DVC occupancy vs low park crowds

[John Gry]

Parks appear to have very low attendance currently, but DVC has basically no rooms available. Any idea as to how this happens?

 

[RivShore]

What is your low attendance assumption based on? Spoke to someone who was at Epcot today and they were surprised how busy it was. F & W has always been popular with DVC'ers so maybe they are all there?

 

[CarolynFH]

DVC members tend to be bargain travelers in that they try to make their points go as far as possible by visiting at times when per-night costs are lowest. September is the lowest point cost season of the entire DVC year - but the F&W Festival is going on along with MNSSHP, and park crowds are low. A similar effect happens during the first two weeks of December, although points costs for those weeks were increased a few years ago (summer points costs went down to balance).

 

[_auroraborealis_]

DVC is designed and sold to run at full occupancy 365 days per year. You can expect DVC to be full all year. The variance is how long it takes to fill.

 

[Nabas]

Nowadays, the easiest months to book a DVC room are July and August. Months with low points (January, early May, September, and early December) tend to be the most difficult months to book.

 

[kilik64]

There is also a probably sizeable contingent of dvc owners who don't go to the parks now either, or if they do its maybe 1 or 2 times in a trip.

At least going by people who say they do that.

TLDR Dvc stay doesn't necessarily mean a park visit each day or any days.

 

[CastAStone]

@_auroraborealis_ nailed it with the “why is DVC busy if the parks are dead” piece, the flip side is “why are the parks dead if DVC is so fully booked?”.

Here’s why: DVC rooms in total have a capacity of approximately 35,000 guests at WDW and that’s counting all the cabins; in reality the rooms are probably holding 20,000-25,000 guests.

MK and Epcot each have daily capacities approaching 100,000 guests, and between AK, DHS, two water parks, DS, WWoS, various golf and mini golf activities, that’s another 100,000+, and that doesn’t even consider all the things you can do in Orlando that aren’t WDW, like Universal, or playing frogger downtown with the worst drivers in the country.

So DVC guests take up less than 10% of total park capacity. They don’t make huge impact.

 

[CastAStone]

Also the 11 days after Labor Day are the slowest days every single year, and have been for at least 10 years, which is why they price the rooms as low as 9 points this time of year - gotta induce people without school age children to come - and those people probably aren’t clogging up the lines for Tron. But to @RivShore ’s comment above they’re absolutely all going day drinking at Food and Wine.

This also applies to cash guests. Even people who are happy to take their kids out of school to go to Disney world won’t pull their kids out of school this close to the start of the school year. So the crowd at WDW is very, very unusual. And they love F&W.

 

[CarolMN]

So DVC guests take up less than 10% of total park capacity. They don’t make huge impact.

Agree and I will add that It's those who stay off site that have the largest impact on park crowds (even if all of the non-DVC on site resorts are full).

 

[eticketplease]

So DVC guests take up less than 10% of total park capacity. They don’t make huge impact.

On the other hand I have to assume we take up a good percentage of ADR’s

or playing frogger downtown with the worst drivers in the country.

So true!!! lol

 

[RivShore]

But to @RivShore ’s comment above they’re absolutely all going day drinking at Food and Wine.

Hey, I resemble that remark!

 

[dkbnyc]

i've rented DVC points 3x for resort only stays. If im spending that kind of money i want to enjoy the resort

 

[s.r.disney nut]

Every park we've gone to has been very crowded!