Disney Vacation Club adjusts 2010 Vacation Points charts

[aurorafan]

Our kids get unexcused and get zeros for all missed work for vacations (even weddings)--and still must make-up the work. More than 10 days (including sick) can mean child is held back a grade. I don't know if they have ever done that for a high-performing kid--but my neighbor was told this by asst. principal for pulling her 1/2 day K out of school the last week in May! We had to cancel a family cruise (which was scheduled for college kids' break) b/c of elementary attendance policy.

Where in VA are you? We're in Fairfax and we pulled our kids out of their elementary school for 8 days last school year (5 in Oct. and 3 in June) with nothing more than "have a great time!" Some of the teachers had makeup work, some didn't. Their grades were not affected and the absences were not unexcused.

So I'm guessing it's by county in our state? Because if it were a state rule they wouldn't have allowed us to do that. I really feel for those who have such strict rules--I think we'd have to move!

 

[MiaSRN62]

Megsmachine : Homeschool, then you can go whenever you want.

Oh....how I have often wished my job and hours would have allowed this over the years.....

dd08 : Sorry, shouldn't have spoke, hopefully you saw some of my positive comments, I was just questioning. Because sometimes people "hear" somethign from a friend that just isn't correct. For example this thread....there is a TON of misinformation on the thread, I wasn't trying to judge, criticize anything, just trying to let you know that what your friend told you may (or may not have been) an exaggeration.......

BTW - family = Philly and Bucks county so can't get much more Southeastern than that. and again don't want to promote you pulling your kids from school, just was asking

Montgomery County here ! So we're practically neighbors. But I've seen drastic differences from one school district to the next. My kids used to be in Catholic school and they seemed more understanding about absences. And no apologies needed.....there are just so many variables besides just missing school, that I don't want to clog up this thread with. But let it suffice that aside from the fact, vacationing in slow season is not only not a choice, it's not even a remote option for us. I have one in college and for every 3 classes they miss, they drop 1 letter grade as per almost every professor. When you're on a partial scholarship, this is not an option. I just couldn't get into all the details when I first posted.......but trust me on this......and no hard feelings dd08.....

 

[MiaSRN62]

That's President's week. Many kids have the whole week off.

Yes ! And be afraid.....be VERY AFRAID of that week..........

 

[Mattsmommy]

Yes ! And be afraid.....be VERY AFRAID of that week..........

I can't go on vacation when the kids are off from school. I am a rookie at my job and I can't take off that week or during the summer, but I always find a way

 

[dd08]

Oh....how I have often wished my job and hours would have allowed this over the years.....




Montgomery County here ! So we're practically neighbors. But I've seen drastic differences from one school district to the next. My kids used to be in Catholic school and they seemed more understanding about absences. And no apologies needed.....there are just so many variables besides just missing school, that I don't want to clog up this thread with. But let it suffice that aside from the fact, vacationing in slow season is not only not a choice, it's not even a remote option for us. I have one in college and for every 3 classes they miss, they drop 1 letter grade as per almost every professor. When you're on a partial scholarship, this is not an option. I just couldn't get into all the details when I first posted.......but trust me on this......and no hard feelings dd08.....

OH, you don't need to justify yourself with me, and I'm sorry I came across that way, I was just trying to be helpful (and failing ) and stating my family member's "experiences." because I know sometimes stories get blown out of proportion, I was just sticking my foot in my mouth it turns out.....

 

[Dean]

Sorry to hear that Marriott is no better.

Nor worse, different expectations I guess. Still it's interesting to see people's faith and value shaken so easily by what I'd consider minor issues that should have been anticipated as at least a possibility.

So I also suppose you don't believe that in the last few days DVC sales reps were telling people and selling people contracts that had "just the right amount of points to take a vacation" during a certain time of year? Sure, the sales rep might not have known, but somebody knew this change was coming and it looks really bad on Disney's part.

I'm sure some did but if you read my take on timeshare sales staff you'll know that you should take anything they say with a grain of salt the size of a HUMMER. DVC's are better than most but their job is to sell. Truthfully, it's unlikely they knew this was coming, they're usually the last to know such things and we often know them here before they do. They may have known it was being worked on but wouldn't have known enough specifics to make any changes in their suggestions. I wouldn't be upset with them due to timing. IF they suggested to buy exactly the amount of points with no cushion for a smaller unit or less than a full week without a warning, I'd look for a new guide even if this had not happened because I wouldn't think they were doing a good job, period.

Hmmm, maybe buying a 10% cushion IS the best kept secret because I never remember hearing that during the sales pitch??

Maybe you should listen to me more and to the salespeople less. At some point the buyer has to take responsibility to understand the product and read the literature and to remember that verbal representations are not binding. Basically plan for the worst scenarios.

I hear what you are saying and that is why I used the word feel before unfair. However, for many of us there is an emotional part of us when it comes to vacationing and to Disney. So while your point is valid and your predictions were accurate I think you need to understand that for many their decision to purchase had an emotional component. Therefore their reaction to the "alleged point charts" will have an emotional component as well. It seems that you are not emotionally connected to the process (which is neither a good or bad thing.) But the bottom line, is many of us do get emotional about our vacations, which is OK too.

To be honest I know it is emotional. However, my feeling is there is little place for emotion in these decisions or in member interpretation. Having the main reaction to be emotional simply makes no sense just as buying a timeshare mainly on emotion is a poor choice as well though it's done every day. Emotions cannot be the basis for judgement of such changes, the rental debate, occupancy, etc. as then there is NO standard to judge by.

 

[DeeCee735]

The Feb time slot that we like went up 11 points, and the January (like last week's trip) went up 20 points! That's alot, and if Disney's intention was to get people to vacation less, in my situation, they succeeded. I'm NOT buying more points, and now I see I'll most likely have to cut out one 3 night trip per year .

All I can say is, we bought what we wanted, we make the best use out of it. However I see Disney still trying to get more and more money out of me, and they will not. I also will not be renewing my AP, I'm going to go with a 10 day non expire, because since I'll have to cut back on nights per year there, it won't be worth it to buy an AP and the 10 day should last for three trips, but now it'll take more than a 12 month period to get those three trips in. I only like my AP if I get more then 10 nights a year out of it, and I'm pretty sure those days are now coming to an end. We'll continue to enjoy our once a year family trip, but I won't be bringing friends as often for the shorter trips, I guess I have to look at it as a good way to save some money, keeping it in my pockets instead of spending it in Disney

Another change is that I won't be "promoting" DVC to anyone they way I have been. I had my cousin one phone call away from buying in, but I'm not pursuing that anymore, this will DEFINITELY be a big turn off to him, and I've got a co worker looking into buying a timeshare, I'm not going to mention DVC to her. She's interested in Marriot and Starwood and I'm just going to help her gather info on those without my usual DVC "push".

I'm not really complaining, but I will say I don't like this change, it's taking a couple of nights a year away from me, and I don't appreciate that much at all.

 

[Dean]

I understand that a unit is a group of rooms. But since units appear to often be random groupings of physical rooms, crossing those boundaries from one room size to another would appear to be exceedingly difficult. As you said, some OKW units have Grand Villas and others do not. It seems like it would be impossible to blend (for example) a global increase in Grand Villa point costs across all of the OKW units and still have those deeded ownership percentages be equal.

I'm not saying you're wrong--I'm just trying to make sense of this aspect of it. According to the deed the number of points I own is almost an incidental figure. It's a unit of measure to simplify our lives.

What I really (legally) own is .3284% of a physical building. And if the points are shuffled across multiple room sizes, my 150 points would almost certainly no longer equate to the .3284%. Ignoring the entire issue of how far points go, changing the ownership percentage seems like the equivalent of selling someone 5 acres of land and later saying "oh, well you only have 4 1/2 acres now." I'm not grasping how that is possible.

If I owned a fixed percentage of "Saratoga Springs Resort", then it would make more sense that the points could be shuffled however they wish. But the existence of the legal units makes this less clear.

It is my understanding that they grouped units taking this into account to allow for reallocation changes. Still, it's got to be a lot of fun working out the details on something like this. At least with a new resort like BLT, if you were off a points here or there there are no legal ramifications. I think you'll find that each unit points were the same on average over a 6 year cycle but the points vary slightly every year due to where the weekends fall in relationship to the yearly calendar.

Historically, each time an adjustment is made to the way DVC operates, posts of litigation & class action suits make their way into the discussion. I can't recall a single case where any policy change or "enhancement" was ever overturned thru legal action. There have been instances of policy reversals due to member feedback (glassware fiasco, for one).

Bottom line - I wouldn't count on the legal system to save us from the new point charts.

There have been a couple of issues that headed that direction and DVC caved. The one that comes to mind is for those that had free tickets. The original ruling was you couldn't borrow points into 1999 to use for free tickets. This was changed as I understand it because a member who was a lawyer did threaten legal action. Still I'd agree that I don't think it has any bearing on this situation and that it would be dismissed immediately by any judge as frivolous.

Same with me KLR-wlv. I'd still be short 15 points instead of 30 points every year. We would still not be able to do our 5 night stay at OKW in Magic season.

My recommendations have involved full weeks, I likely would have recommended a larger cushion for someone trying to time weekdays only. Still, you'd be a lot better off with the extra 10% than without it wouldn't you.

 

[ddhoeg]

We bought 265 VB points with the idea of staying in a beach cottage during the summertime Sunday through Thursday. That same 5 night stay with the new points chart increased 50 points to 315. That is a 19% increase in points from 2009. Even if we had bought a 10% cushion, it wouldn’t have been enough. To cover the additional points to keep our same stay, we would have to fork over at least another $5K, which isn’t possible at this time. To rent an additional 50 points we're looking at another $500 for the stay ($100 per night additional).

I’m peeved, especially in the way they present it like they are doing me a favor. It's all about the spin.

Thanks for letting me vent !

 

[Dean]

And I am pretty sure that NO ONE asked for weekday rates to go up either.

Sure, a lot of people did. Everyone who wanted weekend points to go down.

Dean, no disrespect, I have been learning from you for months, but I do think the timing of the notification is inappropriate. Some people will be using these points days from now.

BUT, this change didn't happen overnight. They probably had some inkling they were going to do this WHILE they were setting the BLT charts. If they knew this was coming - hold off on announcing BLT, releasing the charts and beginning the sales UNTIL this change is implemented.

Bob no offense taken, we can disagree and still do beers. The timing is unfortunate. But assuming they simply couldn't get the change out in time to coincide with the BLT announcement and this was the earliest they could get it checked and ready then approved, what would you do in their place. Would you wait 3-6 months to have it coincide with Easter bookings and BLT opening? There will never be a perfect time going forward and any time a change is made is always going to be wrong for someone. What would delaying on BLT have cost them, maybe 5-10 million dollars, who knows but you get the point. If you were making the decisions for BLT, would you really have waited until it was almost done to announce and start selling it? Look at the bright side, many of those buying in for BLT, HI and GCV will have the benefit of the new changes even if not everyone for BLT did.

 

[tjkraz]

I'm sure some did but if you read my take on timeshare sales staff you'll know that you should take anything they say with a grain of salt the size of a HUMMER. DVC's are better than most but their job is to sell. Truthfully, it's unlikely they knew this was coming, they're usually the last to know such things and we often know them here before they do. They may have known it was being worked on but wouldn't have known enough specifics to make any changes in their suggestions.

I'll go one further. There is little doubt in my mind that we could have heard some rumblings about this if the Guides had any idea it was coming. Someone would have...suggested...that a customer buy a few extra points or just outright spilled what was heard around the watercooler.

Forget add-ons. If a salesperson had a chance to make larger sales in advance of this announcement, someone would have taken advantage of that knowledge.

IMO, the guides had no idea this was coming.

 

[westjones]

The Feb time slot that we like went up 11 points, and the January (like last week's trip) went up 20 points! That's alot, and if Disney's intention was to get people to vacation less, in my situation, they succeeded. I'm NOT buying more points, and now I see I'll most likely have to cut out one 3 night trip per year .

Well this will be us too. I won't have enough points now for 2010, so we will have to skip that year and wait until 2011. I guess we will save on airfare and all the money we would have spent at Disney while we are there. We will just have to find something else to do over spring break.
DJ

 

[dzorn]

That's President's week. Many kids have the whole week off.

President's day is Feb 15th not the week everybody is saying is the Vero Beach week added.

Denise in MI

 

[MiaSRN62]

Ok...dh got home from work at 8 pm and we've been mulling our situation over.

Here's what we decided to do so that we can still stay at OKW in Magic season for 5 week nights :

OPTION 1 :
Night 1 : all 5 of us in a studio with an air mattress
Night 2 : rent an additional studio to give us 2 studios
Nights 3-5 : move to a 2 bedroom
Total cost of points = 144 (bank 6 points or use to supplement AKV stay)

OPTION 2 :
Nights 1 thru 5 : 1 bedroom with air mattresses
Total cost of points = 130 (bank 20 points or use to supplement AKV stay)

OPTION 3 (only 4 night stay):
Nights 1 thru 4 : 2 bedroom (losing 1 night vacation every year)
Total cost of points = 144 (bank 6 points or use to supplement AKV stay)

Sure, we're not thrilled with using air mattresses, but it's the best we can figure out for now. Thank goodness the OKW 1 bedrooms are so big !

 

[photobob]

I am a Sun-Thurs stayer and this will definitely affect us negatively. I sent a long email to MS and I'm sure I'll get a form response. It a amazes me how they make changes like this and act like they are doing us a huge favor.

People in my situation how have smaller contracts(180 points) and never had any intentions of staying Fri-Sat nights will have to really alter our vacation planning. Either fewer trips or shorter trips or both. I'm sure there is a great number like me. I posted on another thread, that I honestly feel misled. My guide said there will occasionally be small point adjustments. This is no small adjustment this is wholesale change.

 

[hoodedrooster]

Lets see how this works. We have 150 points. Each year we stay at Disney World and spend $2,000 plus on food and other items. Because of the point reallocation, I will NOT add points to stay the same number of nights (part of Disney's strategy here) but instead we will stay less nights (thus less money to WDW) or we will only travel every two years (thus less money to WDW). So, I may actually save some money by not spending so much time at WDW and this now gives me the incentive to start spending our money at other resort destinations instead of being at Disney all of the time. Overall, at least for this family, WDW will net less money from us the long run for this change. Too bad. It is an interesting, maybe risky strategy, on their part given the significant slow down at WDW this year. I wonder if Jim Lewis was offered one of the buy-out packages. If so, I hope he takes it.

 

[BeccaG]

To be honest I know it is emotional. However, my feeling is there is little place for emotion in these decisions or in member interpretation. Having the main reaction to be emotional simply makes no sense just as buying a timeshare mainly on emotion is a poor choice as well though it's done every day. Emotions cannot be the basis for judgment of such changes, the rental debate, occupancy, etc. as then there is NO standard to judge by.

I agree with you emotion should not be the basis for making a decision, however to expect people's reactions, especially their initial one, to not be emotional is unrealistic at best and cold hearted at worse. Even though this change will probably benefit me, my initial reaction is to ask, "how do I feel about it?" I wish I could think about things as purely logical from the get go, which you seem to be able to do, but I guess there is just not enough Spock in me!!! That's why when I purchased DVC I took a few days to mull it over, so it wasn't an emotional decision. Because it takes me a while to flush the emotion out of my system. I am guessing most people are the same. But thanks Dean for your insight, maybe we all won't be so shocked, but will still be disappointed when they implement a minimum stay.

 

[WolfpackFan]

Looking back now at the "official" points charts, this change will not effect our WDW trips as much as they will our HHI trips. For our WDW trips we were usually staying 6 nights anyway, we'll just go on and add that seventh night at the lower rate and save from having to pay cash for wherever we'd be staying for our night before lodging. But with HHI, it's really hurting us big time. We usually stay 5 nights in a 1BR the first week of June or in September. It was 110 points, now it's 125 points. That's a big difference. I guess what my thinking is now, I'll make my ressie for only 4 nights using my 11 month window and just hope I can add the 5th night using my VWL or AKV points. If not, we'll just stay 4 nights instead of 5. The thing is the Fri and Sat night points at HHI are still ridiculous. This change didn't help that situation much at all.

 

[Dean]

I agree with you emotion should not be the basis for making a decision, however to expect people's reactions, especially their initial one, to not be emotional is unrealistic at best and cold hearted at worse.

I always expect the majority of this group to act, think and react on emotions. There seems to be little room for anything else on anything that's not warm and fuzzy. To a degree, that's OK, but only to a degree. If you go back through this thread you see maybe 50 pages of emotion and 6 of substance. It's the defending emotion as having substance that really gets me shaking my head. As I said, this change will affect me negatively as well, probably more than most. My usual December reservations will be approximately 70 points more than they would have been under the current chart.

 

[Dean]

Lets see how this works. We have 150 points. Each year we stay at Disney World and spend $2,000 plus on food and other items. Because of the point reallocation, I will NOT add points to stay the same number of nights (part of Disney's strategy here) but instead we will stay less nights (thus less money to WDW) or we will only travel every two years (thus less money to WDW). So, I may actually save some money by not spending so much time at WDW and this now gives me the incentive to start spending our money at other resort destinations instead of being at Disney all of the time. Overall, at least for this family, WDW will net less money from us the long run for this change. Too bad. It is an interesting, maybe risky strategy, on their part given the significant slow down at WDW this year. I wonder if Jim Lewis was offered one of the buy-out packages. If so, I hope he takes it.

To say this is a sales ploy is not understanding the situation. It may hurt sales but this change is done by DVC, the management company, not DVD, the development company. They are separate in large part. There will be consequences but there always are with any change. While you may not add on, someone else likely will. And someone will stay in those rooms, actually a higher number of total people if the occupancy balance is better throughout the entire year.