Do DVC members get preference over non-members?

[melk]

I am just wondering about rooms at any of the DVC resorts. I realize you have an 11 month window at your home resort but what about non-members? At what point can they book a room? Or in other words, is there a possibility that you may not get the kind of room you want because a non-member has already reserved it for cash/credit? This just crossed my mind about especially busy times of year (in particular December at VWL) over whether or not a DVC member gets preference over a non-member? Thanks!

 

[Firefighter Mickey]

As I understand it, requests are only ordered by the date that the reservation was made. I've never heard of DVC members having a priority within this list, so yes, a non-member making cash reservations at 6 months would be more likely to get what they wanted than a member making a points reservation at 5 months.

 

[SAKPEG99OKW]

I thought that rooms had to be releassed in order to have cash resi's? I can not believe that a 2 bdrm for sept would not be avaialable to a member because of a cash resi? Am I wrong. ?Somebody please confirm.

Scott

 

[POLLY ANN]

That question confused me, too.

I thought that we have a block of rooms available to DVCers and when they are used up, they are used up. If someone decides to use another form of vacation (say, concierge collection), then those points go to CRO.

I guess I better go read my guidebook!!

 

[Peterd]

I think I have kind of an idea of how it works. My numbers and dates could be off a little bit. I believe DVD owns about 4% of the resorts rooms to sell how ever they want to non-DVCers. The rest is owned by the DVC members. When it gets to 60 days before a check in date, and the DVC members inventory is not all used up, I believe then the non-DVCers get a shot at those rooms. So when they say a resort is sold out to non-Dvcers at some time, (I believe 60 days if DVC rooms are not sold out), there would be more rooms available to you. I'm still not sure if DVD actually own certain rooms, or a certain percentage of preferred and standard view rooms, so the question about who gets priority requests, non DVC vs. DVC is a good question. I wonder if all 4% are preferred are not. I also think that's the way it works at the new BCV, where if they're only 25% sold to DVC, that DVD would have 75% available to non DVCers until sold. I'm probably off on this, and maybe someone else who has these things more memorized could chime in.

 

[Doctor P]

Keep in mind that there are also cash reservations that occur as a result of members trading their points for the cruise, to other WDW properties, II exchanges, etc., that come out of the member inventory.

 

[DebbieB]

That's correct - there are 2 separate inventories of rooms - points and cash. When a member trades out for a cruise, non-DVC resort or whatever, then DVC gets control of a room and can rent it out for cash through CRO. They then use that cash to pay for the members outside stay (to the cruiseline, concierge hotel, non-DVC WDW resort, etc). So it's possible there could be cash rooms available but not points rooms or vice-versa. DVC also has control of some points through buy-backs or member defaults that they can rent for cash.

Any rooms not rented for points 60 days before go to CRO for possible cash rental, aka breakage. The cash for breakage rooms go back to the members in the form of a dues credit (you'll see a line on the annual statement "breakage income"). Those rooms would still be available for a points reservation.

 

[Dean]

The preferences for the DVC owned rooms should be members, renters then exchangers. Since the DVD owned rooms are a totally separate category, it doesn't matter as there should be no intermingling of the reservations. The trouble with DVC though is that being more of a hotel reservation system means a more complicated request system as well.

 

[Firefighter Mickey]

Should be, or is?

The reservations are "inter-mingled" when they hit the resort computer, so that no doubt makes things more complicated. Not to mention that the front desk has the ability to bump a pre-assigned room - so even if you made your request 11 months out, if someone makes a scene at the front desk when they check-in, you may be the person that gets bumped.

Also, I remember talking to a room assigner at Vero Beach, and was informed that in general, 50% or so of the reservations have no specific requests, and so those simply get rooms assigned at check-in time. If this statistic is in fact true (or still true), then in general it's probably not a major issue if everyone who makes a request gets lumped in to the same group, except for those most popular requests.

 

[LoveRafiki]

It is my understanding that Disney retains ownership of slightly more than 50% of the DVC "points" - when we purchased DVC it was actually mentioned to us by the vacation club "guide" -- the point was that because Disney owns 50% of the points, they too are subject to pay the annual dues. It is therefore in their best interest not to hike the rates of the annual dues.

Additional rooms become available as DVC members trade out points.

At least that is what I was told....

 

[Dean]

Originally posted by LoveRafiki
It is my understanding that Disney retains ownership of slightly more than 50% of the DVC "points" - when we purchased DVC it was actually mentioned to us by the vacation club "guide" -- the point was that because Disney owns 50% of the points, they too are subject to pay the annual dues. It is therefore in their best interest not to hike the rates of the annual dues.

Additional rooms become available as DVC members trade out points.

At least that is what I was told....

You were told wrong. DVC sells all points but about 4%. With the way they had it set up, they have total controll even if they own no points. DVC doesn't pay dues on the points they own it appears from what I've read and heard.