As I mentioned before, the "lock-off premium" language that appears in the VGF declarations does not appear in the declarations of any other resort, and that includes Poly and CCV which came after VGF. I am still struggling with its actual purpose and why
DVC thought it necessary to have it for VGF but no other resorts.
In any event, the issue seems to be defined as whether the total points needed to reserve all the rooms for the year in any of the new
point charts exceeds the total points that were initially determined as applicable to the resort. If that is in fact the issue then according to many mentions above, that probably has not happened at any resort. My review of the new BWV charts indicates it is unlikely that there has been an increase in total points, but I am not taking any guesses on others.
But I am now wondering if that is really the issue. In fact, there is a possibility that changes made which, for example, raise most standard view rooms and lower most preferred view rooms by an equal amount, or raise studios throughout the year and lower 2BRs, may itself be improper. In other words, DVC may be getting it wrong because it may be using the wrong assumption that all it needs to do is assure total points applicable to the resort as a whole do not change.
The key is in certain language that appears in the Disney Vacation Club Management Agreement, Exhibit G to the Declarations. I will use BWV's here. That is the same clause that has been noted above that allows DVCMC to do reallocations, so I quote the key language here:
“In order to meet the Club Members’ needs and expectations as evidenced by fluctuations in Use Day demand at the Condominium experienced by DVCMC during a given calendar year, DVCMC may, in its sole discretion, increase or decrease the Home resort Vacation Point requirements of a given Use Day within a given Vacation Home during the given calendar year by any amount not to exceed twenty percent (20%) of the Home Resort Vacation Points required to reserve a Use Day during the previous calendar year;
provided, however, that the total number of Home Resort Vacation points existing within a given Unit at any time may not be increased or decreased because of such reallocation. The twenty percent (20%) reallocation limitation shall not apply to increases or decreases of Home Resort Vacation Point reservation requirements relating to designated periods of high demand which do not occur on the same Use Day each year. Any increase or decrease in the Home Resort Vacation point reservation requirement for a given Use Day pursuant to DVCMC’s right to make this Home resort Vacation Point adjustment must be offset by a corresponding increase or decrease for another Use Day or Use Days.”
The clause does not require just that total points for the resort not change. What it expressly requires is that total points “existing in any given unit” never change. A “unit” is that which you actually have a property interest in. Check your deeds and it will say that you own in some particular unit, e.g., Unit 24 in BWV. A unit is, in fact, one or more contingent Vacation homes. Vacation Homes are the rooms themselves. At OKW each building is a unit. At other resorts it is one, two, three or four rooms, and very often will contain a combination of Vacation Homes such as a lock-off and dedicated 2BR. The units are what gets declared over time into saleable inventory as the resort is being sold and filings with the applicable recorder are done when that happens.
So here is my theory. Take the current BWV changes. What DVCMC mainly did was lower the points for preferred view 2BRs and raise them for all standard views. But the rooms designated as standard view make up their own units which are separate from the rooms that are preferred view. Thus, the reallocation has, in fact, raised the points existing in those standard view units without any equal lowering of points for the same units, such as in a different season. In other words, the real purpose of the reallocation clause is to do mainly seasonal changes for the same rooms. A change like lowering all rooms in one season and rasing them an equal amount in another would result in an equal decrease and increase in each unit. Likewise, the change DVCMC did to lower weekend points and raise weekday points in 2010-11, likely complied as the actual total points for any given unit likely did not change for the year. However, my analysis raises the question whether the change made to SSR in 2013 to raise the treehouses for the entire year, which treehouses were all part of units separate from any other SSR rooms, or the change at SSR to have both preferred and standard view, with some units becoming entirely preferred and others entirely standard, may have both violated the above clause. And DVCMC may be violating it with the new changes for the WDW resorts.
