Booking Tips for Chip and Joanna Gaines' Magnolia House
What is it really like to stay at Chip and Joanna Gaines' Fixer Upper Bed and Breakfast? The Magnolia house is a beauty and we have all seen the amazing work that they do on their show, but stepping foot into one of their properties and getting to stay there was pretty much a bucket list dream come true for me and my family!
Booking this house or Hillcrest Estate can be MUCH more difficult than you would think, but I have some tried and true tips to help you secure your reservation!
Check out some of the pics I took from our stay, and then be sure to carefully review my tips for booking below!
Everything about this house was beautiful and amazing and if you are a fan of the show like we are, you have got to add it to your bucket list! How did we manage to secure a weekend at the house when it books within 4 minutes for the 6 month blocks they open? Well I have some tips that worked for us that I am going to share with you now!
- Get on the email list for The Magnolia Market - you can sign up here. They open slots in blocks of 6 months at a time, so if you miss out on the first try, you can try again a few months down the road! The last few times they have opened these up in February (for July - December bookings) and August (for the following year's January - June bookings). If you are on their email list you will get an email giving you a heads up that the bookings are coming up! Also, if you follow them on instagram @magnolia they will share the post there as well!
- Get READY. The day of make sure your computer is good to go because you don't want to miss this because you are waiting for it to boot up or connect to your neighbor's wifi. The slots book in minutes and the weekend slots book even faster than that! You may even consider calling your CC provider to pre-clear the transaction charge!
- Have the website up and ready to go at least 5 minutes before the bookings open and be sure to notice the time zone that they are referring to when they open the slots!
- Hit refresh until you see the bookings pop up. Don't do like I did the first go around and check the world clock in one tab and then wait for it to hit 7pm exactly - just hit refresh, you never know at what second they will open and believe me, every second matters.
- Select a weekend or 2 day time period and think ahead - is this going to be a high demand holiday weekend? Try to plan around that if possible. The minimum time to stay at the house is 2 days so go ahead and get thinking on when you want to go! Once you have that secured YOU ARE NOT ALL SET. Y'all this is where I made my mistake the first time - you have to click every little check box that say you agree to all terms, etc. Scroll all the way down and click all those boxes! I missed one or two and when I went to pay the weekend I thought I had secured had been booked and paid for by someone else. I am talking about a time frame of 10-15 seconds here!
- Are you at the payment screen? PAY UP aka #shutupandtakemymoney at this point. This is where having more than one credit card handy is helpful in case you get declined the first try. My expenses are usually at Kroger, Target, and Amazon so I am guessing the random high charge at a retailer out of state set off a red flag. Luckily we had another card handy and...
- BOOM! CONFIRMATION! I swear Cody and I sat and stared at the screen in disbelief that we had successfully booked it! We kept asking each other - "Wait, so what does that mean? Did we get it?"
- Jump up and down in excitement and start planning your trip! See my next blog post about our fun itinerary we had while there and the places you can't miss!
I truly hope you get to stay at one of these amazing houses, and if these tips helped you secure your reservation please let me know! I love to hear any advice you have too and I can share it with other Fixer Upper fans for the next booking time!
Much much love!
Kristin