Getting less...for more! (AKA DVC)

That seems to be an issue. From everything I have read the one bedrooms are always the last to book? That increase seems to have allowed Disney to increase the amount of points overall in each resorts since they are available individually but in their charts are counting studio/1 bedrooms combined as 2 bedrooms- which went down?

I think what bothers me about this is not the perception by many that Disney is once again “pulling a fast one” - shame on us for not expecting it.

Many people will say that Disney has done this in the past. They point to 2010. This is copied from 2010:

Disney Vacation Club adjusts 2010 Vacation Points charts

To help address a growing Member interest in weekend stays at Disney Vacation Club Resorts, Disney Vacation Club has adjusted 2010 Vacation Points charts, reducing Vacation Point requirements for Friday and Saturday nights.

To make this change possible, Vacation Point requirements for some instances of Sunday-Thursday stays are now higher. However, a full week’s stay will essentially cost the same amount of Vacation Points as before."

It is not the same. I cannot stay the same amount of days at any point in 2020. It is completely on me and it really does not even upset me, but it is a change.

BOM explained it better than anyone else has to me this far:

The bungalows cost a lot of points per night. So a certain number of points were allotted to the program to account for that. But they aren’t being rented very well/often which means that all those allotted points are being shifted to smaller more affordable units like studios. Which means thise are more jammed up than they ought to be. So a reallocation will help redistribute the available points within the program in its entirety in such a way that the points overall will
be more usable to members.

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PS @PrincipalTinker was mentioned as “a friend of the show” this week, concerning an issue unrelated to the current topic.

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i Still do not see how that explain YC or SSR? Or 1 bedrooms?

Because it’s a reallocation of the entire program points, not just one property or another, and is somewhat related to supply and demand. The bungalows and grand villas went down because they aren’t rented as often. That’s a LOT of points that will be used elsewhere.

I don’t know if I’m explaining clearly. But when he said it on the show I immediately understood the rationale and it took the sting away a bit.

My question is this: all members or member with excess of 300 points? Are they trying to meet the needs of a targeted group? I am not saying there is anything wrong with that, I just want DVC to own it.

All members! Because of those high point members are renting studios because the big ones are pricey, then us little guys don’t have an option as we get edged out. So now the bigger units are less expensive, drawing those members and their points to where they “belong” and freeing things up a bit for you and me. And the studios are not as appealing to them.

I see how it can bite us too, don’t get me wrong. But I get why it needed to happen.

Interesting- so do you think the people that are counting up the points and are saying that Disney has added points to every resort, therefore making more money just for themselves are wrong? There seems to be a lot of thought that it may be an honest mistake but honestly the numbers are just confusing me.

There’s a law against them doing that. I think it has to come out to be within a certain – very small! – percentage of current points.

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I also think that some of this has been in anticipation of Riviera coming on board.

Yeah, there are a lot of spreadsheets on MouseSavers, DVCinfo.com and that other board I try to ignore (lthey are trying to get a lawsuit going) that all seem to show they have.

Well if it can be shown, they should go after them

I wonder if they would be covered from liability by the points soon to enter the program

I find the whole thing very interesting. I have spent way too many hours going back reading the 2010 and SSR changes and then this one, but every time I think I fully understand -another spreadsheet comes up or an email from Disney responding to someone’s questions and it just confuses me all over again.

I would probably need to play around with actual points, but while it makes sense to reallocate points to get people with more points to “move up”, from what I can tell it will barely make a dent in such change in behavior. Lowering a 650 pt GV to 620 will do little to get people to rent the GV. But in the meantime, raising a week from 194 to 208 pts means the person who has 100 pt plan can no longer rent a week every two years. If they borrow pts ahead, they eventually run out. So, they will now have to move DOWN, not up, making the “freed” studios more in demand than ever.

Truth is, the appears, once again, the only one this benefits is Disney itself. Not even sure they benefit, frankly, except in new DVC sales (and resales, indirectly) because people will no longer be able to get a lower point allocation and be okay.

I dragged out one of my DVC points spreadsheets and started to try and work this out, but then I decided that it was pointless as I don’t have any skin in the game in the first place. However, I find it odd the they would be able to reallocate points across resorts - I thought each resort was its own entity so any reallocations would have to balance within that resort.

No, all increases are resort specific. I took a screen shot an example of some of the numbers showing up on MouseOwners:

I am just adding that some people are focusing on the Poly because they only have the studios and the bungalows so it is easier to track the points. The combination of studio/1 bedroom points at other resorts that can be booked/counted separately or as lock offs seems to come down to interpretation of the rules.

An increase of 100,000 points really is not a lot when you are talking millions, but if DVC rents them to owns as one time use points at $18 a point and this is available at all resorts-I believe that is what is driving people crazy.

Although there was a post this morning that DVC is allowing a CCV owner to purchase 10 points (there was a 50 point minimum for new CC owners to add on) so I guess it is great news that they only have to pay another $2000 or so to book the same stay in 2020. Ok- now I am getting jaded here so I will bring my bad attitude to work.

Where it rightly belongs. :slight_smile:

I think that there are two questions here:

  • Can WDW do what they did, under the terms of the contract? Probably, as they have very expensive lawyers and property management professionals to think about these things. However, this would not be the first time that a sleazy corporation* did something that it wasn’t allowed/supposed to do.
  • Did WDW say or do anything outside of the contract that would indicate that they would not do this? Here is where the true issue lies. Many (most?) DVC owners bought a given sized contract with the expectation that they would be able to book a certain type of room for a set period of time every year (or two years, etc.). This would have been based on their understanding of the points allocation at that time, which technically could change at any time (as it did). However, if the DVC marketing team made representations to potential owners that they would indeed be able to do this, then we have a whole new ballgame. This difficulty here would be to prove it - in the absence of any promotional materials or documentation to the contrary, a court would look to the contract, as that represents what was actually agreed. If fact, a court might still look to the contract even if there is documentation that supports the owners’ expectations.

*Note: I am not saying here that WDW is a sleazy corporation per se. However, in my opinion the terms sleazy and corporation go together, as one of the purposes of a corporation is to absolve individuals of accountability for their actions. This allows people to do sleazy things under the guise that it wasn’t them that was doing it, but rather the corporation, presumably allowing them to sleep at night.

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So, based on your screen shot, they have changed the total home points pool for Poly. Hmm, very sketchy. Probably allowed, as long as the total DVC points pool did not change, but still sketchy.

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I think that most new direct owners will report that they were told that this was the case. SSR was used to illustrate this. New owners were told that when Preferred was added the points were reduced across other areas (so a studio in non preferred went down). Now, email inquiries responses from Disney are using this same reallocation to demonstrate that shifts always happen. Of course nothing was ever in writing, and it is really silly to argue what anyone was “told”.

I am very lucky. I bought a small contract but without any expectation that I would have a certain amount of days so this does not change anything for me- other than having me adjust future planning.

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