come back up. The second thing is that there may not be anymore normal rooms at the Grand Californian Hotel during her intended length of stay. The hotel reservations computer sometimes "overbooks" the hotel in anticipation of cancellations. However, during these "overbook" periods, even when someone decides to cancel their reservation, the rooms may not show up in the computer to be available for booking again because the hotel had OVERBOOK. Thus, that is a reason why there were only Concierge Service rooms left.
And finally - here's the most important part of Hotel Reservations: When you make a reservation, but call back later to change your length of stay, no matter if you're only dropping one day or two days or three days ... if you're changing your length of stay, the reservationist MUST go back into the computer to search for rooms in your new length of stay as if it was a new reservation. Even if you're ADDING a night, they must do that (unless you want to add a night using a totally different reservation - in which case you run the risk of having to move hotel rooms for those nights that you've added). It's just how the computer works.
The reservationists aren't trying to play a trick on you or doing it just because they don't like you or something. It's how the computer works. Since Central Reservations does not require deposits and guests are able to cancel as long as it is 72 hours before the first day of arrival, this policy prevents guests from booking a HUGE length of stay just to hold on to dates because they're unsure of which dates they want to come in.
And by the way, this is not JUST for AP rates... this applies to ALL reservations."
