I do understand. I'll still be purchasing.
My Chase card 'used to' get me in Food & Wine concerts with a wrist band you could get morning off. They also 'used to' have the Chase lounge where with your Chase card you could go and relax, charge your phone, enjoy a clean bathroom and get complimentary drinks.
My Amex card 'used to'........ I won't go on but there are a whole host of 'used to's' that I remember that aren't coming back.
This year I used the benefits and got my money's worth for $99.
Next year I will use it again. I'll need tickets and they will be better than what I can get without MMB.
I'm a long time owner - bought in 2000.
I wish things could stay the same. But there are a lot of things I don't want to stay the same.
Anything that is free will probably eventually change. Not just at Disney.
Well, I guess since you are OK with all the changes, Disney should go back to charging for parking as well, things like that...
I get that things change. In fact, we have been big
DVC fans since we joined in 2007, however, like you said, it's getting to be a different program, and quite honestly, this past year, we've seriously considered downsizing our points. To run with the credit card example, we 'used to' be able to use our Disney Visa to earn Reward Dollars that we could pay monthly on our annual dues and it worked great. Well, they made that much more difficult this past year, but instead of just saying "oh well" and keeping that card, we just got rid of it and got a different card that had a rewards scheme we valued more.
We 'used to' have annual passes and go to WDW at least 3-4 times a year (we are an 8ish hour drive). We gave those up when they stopped selling them during the pandemic and haven't bought them since. This past year we made it down twice, both times in Cabins where we spent more time just enjoying FW, which I love, BTW. In the past year though, I've spent exactly 2 days in a Disney park. It's about value, and we all value things differently (what economists call Marginal Utility). For us, the things they've added haven't had much value, but the things are are changing or gone did. That may be very different for someone else.
Maybe part of it is as we age, priorities change, but we had a real eye opener when pricing out a weeklong Viking River cruise with included airfare and included excursions is cheaper than driving down to Port Canaveral and spending a week on the Treasure (I know, not DVC, but you get the picture...). Maybe it was the pandemic and following years where we used our points to go to Aulani rather than WDW, maybe it's that our DD has graduated college, but times change and so do people. I 'used to' be one of DVC's biggest fans, but I am falling off the bandwagon more and more each day...
And that's actually OK, because this is just specific to us, and not everyone. I can see where people can enjoy the current iteration of DVC, etc., and by all means, enjoy the heck out of it. But for us, the shine has faded a bit, and it does make us a bit sad. We still love Aulani and CFW, so there's that...