2020 Point Charts

Positive changes at Poly IMO. But, more cuts to Bungalows needed, and to more evenly allocate points, there needs to be more studio categories (Bungalow View, Lake/MK view, Garden View, Pool View, and Value/Parking lot/street) Could even look at points based on which floor level imo. I could see advantages and disadvantages to 1st floor, but that would absolutely not be my preference. Just my 0.02.

I think just creating one more category would do. Splitting standard into a garden and standard view would probably be fine. Putting the lesser liked parking lot/monorail view into standard and the rest of the studios into a garden view would probably help out in a couple ways. One, those who book the garden view would probably feel a lot better knowing they don't have that "bad" view/location if they don't want it. Two, it can provide a solution for those who want the lowest cost studio possible. Of course it would be much like standard at BLT or BWV and Value at AKV but at least it's an option. Plus, you pay more for the view you want if you want it ensured. DVC can sell you more points or one time use points if you need to cover the gap which I'm sure is always a plus for them. Not only that, it's a known factor so no "valid" complaints coming in about the view for those disappointed in the "Standard" view. Personally for a few nights, I don't mind the parking lot view but I would be a little peeved if it was for a week or more only because it is pretty far from the Ceremonial House. The downside is the amount of havoc that causes for existing owners now that it's sold out.
 
Just eyeballing it-Poly and VGF studios are hit pretty hard.
Yes. We'll have one more stay in a VGF studio, but after our recent add-on, which was intended to make us not dependent on studios, we might think about shorter stays in 1Br for the same # of points.

and Food & Wine fest / MNSSHP in September have created numerous peaks in demand which belie the slower periods like the end of Jan and beginning of Sept.

This was definitely the case when we were there in Sept. (staying at Swan) - touring plans had crowd levels around a 2-3, supposedly, but Epcot was more crowded than I've ever seen it. Admittedly it was our first time at F&W, but it was wall to wall people Saturday - Monday, inclusive.
 
The leap year is interesting...but under that theory, points would go down to justify the one additional day. I wonder if it pushes people to book in 2019 before star wars and slightly discourages people from holding their points for 2020 and 2021 to better control crowds. I have noticed a lot of availability between June and November. Fewer people booked home resorts in the 7 to 11 month window.
 


The leap year is interesting...but under that theory, points would go down to justify the one additional day. I wonder if it pushes people to book in 2019 before star wars and slightly discourages people from holding their points for 2020 and 2021 to better control crowds. I have noticed a lot of availability between June and November. Fewer people booked home resorts in the 7 to 11 month window.

In the past, there has never been a change (up or down) in points needed any night during the year just because the year is a leap year. The key is that when determining original total points for the resort in a year is that they did not use a leap year to do that. Adding that extra day during the leap year actually just means there is one more day in the year for members to use points even though total points for the resort remain unchanged.
 
For what it's worth, I ran some numbers last night. Using the 2018 calendar as my basis (for determining number of days in each season, weekdays vs weekends), I applied both the 2019 and 2020 point values for BCV. Room counts used were 36 studios, 20 One Bedroom villas and 152 Two Bedroom. @drusba previously indicated that lockoffs should be counted as 2Bs, which makes sense given that there is no guarantee owners will book them separately.

Summing all points required to book all villas for the full year, I came up with the following numbers:

All 2Bs counted as 2Bs
2019 chart: 3,027,324 points
2020 chart: 3,027,928 points

That's an increase of 604 points for the full year. Given that 2018 is probably not the Base Year used by DVC and the variance is less than .02% on more than 3 million points, this is an acceptable variance. I performed the same analysis for SSR (much more complex with standard/pref views, treehouses, etc.) and ended up with a variance of +450 on more than 14 million points.

In this regard, I have no reason to question the validity of the charts. To the naked eye it looks like costs rose on far more rooms/views/seasons than where they declined. But the number of villas in each grouping, number of days in each season and exact amount of each +/- change all play a role in balancing the totals.

I then did a second comparison for BCV where I counted all of the lockoffs as their separate 1B + Studio components to evaluate the gap in points between booking lockoff units as one room vs. two rooms. In 2019, it costs 5 MORE points (42 vs 37) to book a weekday Adventure Studio AND One Bedroom vs booking that same physical room as a Two Bedroom villa. In 2020 that disparity will increase to +7 points.

Does that mean owners are collectively paying more for Studio + 1B bookings at BCV in 2020? The answer appears to be yes.

Assume for a moment that all lockoffs are booked separately as 1B + Studio. Changing my room counts to 110 Studios, 94 One Bedroom (both numbers including the lockoffs) and 78 Dedicated 2Bs, I came up with the following numbers:

Lockoffs counted separately as Studio+1B
2019 chart: 3,219,058 points
2020 chart: 3,282,118 points

That's an increase of 63,060 points over the course of the year or 1.96%.

At this particular resort, owners staying in lockoff Studio and One Bedroom villas will collectively pay more points in 2020 than in previous years.

However, with BCV this may be a phenomenon that falls under the heading of unintended consequences--or at least uncontrollable consequences. Remember that my initial set of numbers at the top of this post are the true basis for the point chart. It's impossible to narrow that variance between Studio+1B vs 2B costs without impacting the overall total on the chart. Even minor changes create a ripple effect which alters the chart by thousands of points.

Consider the impact of reducing a 2020 weekday Adventure Studio from 16 points per night to 15. There are 36 dedicated Studios at BCV and 54 weeknights in Adventure season. That one point adjustment removes 1944 points from the chart. In the top set of numbers, instead of a +604 variance for 2020 there would be a -1340 variance. There may be other areas where a smaller adjustment is possible, but that wouldn't make much of a dent in the 62k gap in my "lockoffs counted separately" figure.

If most/all BCV lockoffs are booked separately, member points will be consumed at a slightly faster rate than in the past (~2%) which could lead to additional room inventory allocated to breakage, etc. That said, I don't see a clear path for DVC to narrow this gap while still accomplishing their (apparent) goal of raising Studio costs and tweaking other aspects of the charts. At least, not in the case of BCV.

Saratoga Springs is another matter. SSR has no dedicated Studio or 1B villas, so it seems as if those rates could be set at any reasonable level of DVC's choosing. Nevertheless, this gap between Studio+1b and Lockoff 2B pricing rose by 3.54% from 2019 to 2020. The collective cost of booking all of the lockoffs separately rose from 14.994 million points in 2019 to 15.526 million in 2020.

An Adventure season weekday standard Two Bedroom at SSR is priced at 28 points per night in 2020. That figure is material to balancing the points and I have no qualms with it. However, it's not clear to me why DVC assigned 12 PPN to a Studio and 24 PPN to a One Bedroom (total 36) in the same season. Members are paying 8 additional points every weeknight--for every lockoff--during that one season. I don't see any barriers that would prevent them from lowering either the Studio or 1B rate (or both) so that the combined cost is similar or equal to the cost of a lockoff Two Bedroom Villa. This variance has always existed at SSR (and most DVC resorts), but the gap is widening.

This disparity appears to be necessary at BCV and other resorts with dedicated Studio and One Bedroom villas. Perhaps DVC feels justified in applying a similar formula, even at resorts that only have lockoffs.
 
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I compared the point charts for Boulder Ridge and came up with a difference of 605 points between 2019 and 2020.

I did not include a Leap Day in the 2020 point chart because it would not be included in the Base Year method used by DVC.
 


It is good to see that the reallocation is playing by the rules, but I think there are still questions about what the intended outcome is supposed to be. The outright increase in the studio+1BR versus 2BR for lock offs still troubles me.

An Adventure season weekday standard Two Bedroom at SSR is priced at 28 points per night in 2020. That figure is material to balancing the points and I have no qualms with it. However, it's not clear to me why DVC assigned 12 PPN to a Studio and 24 PPN to a One Bedroom (total 36) in the same season. Members are paying 8 additional points every weeknight--for every lockoff--during that one season. I don't see any barriers that would prevent them from lowering either the Studio or 1B rate (or both) so that the combined cost is similar or equal to the cost of a lockoff Two Bedroom Villa. This variance has always existed at SSR (and most DVC resorts), but the gap is widening.

This disparity appears to be necessary at BCV and other resorts with dedicated Studio and One Bedroom villas. Perhaps DVC feels justified in applying a similar formula, even at resorts that only have lockoffs.

I would feel better if I knew what Disney did with the extra points they get from studios and 1BR (rather than someone booking them as a 2BR). If they use them for one-time-use points and the money from the sale of those points goes towards funding the DVC property, I'd be OK with everything. But if that money goes to Disney, then I'd have a problem with that.

Wild Guess: maybe one-time-use points are getting to be too popular and DVC needs to generate more of them?
 
I would feel better if I knew what Disney did with the extra points they get from studios and 1BR (rather than someone booking them as a 2BR). If they use them for one-time-use points and the money from the sale of those points goes towards funding the DVC property, I'd be OK with everything. But if that money goes to Disney, then I'd have a problem with that.

In a vacuum, if there are 3.0 million BCV points and it would take almost 3.3 million to book all rooms as lockoffs for a year, all member points will be used up with vacancies remaining. However, this isn't a vacuum. Members have the right to bank and borrow points, which shifts points from year to year. Technically BCV owners collectively have access to 9 million points in any given year if EVERYONE banked and then borrowed their points. That obviously doesn't happen, but there is certainly some maneuvering going on, the details of which are unknown to us. And thanks to the 7-month booking rights a non-home resorts, it's unlikely that much excess inventory ever remains at a resort like BCV.

Ultimately wherever unbooked rooms filter down to CRO for cash guests, much of the revenue would come back to DVC owners as "breakage" income. It's credited to annual dues. (Although there are limits on that money, too.)

Wild Guess: maybe one-time-use points are getting to be too popular and DVC needs to generate more of them?

DVC has literally millions of unsold Aulani points (plus more at Copper Creek.) You can bet that's where the one time use points are being pulled from. Home resort is irrelevant since DVC only allows them to be used at 7 months.
 
Thanks. So it seems like DVC can't game the system for its own profit. I'll put my pitchfork down over here.
 
it's unlikely that much excess inventory ever remains at a resort like BCV.

Not at a resort like BCV because other resorts points would be used to book such a desiderable resort. This would leave extra bookings available at middle tier resorts like AKV or BRV to which their own lock off extra points would add. And then SSR points will be used to book those and would leave days open at SSR. In conclusion, at a resort like SSR all those extra lockoff points would trickle down and add up to hundreds of thousands of points. Breakage income is capped (at 2%?): there are a lot of extra bookings at SSR that Disney would pocket.
Good job to the mouse.

Is it legal?
 
Thanks. So it seems like DVC can't game the system for its own profit. I'll put my pitchfork down over here.

It's never crystal clear. If all 14 resorts have this built in padding with the lockoff rooms (well, 13 since Poly has no lockoffs), the cumulative effect could be material. But we don't even know the ratio at which lockoffs are typically booked as 1B+S vs 2B. Beach Club has 74 lockoffs. Not all of them are routinely booked as 1B+S, nor are they all booked as Two Bedroom villas. Reality is somewhere in the middle.

The breakage revenue itself is very ambiguous. The budget states that the breakage amount will not exceed 2.5% of the resort budget. Last time I looked closely at the numbers, it seemed like Disney always (arbitrarily?) threw 2.5% in there as a credit to members. For 2019, BCV has a breakage credit of $426,000. That money should ONLY come from rooms which ended up sold for cash in 2018 because nobody wanted to book them on points. Does anyone really believe that $426K worth of BCV villa rooms went unbooked by members this year???

Seems likely that Disney is erring on the side of caution and just giving members the maximum 2.5% breakage credit annually.

As for actual vacancies, the 7 month booking window ensures that members have plenty of time to book the resorts they want. If anything is actually slipping thru to breakage, it's probably SSR rooms, Poly bungalows, off-season at Aulani, HHI and Vero...that sort of thing. Rooms that members have ample opportunity to reserve but choose not to.
 
Not at a resort like BCV because other resorts points would be used to book such a desiderable resort. This would leave extra bookings available at middle tier resorts like AKV or BRV to which their own lock off extra points would add. And then SSR points will be used to book those and would leave days open at SSR. In conclusion, at a resort like SSR all those extra lockoff points would trickle down and add up to hundreds of thousands of points. Breakage income is capped (at 2%?): there are a lot of extra bookings at SSR that Disney would pocket.
Good job to the mouse.

Is it legal?

We must have been writing at the same time. See my post above.

Agree it's going to trickle down to the less desirable resorts. But those locations are...less desirable. Breakage is capped at 2.5% but all resorts are getting some sort of credit.

For 2019 BCV owners got a breakage credit of $426K. SSR was over $1.8 million. BLT $690k.

Do we really believe that each of those resorts has that volume of points-based rooms that go unbooked per year? Honestly I dunno. Some of dollars strike me as being generous. BCV and BLT would have to average a couple empty rooms per night, year round, to produce that revenue. AND they wouldn't just be empty rooms from members who are late cancellations or no-shows...they'd actually have to be unbooked rooms earmarked for points stays which are subsequently sold to cash guests.

SSR is likely to have the most vacancies (among DVC at WDW), but it doesn't seem to be a popular destination for cash guests.
 
For what it's worth, I ran some numbers last night. Using the 2018 calendar as my basis (for determining number of days in each season, weekdays vs weekends), I applied both the 2019 and 2020 point values for BCV. Room counts used were 36 studios, 20 One Bedroom villas and 152 Two Bedroom. @drusba previously indicated that lockoffs should be counted as 2Bs, which makes sense given that there is no guarantee owners will book them separately.

Summing all points required to book all villas for the full year, I came up with the following numbers:

All 2Bs counted as 2Bs
2019 chart: 3,027,324 points
2020 chart: 3,027,928 points

That's an increase of 604 points for the full year. Given that 2018 is probably not the Base Year used by DVC and the variance is less than .02% on more than 3 million points, this is an acceptable variance. I performed the same analysis for SSR (much more complex with standard/pref views, treehouses, etc.) and ended up with a variance of +450 on more than 14 million points.

In this regard, I have no reason to question the validity of the charts. To the naked eye it looks like costs rose on far more rooms/views/seasons than where they declined. But the number of villas in each grouping, number of days in each season and exact amount of each +/- change all play a role in balancing the totals.

I then did a second comparison for BCV where I counted all of the lockoffs as their separate 1B + Studio components to evaluate the gap in points between booking lockoff units as one room vs. two rooms. In 2019, it costs 5 MORE points (42 vs 37) to book a weekday Adventure Studio AND One Bedroom vs booking that same physical room as a Two Bedroom villa. In 2020 that disparity will increase to +7 points.

Does that mean owners are collectively paying more for Studio + 1B bookings at BCV in 2020? The answer appears to be yes.

Assume for a moment that all lockoffs are booked separately as 1B + Studio. Changing my room counts to 110 Studios, 94 One Bedroom (both numbers including the lockoffs) and 78 Dedicated 2Bs, I came up with the following numbers:

Lockoffs counted separately as Studio+1B
2019 chart: 3,219,058 points
2020 chart: 3,282,118 points

That's an increase of 63,060 points over the course of the year or 1.96%.

At this particular resort, owners staying in lockoff Studio and One Bedroom villas will collectively pay more points in 2020 than in previous years.

However, with BCV this may be a phenomenon that falls under the heading of unintended consequences--or at least uncontrollable consequences. Remember that my initial set of numbers at the top of this post are the true basis for the point chart. It's impossible to narrow that variance between Studio+1B vs 2B costs without impacting the overall total on the chart. Even minor changes create a ripple effect which alters the chart by thousands of points.

Consider the impact of reducing a 2020 weekday Adventure Studio from 16 points per night to 15. There are 36 dedicated Studios at BCV and 54 weeknights in Adventure season. That one point adjustment removes 1944 points from the chart. In the top set of numbers, instead of a +604 variance for 2020 there would be a -1340 variance. There may be other areas where a smaller adjustment is possible, but that wouldn't make much of a dent in the 62k gap in my "lockoffs counted separately" figure.

If most/all BCV lockoffs are booked separately, member points will be consumed at a slightly faster rate than in the past (~2%) which could lead to additional room inventory allocated to breakage, etc. That said, I don't see a clear path for DVC to narrow this gap while still accomplishing their (apparent) goal of raising Studio costs and tweaking other aspects of the charts. At least, not in the case of BCV.

Saratoga Springs is another matter. SSR has no dedicated Studio or 1B villas, so it seems as if those rates could be set at any reasonable level of DVC's choosing. Nevertheless, this gap between Studio+1b and Lockoff 2B pricing rose by 3.54% from 2019 to 2020. The collective cost of booking all of the lockoffs separately rose from 14.994 million points in 2019 to 15.526 million in 2020.

An Adventure season weekday standard Two Bedroom at SSR is priced at 28 points per night in 2020. That figure is material to balancing the points and I have no qualms with it. However, it's not clear to me why DVC assigned 12 PPN to a Studio and 24 PPN to a One Bedroom (total 36) in the same season. Members are paying 8 additional points every weeknight--for every lockoff--during that one season. I don't see any barriers that would prevent them from lowering either the Studio or 1B rate (or both) so that the combined cost is similar or equal to the cost of a lockoff Two Bedroom Villa. This variance has always existed at SSR (and most DVC resorts), but the gap is widening.

This disparity appears to be necessary at BCV and other resorts with dedicated Studio and One Bedroom villas. Perhaps DVC feels justified in applying a similar formula, even at resorts that only have lockoffs.

I would appreciate if you would run the numbers for VGF since it appears that 3 times as many units have increased as decreased.
 
SSR is likely to have the most vacancies (among DVC at WDW), but it doesn't seem to be a popular destination for cash guests.

OKW and SSR are offered on the UK website often with both a discount and free dining, and are very sought after because being deluxe grant the upper tier of dining plan.
And if a room sits empty, it will be dumped into Priceline for last minute offer: I bet the Mouse won't easily leave money on the table.

Also, we do not know the exact mechanism of how the extra lockoff points are handled. It is entierly possible that every time a lock off is booked, the extra generated points go into a pool that Disney use to book units at that very resort. So no trickle down effect, just extra profit at every resort.
 
Yes. We'll have one more stay in a VGF studio, but after our recent add-on, which was intended to make us not dependent on studios, we might think about shorter stays in 1Br for the same # of points.

We just added on as well! Luckily, because the original 50 point VGF contract that served us well would be borderline useless now. Disappointing that almost any time we'll go, it will easily be 15+ more points for a week. Add to the fact that 1 bedrooms also increased, it's just ridiculous. They're always the last rooms to go! I could care less 2 bedrooms barely went down or that Grand Villas went down 8 points a night; I cannot afford either of those options anways.

VGF is a relatively significant change compared to AKL or Aulani where we also own.
 
Lockoffs counted separately as Studio+1B
2019 chart: 3,219,058 points
2020 chart: 3,282,118 points

That's an increase of 63,060 points over the course of the year or 1.96%.

I believe that is in violation of our contracts. I thought the total point allocation had to remain the same.
 
The leap year is interesting...but under that theory, points would go down to justify the one additional day. I wonder if it pushes people to book in 2019 before star wars and slightly discourages people from holding their points for 2020 and 2021 to better control crowds. I have noticed a lot of availability between June and November. Fewer people booked home resorts in the 7 to 11 month window.
Points are per day so just more points for leap year. The points are based on a specific year, either 1991 or 1992.
 
OKW and SSR are offered on the UK website often with both a discount and free dining, and are very sought after because being deluxe grant the upper tier of dining plan.
And if a room sits empty, it will be dumped into Priceline for last minute offer: I bet the Mouse won't easily leave money on the table.

No, of course they won't. But you're also talking about highly discounted rooms. The rates are on the low end to begin with, and Disney is almost certainly taking a cut for administrative overhead, dining plan cost and other fees. The travel agent / website gets a commission. How many rooms are sold in this manner and how much actually trickles down to breakage from each room?

And how does that jive with the millions in breakage allocated to BCV, BLT, VGF, VGC and other resorts which are getting a credit, but are unlikely to be generating much revenue?

I don't have any specific answers...merely playing devil's advocate.

Also, we do not know the exact mechanism of how the extra lockoff points are handled. It is entierly possible that every time a lock off is booked, the extra generated points go into a pool that Disney use to book units at that very resort. So no trickle down effect, just extra profit at every resort.

Well, it's not "profit" unless Disney can actually sell a room generated by the excess. WDW hotels don't operate at 100% occupancy. And keep in mind any added revenue for Disney is at least third in line for cash bookings. DVC would first need to break even on the member trade programs (DCL, Adventures by Disney, etc.) with cash revenue and then the breakage maximum has to be satisfied.

Another piece to the puzzle is large scale resort refurbishments. Old Key West has been under refurb for more than a year now. There are 49 buildings at the resort with 3-4 closed at a time. That's 6-8% of all rooms unavailable for a span of 18-24 months, but DVC only holds a 2% maintenance allocation. On paper, DVC would seem to be fronting the points to take those extra rooms out of service. (Or, if you prefer, the points are coming from this Studio/1B overage.) Same will happen next year with SSR, and has likely happened in the past when large blocks of rooms were renovated at BWV, BCV, and so on. With refurbs scheduled every year--often multiple resorts--those points are coming out of Disney's proverbial "pot". Perhaps this is all part of adjusting for the 7-year refurb cycle rather than the 12/13 years originally planned.

There are just so many moving pieces. Personally I'm not inclined to believe that DVC is using these moves as an excuse to squeeze a few thousand extra dollars from the program each year. YMMV.
 
I believe that is in violation of our contracts. I thought the total point allocation had to remain the same.

The charts have always been calculated with lockoffs counted as Two Bedroom villas. I believe that is even stated in the POS. On that basis, the total point allocation did not change materially.
 

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