DVC Point Charts for 2011 - Post chart release discussion begins on Pg 14

[TSMIII]

Are there accommodations at Kidani still under construction? I thought that all of Kidani's villas were completed and available for occupancy by September 2009. Please correct me if I am wrong.

AKV has 22 Grand Villas and 14 have been declared for the DVC membership. If there are GV accommodations still under construction at Kidani, then, of course, the Units which contain those unfinished accommodations cannot be declared for the DVC membership. However, under the Reciprocal Use clause of AKV's Declaration of Condominium, DVC members can book undeclared "completed accommodations which have not yet been committed to the Vacation Ownership Plan." What this means is that on any given Use Day, DVC members can book up to 14 GV accommodations and that it does not matter whether the specific Unit has been declared for the DVC.
If I am right that all of Kidani is completed and available for occupancy, then one of two things is happening with the Standard View GVs: One, Member Services is not allowing members to use points to book the Standard View GVs until 1/1/2011; or Two, during 2010 members are booking the Standard View GVs and being charged with the same number of points as the savanna view GVs.

Correct, it doesn't matter if they are declared or not. And if they projected they would not be declaring them until 2011, and so wished to put the corresponding new view category in then, nothing precludes them from charging higher points in 2010 and categorizing them as Savanna View if they are available for occupancy.

 

[TSMIII]

Looks like you have a typo in your post for the second number in standard view; should be 1,080,681 not 1,880,681 (a difference of 800,000) now that would be something to talk about.

More importantly, I do not understand why you think they will quickly pull down the AKV charts. Your explanation that they reclassified 2 GV and 42 2brs, (if that is indead what they did) seems to explain away the apparent "point creation" at AKV that you (and others) have talked about in in earlier posts. (Your numbers seem to support what you said in your post #551) Given your post #582 indicated there were 298 2brm savanna view rooms, reclassifying 42 of them (14%) does seem possible. (BTW, how did you get the breackdown in your post #582? I did not know DVC ever disclosed the exact number of rooms, by size, in each view catagory)
Maybe DVC learned from its experiance at Boardwalk IF AS OTHER HAVE STATED, before BW was sold out DVC reclassified some rooms down to a standard view catagory and lowered the points on those, BUT did not raise the points on the other rooms which they reclassified as prefered view rooms, so they therefore ended up with fewer points to sell. DOES ANYONE KNOW IF THAT IS WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED? It seems to me if you started with 5 rooms at BW at 40 points each (a total of 200 points) and wanted to reclasify 1 room (20% of the 5 rooms) downward, you could just reduce that room to 32 points and raise the other 4 rooms to 42 points and they would still total 200 points. (the actual numbers at BW are closer to 350 rooms with 70 being reclassified, but the math is the same) That way the total number of points to be sold would not change, and I would suspect that is what they actually did at BW. It does not seem to me that it matters whether the resort is fully sold or not when they to do that.

Regardless of what they did at BW, at AKV, it definitely looks like they made up for the points they lost when they downgraded some rooms to standard view, by rasing the points on the other room catagories, and therefore did not end up with fewer points to sell, but also did not end up with more points.

I wonder if they did (or will do) a similar thing at BLT if they need to reclassify some rooms from one catagory to another at that resort.

Finally, I also want to add my thanks for all the effort you put in on this. You, wrdl, and TSMIII really seem to have a handle on the numbers. (I find it really interesting, but them I am a math geek.)

They did dsiclose the numer of rooms by size but not by view. The Pre-Opening Program details for Kidani Village from the Member Benefits Guide of February 2009 lists the rooms as:

140 2BR Lockoffs, 168 Dedicated 2BR & 16 GV

The accompanying point chart is the same as for Jambo and so lists no Standard View GVs. The view breakdown thus far has been fairly straight forward by merely looking at where the rooms are located in relation to the Sunset Savanna or the Parking Lot/Pool. This will be more dificult to ascertain as units in the northern segments are declared if, in fact, that is where the Standard View GVs are located.

Note too that the same Pre-Opening Program described above also gives the number of rooms and sizes for BLT, SSR-THV and GCV. However, until units are declared, they are always subject to change.

 

[BroganMc]

The recent changes have convinced me we'll likely see a minimum stay.

Well I guess what we're talking about is what sort of minimum stay you foresee. If we're talking a week, then I'd bet you one of my add-on contracts you are dead wrong.

Isn't the whole point of lowering weekends to encourage long weekend stays? Limiting the program to week-only stays would have a disastrous effect on members. All those families with school-aged children would not be able to travel except on weeklong school breaks (Premier season and Summer). Anyone who wanted to come for a F&W weekend is excluded. Fly down for ESPN or marathon weekend? Nope, no more. How about New Year's or a Holiday December weekend to see Candlelight Processional? Nope, you are SOL.

The bad PR on that would be a sight to see.

 

[Dean]

Dismedvc.

The problem is this, if a timeshare company sets up a timeshare an creates points based on certain views and then before the units are even declared changes the views of a significant portion of the units so that if they had classified them correctly they would have sold say $20m less worth of points then they should take the “hit” for this mistake, instead of just raising the per point requirements per night for all the members who have already bought, so the total number of points stays the same.

Certainly not “fair” and possibly a civil law issue and if they did it with for knowledge that is might potentially be civil law a violation (and it is judged as such) and they attempted to conceal the “adjustment” (did not tell the members about it when they made the adjustment) then that might well enter into the fraud statues of many states, especially if there was a past pattern of doing this.

Or maybe I just have a distorted sense of what is “fair”.

bookwormde

First, when one buys you are only buying into the declared portion of the resort at that time. One acknowledges that when you buy. To my knowledge, DVC has never changed the total points of a sold out resort and have never raised the total points for a resort after the schedule were released. They have decreased the points for BWV after sales were started. An increase in TOTAL points and I'd agree with you. I have not seen any reallocation result in a total increase above year to year variations. Rearranging between units is not the same as increasing, an increase in some units is meaningless from a legal standpoint as long as they follow the other rules in place.

I don't know if this has been touched on, I didn't get through all 47 pages of the thread, but I am wondering if/how this is going to affect rentals? A lot of rentals seemed to be 5-night weekday stays, since the cost savings for the people renting was so significant and people were eager to take advantage of it. Now that that value has been diminished, I think fewer people are going to rent in general. Why take on the risk and restriction if the payoff isn't as great? Not saying its good or bad, but I think it may have an affect. There is still value for people renting, especially larger units vs. what CRO charges, so I don't think renting will dry up, but might it have an affect?

I am pretty sure it will affect spec and commercial renting in particular, especially on sites like Ebay, as those are usually predominately 5-day week rentals.

As for prices, I don't see it affecting prices much, unless this causes rental demand to significantly decrease.

I'm not sure. My first thought is it won't make much difference overall but may result in more weekend and full week rentals and less S-F rentals.

Dean, keep an open mind...
Just as it would have been unfair for me or others to call you a "2 year old" for disagreeing with us (which I wasn't, really), it is truly unfair for you to insinuate that anyone who came to WDW M-F only was taking advantage of the system, and now whining because they got caught. There are many out here like myself, who simply don't have the flexibility to travel whenever we want. I bought DVC specifically to travel M-F long before I was "smart enough" to know it was good for my point usage. I told my agent this is how we vacation and there probably will never be a change. I saw in your post you were in Cabo on a trip and looking at another timeshare. Man that is great I wish I was there! So it sounds you may own more than one timeshare? Looking at more ( or just getting the freebee hehe...)? It seems alot of folks on the board here have multiple timeshares... multiple vacation weeks... multiple options. That is fantastic! I would love to have more options.... but here's the thing, we simply don't. We get one week a year to dedicate to Disney. We love the Disney thing and the memories it has created for us and our girls are priceless. Bottom line: I don't go M-F to "abuse" the system, I genuinely have no real choice, and I am confident I am not the only DVC owner in this same boat.

Point taken but I honestly find it interesting. As I noted, this is a black and white issue, one of the rules in place. There is a separate issue of how it affects people which is far more emotional than the technical discussion and IMO, does not play into the decision itself, only the after effects.

I am in Cabo and did the tour here. Didn't plan to but they talked the wife into it for the bribes. It was pretty brutal though, I think every DVC member should have to sit through one such as this, might change their perspective on DVC and timeshares in general.

Whether you do M-F with the intent of abusing the system doesn't really matter. It's what's currently allowed, you should not feel guilty for it though I don't see any reason to be upset for the obvious changes that such usage has generated. As I mentioned, that has been my plan also and these changes have affected me as much as anyone with DVC. But as you point out, I do have other options and am thankful I do as DVC isn't great for all trips, only for Disney trips.

Well I guess what we're talking about is what sort of minimum stay you foresee. If we're talking a week, then I'd bet you one of my add-on contracts you are dead wrong.

Isn't the whole point of lowering weekends to encourage long weekend stays? Limiting the program to week-only stays would have a disastrous effect on members. All those families with school-aged children would not be able to travel except on weeklong school breaks (Premier season and Summer). Anyone who wanted to come for a F&W weekend is excluded. Fly down for ESPN or marathon weekend? Nope, no more. How about New Year's or a Holiday December weekend to see Candlelight Processional? Nope, you are SOL.

The bad PR on that would be a sight to see.

I don't think they could do a min stay of a week but they might be able to give priortiy for a weeks reservation the way I read the POS though that might be open for legal interpretation. As I read it I don't see anything that would prevent them from having a priority for a week over shorter reservations but I'm sure some will disagree. I also don't feel that the negative impact will be that much if they do either. I don't think they'll limit to full weeks, I don't think they can but the option of shorter stays may be less available under some options they'd have for change. They could institute a min of 7 nights only by having members vote is my understanding.

I'm not sure that I know the reason at present but my assumption is to even out usage which would be to increase the demand for weekends and decrease the weekday demand proportionately. I further assume they want to encourage full week stays, NOT just long weekends. As I noted, I don't think any PR issues would be worse than the reallocation issues, in effect, I don't think it'd have nearly as much effect as it seems you think it will. As noted, I think in some capacity, we'll see at some point.

 

[Maistre Gracey]

I really don't understand how DVC has any sort of baseline for a VGC reallocation, yet they have reallocated points within seasons for which the resort hasn't been open yet??
How can that be? If they knew the points were not correct, why not do it prior to selling points?

MG

 

[Petraman]

I got all emotionally involved in the reallocation thread last year and here's the conclusion I finally came to. I had 2 options:

1) Sell my DVC
2) Live with the reallocations as dictated

I decided to live with the reallocations and will likely do the same this year too, although I don't particularly care for them either. I do understand their necessity over time, though. So far, I can't find that they've violated my POS in any way, just my feelings maybe and some assumptions I may have made that I probably shouldn't have in hindsight.

Would ya'll do me a favor? Let me know if we change anything in the points chart or with DVD/DVC in general in this thread, OK? (j/k)

hehe.... I love it!
Well said.

It sounds like you thought it through and made your final statement. I think I'll follow suit. time to just say my peace and then be silent. BTW this is just one man's opinion so relax. No need for continual rebuttals... I promise to respect your opinons... please relax and let me have mine

To all the posters who remind all those here who are upset over the change, that this is a legal transaction, there is a legal contract, you signed it, etc.

You are correct. From a purely business/legal perspective, Disney has done nothing illegal, and honestly I don't believe they have targeted anyone particular group. They are a business, making business decisions to make the business a success. I feel safe in saying that all of us who signed a DVC contract were aware that it was a legally binding contract... so let it go, OK?

You don't have to keep reminding us. Could you please just accept that for some of us, buying into DVC was more than a legal decision?

Why do we buy a DVC timeshare instead of just getting Wyndham/Marriott or others that are cheaper and even more flexible?
Why do we take Disney cruises when the ship right next to the Magic is going to the same ports, same places, and often at HALF the price?
Why do we travel to the same location over and over knowing that our children have wait times, fastpass info, and the best rides all memorized by now?
Why?.......... I think it's simple. We were buying more than a timeshare, we were buying Fantasy... the Dream... The Magic that is uniquely Disney.

I make no apologies, I love Disney! I love what it provides for my family. Laughter, memories, a true sparkle in ALL of our eyes. So excuse me if I am disappointed that one of the largest investments we have ever made is losing some of its luster, and becoming less valuable. Value to me is not represented by a deed of ownership in a timeshare, it is the Magical experience having to be shortened, having to be adjusted to staying in Pop Century instead of watching the wonder in my daughter's eyes from a Savannah view at AKL.

So let's make a deal, we promise to accept your business prowess and admit we have no legal right to complain, if you will in turn give us the right to be disappointed. We do have the right to be saddened whether you can accept it or not.


To all those who find themselves disappointed and disillusioned over these past 2 years of changes that are affecting your family and your own personal Disney experience

Hopefully you read what I wrote above carefully. Let's be honest, from a legal position Disney has not robbed us... they have not deceived us. DVC is a timeshare plain and simple. But here's the deal, don't let anyone tell you that you don't have the right to be disappointed. This was YOUR investment in YOUR family, and if you are now stuck because what you thought would be a great dream Disney experience is becoming less than that, then feel free to vent!

But when the dust settles, remember this simple truth... my father taught it to me and I am trying to pass it on to my kids. "Life is not fair.... and it never will be". We cannot always control how things go, but we DO have a choice in how we handle what unfair things come our way. I am very disappointed in these changes, and even more, concerned in what else is on the horizon... but as for my family and me, we're going to DisneyWorld! I'm going to be there in March, we are going to build new memories, and I plan on having an absolute blast. Next year, we will be doing less, staying smaller, or banking to make 2012 a real bang... I don't know. But it is still my choice to make the best of a difficult situation. You still have choices too.

Be disappointed... vent if you want... then make the best of the blessings you have.

Lastly, to the schoolteachers and others who shared they must travel and do long weekends so this will be a benefit to them...

Congratulations! Reading some of your posts, my heart went out to you as I sensed you struggle like us. It is good to see something good coming out of this that isn't just about money. Be careful though, if you take advantage of it too much, then weekends will get overcrowded, and according to others in this post, those points breaks will swing back our way and it will be all your fault

WHEW!! I just read this whole post and it sounds kind of like a "Walton's" episode!
"Good night John Boy"... "Good night Mary Ellen"... "Good night Ben"...

And goodnight to all. I was going to say in the beginning of this post that this would be my last one in this thread or on this subject, but I was afraid you wouldn't read it if you thought we couldn't get into some kind of debate.

Truth is like WilsonFlyer said above. When it's all said and done, nothing's going to change from our wisdom revealed in this thread.... but it still feels good to say it, huh.....

 

[jekjones1558]

Petraman,
I have read every post on this thread and yours really says it ALL to me. Congratulations!

 

[Muushka]

Good night Petraman.

And for the record......you rock!

Thank you and a few others who can see both sides.

 

[wdrl]

Well I guess what we're talking about is what sort of minimum stay you foresee. If we're talking a week, then I'd bet you one of my add-on contracts you are dead wrong.

A minimum stay could be up to but not exceeding 5 days. The Declaration of Condominium of BLT has a clause in Exhibit G (Disney Vacation Club Membership Agreement), Section 4.2.e which states

"Minimum Stay - DVCMC may require from time to time that a minimum number of consecutive Use Days for a particular season or special season be reserved as set forth in the Home Resort Rules and Regulations. The number of consecutive Use Days required to be reserved shall in no event exceed five (5) Use Days."

The same clause is in AKV's Declaration of Condominium.

 

[MiaSRN62]

YEA Petraman !!!!
Love your post !

Breath of fresh air !

Maria

 

[Tiger926]

Petraman - Awesome post! Tiger

 

[Dean]

I really don't understand how DVC has any sort of baseline for a VGC reallocation, yet they have reallocated points within seasons for which the resort hasn't been open yet??
How can that be? If they knew the points were not correct, why not do it prior to selling points?

MG

None of us can truly answer that question. My best guess is either it was a different team working on the various aspects OR the decision to reallocate was made later and the points not ready at the time of initial release. You could make the same arguement for BLT and even AKV to a degree.

To all the posters who remind all those here who are upset over the change, that this is a legal transaction, there is a legal contract, you signed it, etc.

You are correct. From a purely business/legal perspective, Disney has done nothing illegal, and honestly I don't believe they have targeted anyone particular group. They are a business, making business decisions to make the business a success. I feel safe in saying that all of us who signed a DVC contract were aware that it was a legally binding contract... so let it go, OK?

You don't have to keep reminding us. Could you please just accept that for some of us, buying into DVC was more than a legal decision?

If you admit it's accurate and people keep posting info that suggests otherwise, what would you suggest. What I accept is that some bought without knowing the risks, some bought assuming the risks would never happen and some can't seem to accept that those risks were real. What I don't buy is an emotional post that suggests somehow Disney did something wrong when they didn't either technically or in ANY other way. Not only did they make allowed changes, IMO, those were the right changes for the system. I don't honestly see how anyone can argue against the changes themselves. I could see the timing issue as a point of contention just like I could see the BLT change that affected those that had bought but the resort had not opened. In last years thread someone specifically stated it was allowed and likely the right thing but still hurt them personally due to the negative affects, that's fair to say. I think we'll simply have to agree to disagree, feel free to put me, Tim, Chuck, etc on ignore if you like.

 

[Starr W.]

I've already stated that last year AND this year. My vacations, overall, are taking less points than before because we ALWAYS are there for a Friday and Saturda night stay. We will stay anywhere from 4 to 7 nights, but always include both Fri and Sat.

I DO understand the people who are upset that their weekday stays only are now going to cost more points. But I don't understand why they can't see that it is okay for people like Caron to be happy about the reallocation. I don't blame the weekenders for being happy they are no longer paying double the points for their nights as the weekday people. They WERE obviously subsidizing the people who stayed only weekdays.

We're the same, 4-7 days and we usually check in Thursday or Friday.

I think we should be lucky that we as DVC owners can book 1+ nights and check in any day. I have Wyndham points also, and they have more "rules" about booking windows, min. stays, check in/check out days and transaction credits.

I'll save my at DVC if they try to put in some of that sort of stuff. I think we might see something like min. stays before they move the 1st 2 weeks of December out of Adventure season.

 

[dismedvc]

Dismedvc.

The problem is this, if a timeshare company sets up a timeshare an creates points based on certain views and then before the units are even declared changes the views of a significant portion of the units so that if they had classified them correctly they would have sold say $20m less worth of points then they should take the “hit” for this mistake, instead of just raising the per point requirements per night for all the members who have already bought, so the total number of points stays the same.

Certainly not “fair” and possibly a civil law issue and if they did it with for knowledge that is might potentially be civil law a violation (and it is judged as such) and they attempted to conceal the “adjustment” (did not tell the members about it when they made the adjustment) then that might well enter into the fraud statues of many states, especially if there was a past pattern of doing this.

Or maybe I just have a distorted sense of what is “fair”.

bookwormde

Thanks. I think I now understand what you are saying, and how it could be done, at least in theory, especially in the case of a two phase development. However, if it was done it seems it would make it very hard to sell the remaining points after the reallocation. (See below and let me know if I have it wrong.)

For simplicity, assume a resort starts with one building (Building A) and that building has only one size room and one view. Based on the cost of the points everyone agrees the "fair" value for each room in Building A is X points per night. That Building sells out and members book those rooms at X points a night for a few years. DVD then announces plans for a second building (Building B) to be added to the resort, and determines the total points for that building using the assumption each room in that building is also worth X points a night.

DVD starts sales on Building B. After Building B opens, but before it is sold out, it becomes apparent that the views in Building B are worse than those in Building A. DVD therefore lowers the points for the rooms in Building B to the point value they deserve. However, in order not to lower the total points for the resort they raise the points for the rooms in Building A to X + Y points per night. (Remember, X points per night are still the “fair” point value for rooms in Building A). After the reallocation the rooms in Building A therefore cost points per night than they are worth.

In that THEORETICAL case, I would agree everyone who had purchased before the reallocation would be harmed, and DVD would have unfairly gained. Anyone who purchased after the reallocation would also not be getting “fair” value, if they had to pay the same price per point as the pre-reallocation purchasers. However, since any potential purchasers after the reallocation would know that they were not getting fair value it would be difficult to sell the remaining points for the resort. I suppose DVC could sell the remaining points by offering incentives to lower the cost of the remaining points to their fair value, and DVD would then still get to keep the amount they had unfairly gained from those who purchased before the reallocation.

Note to those who have read this far: I AM NOT SAYING JAMBO IS BUILDING A AND KIDANI IS BUILDING B.

I think, however, I now do understand bookwormde's THEORETICAL argument.

 

[Maistre Gracey]

None of us can truly answer that question. My best guess is either it was a different team working on the various aspects OR the decision to reallocate was made later and the points not ready at the time of initial release. You could make the same arguement for BLT and even AKV to a degree.

The key phrase here is "to a degree". In my opinion, it's a very small degree, as AKV and BLT have the other WDW DVC resorts as a baseline. California is a whole different animal, especially since much of the Disneyland crowd is more local.

MG

 

[Dean]

The key phrase here is "to a degree". In my opinion, it's a very small degree, as AKV and BLT have the other WDW DVC resorts as a baseline. California is a whole different animal, especially since much of the Disneyland crowd is more local.

MG

Maybe. I think there is far more alike than not. DVC has access to a lot of info including all WDW info and DL hotel info. Much of this should apply almost as well at DL as WDW. Consider that this change is more of a system shift that making such a change at WDW and not at DL would be more strange than doing it based on ancillary info.

 

[Nancy F]

If the points went up that much, chances are you jumped a season as well. The week before and week after Easter are always Premier season. Those dates obviously change from year-to-year.

It sounds like your dates were in Magic Season in 2010 and Premier Season for 2011. That was going to happen regardless of whether the points reallocated or not. To see how the reallocation came into play you're best to compare the same season in each year.

I don't like it, but it makes sense. LOL. I'm so new to this that I haven't even had a trip yet. So I guess there are going to be times that I'm really happy or really bummed. But all in all, it will have to be better than when I was paying cash year after year and staying at The GF concierge level.
Nancy

 

[Dean]

I don't like it, but it makes sense. LOL. I'm so new to this that I haven't even had a trip yet. So I guess there are going to be times that I'm really happy or really bummed. But all in all, it will have to be better than when I was paying cash year after year and staying at The GF concierge level.
Nancy

Great post and approach. Enjoy your trip.

 

[Maistre Gracey]

Maybe. I think there is far more alike than not. DVC has access to a lot of info including all WDW info and DL hotel info. Much of this should apply almost as well at DL as WDW. Consider that this change is more of a system shift that making such a change at WDW and not at DL would be more strange than doing it based on ancillary info.

I don't see much correlation. I don't think you can use hotel bookings as a solid baseline since the seasons don't correspond between the two.
I also believe DVC will bring a different type of vacationer than currently stays at the GC.

Perhaps that's why they lowered the weekends at VGV.. Trying to sell to locals for weekend visits.

MG

 

[Dean]

I don't see much correlation. I don't think you can use hotel bookings as a solid baseline since the seasons don't correspond between the two.
I also believe DVC will bring a different type of vacationer than currently stays at the GC.

Perhaps that's why they lowered the weekends at VGV.. Trying to sell to locals for weekend visits.

MG

I largely disagree on the correlation of the ancillary info but don't disagree that it may not be exact and that the actual experience may be minimally different. As I noted, I think in some ways this is a shift with DVC that may have additional components such as a possible minimum stay or some similar method to accomplish the same thing. Much easier to do if the days are the same or nearly so but possible to do without the change. I repeat that I think the change could be more of a philosophical one to keepin step with the other DVC options. We may never know for certain. You may want to ask DVC upper management yourself if it's important to you.