I'm an owner at Saratoga Springs and it's one of my favorites. But Disney did make several mistakes throughout its development. In no particular order:
- It's not close to a theme park. You would think that's not the be-all, end-all, but I wish I had a dime every time someone said "location, location, location!" in a post.
- Condo style development (with many small buildings) rather than a hotel-style facility. It's personal preference, of course, but many guests seem to prefer the hotel-style facilities better. In a hotel-style building you have the front desk, bell services, room service and all other amenities easily within reach. To many, it feels more like a hotel stay / vacation rather than an apartment or condo complex.
- You could argue that rooms are overpriced. Stylistically, the most comparable resort to SSR is Old Key West. However, at OKW the rooms are actually LARGER while the costs to stay a night are LOWER across the board.
- Perhaps most significantly, it's simply oversized respective to member demand. All of the other points above are irrelevant if the resort is sized properly. If SSR only had 300-400 villas--including the Treehouses--we wouldn't be having this discussion. But SSR had plenty of land surrounding it which was suitable for expansion, and it grew to a 900 room behemoth. Disney got greedy.
Disney has made a lot of little moves to improve SSR's appeal. They've opened new restaurants (it had 1 on opening day, now 3), they opened a feature pool, they added the Treehouse Villas. The spa and golf course are amenities with which other DVC resorts cannot compete.
But it's a numbers game. There IS demand for the resort and for many owners, it's their first choice of destination. But there isn't enough demand to fill 900 rooms on a consistent basis.