I’m so curious. Is current dissatisfaction with Disney affecting DVC sales?

[longboard55]

I like how a lot of the "problems" with WDW that people point out is how crowded it is, and then go to explain how this means it is the end of Disney. SMFH

didn't Casey Stengal have a line about that

 

[BamaGuy44]

We went Mar 6-11 and it was definitely crowded. Way more crowded feeling then sept 18 and aug 19, our two prior trips. Even still, had an amazing time, which a lot of that was due to effectively using g+. We waited maybe 30ish mins at the most for any given ride we did, and that was the ones we rope dropped mainly.

You need to study up on how to use g+, but worth it to us.

Not trying to derail the thread but our first g+ trip is next month and I’m curious what your strategy was. Stacking for the afternoon? Which parks did you use it in? Did you buy any ILL?

 

[davidl81]

We were at WDW last weekend for the ToT 10 miles run. Epcot was packed on Sunday. It seems to just get busier and busier as we recover from covid (I think we gone like 6 times since covid has started).
Honestly Disney is trying to do what they can to limit crowds, they have raised prices (also profit motivated), they have started park reservations etc. all of this and the parks feel just as packed as ever. It’s not a complaint, it just goes to show how popular the resorts are. DVC will be fine especially when the resort being sold is very attractive as seen with VGF.

As for the Disney+ cancel stuff, we’ve seen this before when a political side who complains about “cancel culture” tries to cancel a company. It becomes a big deal in certain echo chambers on social media, but it has no real world impact.

 

[ray3127]

Just returned home from a week at Beach Club today. We had a really nice time, and spoke with many fellow members (all awesome & friendly, as usual). It was very interesting; almost everybody had a similar attitude.

The general consensus was that it is more challenging to visit than it used to be. It's just not the same, and the nickel & diming is exhausting. Nearly everybody said this was their last trip for a while. They were either going to rent their points for a couple years, or just sell them.

I promise I didn't offer anything up to lead them down this path, and I don't attract negative nellies... There was just a negative feeling about DVC ownership among almost everybody we spoke with.

I also met my resale rep at a park one day and asked him how business was. He told me that they've seen a huge wave of listings from long-time owners after the last few weeks of political news.

Between that and the dissatisfaction I felt/heard from so many, I looked up the DVC listings on a few of the major sites I frequent. I haven't been in the market for points in a while, but I've never seen so many resale listings available. Maybe it's sellers simply trying to capitalize on all-time highs in the market, but I think there's some aspect of being fed up and wanting out for one reason or another.

Somebody earlier mentioned that new DVC sales were huge in March, so maybe new DVC contracts are doing just fine. I imagine that is largely propped up by the VGF points becoming available for sale, but I haven't dug into those numbers.

My current takeaway from my last week of experience and the current crop of resale listings is that many are ready to move on. And to the OP, you're not going to hear from those people, because they're not spending any more of their time reading the "Purchasing DVC" message board, which is bound to be an echo chamber itself in some ways. That's why I decided to post this, just to give you a bit of a different perspective.

For our part, we have a few more trips planned this year on our APs. As my sig indicates, we've been many times, pre/during/post-covid. We share the mindset of "we'll do it next time," and don't have to knock everything out every trip or day. We're gracious with everybody, especially the CMs (most of whom are really outstanding). But after our current APs expire, I'm really not sure what direction we'll go. Luckily we have some time to sort it out.

 

[kilik64]

Not trying to derail the thread but our first g+ trip is next month and I’m curious what your strategy was. Stacking for the afternoon? Which parks did you use it in? Did you buy any ILL?

Might be slightly different then most due to having younger kids and not trying to ride everything, but we used it at MK, EP, and HS.

We did early entry rope drop every day. Because of that I thought the most optimal strategy was to get LL early as possible for the ride I was gunning for then get the next ride as soon as we did that one. Kept us out of the 2 hour window group that a lot of people seem to do, so first ride done before the two hour wait time hits, grab next ride while most people are still waiting. Seemed to work very well.

G+ is really great at mk, was kinda a waste at EP BUT with frozen being a have to do, had to buy it for that. Still used it to ride that and a few others, but wasnt really a must have outside of Frozen. Had frozen been ILL most likely would have just got that. HS it was ok, no interest really in star wars, so mainly hit Toy story with it.

Two main pointers are time.gov and setting up the ride you want a LL for as your only preferred attraction. Used 2nd phone to watch time.gov, soon as it ticked to 7am, swipe down to refresh then tapped through to end as fast as possible. I messed up and forgot to buy g+ before hand on epcot day but my goof actually worked in our favor. But for the 3 days I didnt forget to buy it first, I got return times right after park open for JC, Pirates, and SDD. Even having to buy g+ and come back in I still got like 11ish for frozen. Worked out since Remy was down at rope drop, had we had an early time would have left to go ride frozen and by then Remy would have been back up and we would have missed it. It came up basically right around 9, we were still in france so booked it over there and rode it with maybe a 30ish minute wait.

Oh third pointer, didnt use hotel wifi either. We are on ATT. Not sure if that made a difference or not, but maybe it did.

 

[ML_LovesDisney]

Just returned home from a week at Beach Club today. We had a really nice time, and spoke with many fellow members (all awesome & friendly, as usual). It was very interesting; almost everybody had a similar attitude.

The general consensus was that it is more challenging to visit than it used to be. It's just not the same, and the nickel & diming is exhausting. Nearly everybody said this was their last trip for a while. They were either going to rent their points for a couple years, or just sell them.

I promise I didn't offer anything up to lead them down this path, and I don't attract negative nellies... There was just a negative feeling about DVC ownership among almost everybody we spoke with.

I also met my resale rep at a park one day and asked him how business was. He told me that they've seen a huge wave of listings from long-time owners after the last few weeks of political news.

Between that and the dissatisfaction I felt/heard from so many, I looked up the DVC listings on a few of the major sites I frequent. I haven't been in the market for points in a while, but I've never seen so many resale listings available. Maybe it's sellers simply trying to capitalize on all-time highs in the market, but I think there's some aspect of being fed up and wanting out for one reason or another.

Somebody earlier mentioned that new DVC sales were huge in March, so maybe new DVC contracts are doing just fine. I imagine that is largely propped up by the VGF points becoming available for sale, but I haven't dug into those numbers.

My current takeaway from my last week of experience and the current crop of resale listings is that many are ready to move on. And to the OP, you're not going to hear from those people, because they're not spending any more of their time reading the "Purchasing DVC" message board, which is bound to be an echo chamber itself in some ways. That's why I decided to post this, just to give you a bit of a different perspective.

For our part, we have a few more trips planned this year on our APs. As my sig indicates, we've been many times, pre/during/post-covid. We share the mindset of "we'll do it next time," and don't have to knock everything out every trip or day. We're gracious with everybody, especially the CMs (most of whom are really outstanding). But after our current APs expire, I'm really not sure what direction we'll go. Luckily we have some time to sort it out.

I just saw the same thing when I went on once of the board sponsors listings of resales. 833 listings is the most I've ever seen. I'm on the fence right now. Part of me wants to be done, but I've also sold my points before and regretted it so much and bought them back. This current climate though is really making me think again though.

**Edited to add: I also don't see a single "sale pending" on the website which I thought was interesting.

 

[kilik64]

**Edited to add: I also don't see a single "sale pending" on the website which I thought was interesting.

Not that unusual, they typically remove solds very fast.

Oh you might need to uncheck active listings only, that seems to be new (at least new to me)

 

[ML_LovesDisney]

Not that unusual, they typically remove solds very fast.

Oh you might need to uncheck active listings only, that seems to be new (at least new to me)

I did the filter "sale pending" just to make sure I wasn't missing anything, and there were zero. Could just be a glitch. Usually I at least see "offer accepted" or "sale pending", but none of that. Again, could be a glitch. I like to check it out once a week and that's the first time I've noticed that in past month.

 

[kilik64]

I did the filter "sale pending" just to make sure I wasn't missing anything, and there were zero. Could just be a glitch. Usually I at least see "offer accepted" or "sale pending", but none of that. Again, could be a glitch. I like to check it out once a week and that's the first time I've noticed that in past month.

Weird I just looked and it worked for me. Filter only active returned like 600+, removing it jumped to 800+ and showed a bunch of sale pending.

 

[ML_LovesDisney]

Weird I just looked and it worked for me. Filter only active returned like 600+, removing it jumped to 800+ and showed a bunch of sale pending.

Ahhh so it is a glitch. Well I'm glad because if I do decide to list some points, I was worried none were selling LOL

 

[Memorymakerfor4]

Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see any mention above about current inflation and impending recession talk. In my corner of the world, I'm hearing people are staying more locally for vacation and putting off new car/house purchases while they keep an eye on things.

As far as DVC, we purchased an add on in December so that tells you where we stand. We're 2 or 3 trips away from reaching the point where our biggest chunk of points have more or less paid for themselves and are satisfied.

 

[HIRyeDVC]

Parks are bursting at the seams right now. What will happen when the international travelers come back?!

 

[kilik64]

Parks are bursting at the seams right now. What will happen when the international travelers come back?!

Disney will institute a hunger games type thing to get park reservations.

 

[HIRyeDVC]

Disney will institute a hunger games type thing to get park reservations.

I think Disney will just increase the capacity and let it all play out in the parks. It may be a long while until AP sales come back. Maybe mid 2023 when the 50th celebration is all over?

 

[tjkraz]

In my corner of the world, I'm hearing people are staying more locally for vacation and putting off new car/house purchases while they keep an eye on things.

Parks are bursting at the seams right now.

I'm just gonna put these here together...

Right now, the parks are routinely filling up with advance reservations. That won't happen indefinitely. The fact that they're offering 25% hotel discounts for summer suggests reservations might be a little soft. But this isn't their first rodeo. Disney will use pricing to manage the crowds, discounting when necessary to maximize capacity.

DVC is a little different given the long term commitment. Resale listing volume appears to be up about 20% over the last 60 days. I've seen people openly comment about selling older points while buying VGF, so that undoubtedly plays some role. Others are probably selling due to Disney exhaustion, Disney politics and a variety of reasons. But none of that is new. There are always contacts available resale and these are common reasons why. Only time will tell if this is a the start of a long term uptick in sales volume, which might signal some widespread dissatisfaction with Disney or DVC.

 

[HIRyeDVC]

I'm just gonna put these here together...

Right now, the parks are routinely filling up with advance reservations. That won't happen indefinitely. The fact that they're offering 25% hotel discounts for summer suggests reservations might be a little soft. But this isn't their first rodeo. Disney will use pricing to manage the crowds, discounting when necessary to maximize capacity.

DVC is a little different given the long term commitment. Resale listing volume appears to be up about 20% over the last 60 days. I've seen people openly comment about selling older points while buying VGF, so that undoubtedly plays some role. Others are probably selling due to Disney exhaustion, Disney politics and a variety of reasons. But none of that is new. There are always contacts available resale and these are common reasons why. Only time will tell if this is a the start of a long term uptick in sales volume, which might signal some widespread dissatisfaction with Disney or DVC.

The two can be happening at the same time as more people are moving to FL so that WDW could be a forever staycation, hence leading more people to sell their contracts. Becoming a FL resident is also the only way to buy APs these days. I don't doubt that Disney's popularity and demand ebbs and flows but like DVC owners, Disney itself is in the long game and I think they will be fine, just like they have been the last 75 years. Sure plenty of people threaten to take their money to Universal all over these boards and social media. But there are also plenty of new people waiting to take their place.

 

[Jodi Gross at DVCRM]

Not that unusual, they typically remove solds very fast.

Oh you might need to uncheck active listings only, that seems to be new (at least new to me)

hi, it is new, and you are correct, it defaults to active listings only to make it easier to search

 

[striker1064]

Just returned home from a week at Beach Club today. We had a really nice time, and spoke with many fellow members (all awesome & friendly, as usual). It was very interesting; almost everybody had a similar attitude.

The general consensus was that it is more challenging to visit than it used to be. It's just not the same, and the nickel & diming is exhausting. Nearly everybody said this was their last trip for a while. They were either going to rent their points for a couple years, or just sell them.

I promise I didn't offer anything up to lead them down this path, and I don't attract negative nellies... There was just a negative feeling about DVC ownership among almost everybody we spoke with.

I also met my resale rep at a park one day and asked him how business was. He told me that they've seen a huge wave of listings from long-time owners after the last few weeks of political news.

Between that and the dissatisfaction I felt/heard from so many, I looked up the DVC listings on a few of the major sites I frequent. I haven't been in the market for points in a while, but I've never seen so many resale listings available. Maybe it's sellers simply trying to capitalize on all-time highs in the market, but I think there's some aspect of being fed up and wanting out for one reason or another.

Somebody earlier mentioned that new DVC sales were huge in March, so maybe new DVC contracts are doing just fine. I imagine that is largely propped up by the VGF points becoming available for sale, but I haven't dug into those numbers.

My current takeaway from my last week of experience and the current crop of resale listings is that many are ready to move on. And to the OP, you're not going to hear from those people, because they're not spending any more of their time reading the "Purchasing DVC" message board, which is bound to be an echo chamber itself in some ways. That's why I decided to post this, just to give you a bit of a different perspective.

For our part, we have a few more trips planned this year on our APs. As my sig indicates, we've been many times, pre/during/post-covid. We share the mindset of "we'll do it next time," and don't have to knock everything out every trip or day. We're gracious with everybody, especially the CMs (most of whom are really outstanding). But after our current APs expire, I'm really not sure what direction we'll go. Luckily we have some time to sort it out.

This is a great and insightful post. You aren't going to find people dissatisfied with Disney on the Purchasing DVC board.

We traveled to WDW in December and again in February for Princess Half Marathon weekend, and our sentiments are the same as what you've pointed out here. The only reason I'm on the Purchasing DVC board is because we just sold all of our contracts and I was doing a little research. The nickel-and-diming is exhausting. Parks were overly crowded both times - although this is to be expected from time to time, adding everything else on top of overcrowding made things more unbearable than usual. It's not enough to say it's "not the same anymore." Things change, and that's to be expected. But it just wasn't fun anymore, and we don't have any desire to return regularly as long as things are this way. So we sold, and that's that.

I'm sure we will come back from time to time for runDisney weekends because those are fun, but we're perfectly happy paying Swan/Dolphin's reasonable cash rates when we want to do that instead of "having" to come every year/rent every year to make sure we burned our DVC points. With the cash we're bringing in from our DVC sale, I'm estimating based on S/D current rates +3ish% increases year over year, we'd need to return ~15 times for runDisney weekends before it would have made more sense to keep our DVC points. 15 trips is a lot! RunDisney changes each year too and we're branching out to more races in different places, so it was an easy decision.

 

[BrianR]

Our situation is kind of the opposite. We started with 50 points pre-pandemic, then bought 150 VGF resale when the pandemic hit and prices hit the floor, bought 2x100 (200) points at CCV direct when they reopened sales with the best discounts they've possibly ever put out, and now 200 VGF direct last month. We've been always in a negative points position so hopefully this will be plenty, and then the plan is to roll off that 150 VGF a bit later once direct sales of the new building stop. If you're a "parks person" they change how things operate every 5-8 years once there is a new middle management person trying to move up throws out some idea that gets traction. With the pent up demand they're in a position where they can charge more and offer less, and when it sways the other way a new middle management person gets to bring up new ideas for "value" to entice people back. Wash, rinse, repeat. There's additional pressure on the park attendance because a) staffing isn't back to what it was before, because people value their time effort for money as seen everywhere else, b) there are a LOT of group trips that have been delayed that Disney uses as filler for slower seasons that have to get these trips in before these bands, dance, cheer, etc. have to deal with graduating kids wanting refunds and younger students trying to scramble the cash to replace them for yet another year, c) regular pent up demand from people not travelling and wanting to go out into the big blue world with a bang of a trip, d) 50th celebration / upcoming Epcot 40th demand.

As for listings, there will always be more listings as long as DVC keeps building new properties and adding points into the global system, I'm not reading too much into that.

 

[we"reofftoneverland]

Just returned home from a week at Beach Club today. We had a really nice time, and spoke with many fellow members (all awesome & friendly, as usual). It was very interesting; almost everybody had a similar attitude.

The general consensus was that it is more challenging to visit than it used to be. It's just not the same, and the nickel & diming is exhausting. Nearly everybody said this was their last trip for a while. They were either going to rent their points for a couple years, or just sell them.

I promise I didn't offer anything up to lead them down this path, and I don't attract negative nellies... There was just a negative feeling about DVC ownership among almost everybody we spoke with.

I also met my resale rep at a park one day and asked him how business was. He told me that they've seen a huge wave of listings from long-time owners after the last few weeks of political news.

Between that and the dissatisfaction I felt/heard from so many, I looked up the DVC listings on a few of the major sites I frequent. I haven't been in the market for points in a while, but I've never seen so many resale listings available. Maybe it's sellers simply trying to capitalize on all-time highs in the market, but I think there's some aspect of being fed up and wanting out for one reason or another.

Somebody earlier mentioned that new DVC sales were huge in March, so maybe new DVC contracts are doing just fine. I imagine that is largely propped up by the VGF points becoming available for sale, but I haven't dug into those numbers.

My current takeaway from my last week of experience and the current crop of resale listings is that many are ready to move on. And to the OP, you're not going to hear from those people, because they're not spending any more of their time reading the "Purchasing DVC" message board, which is bound to be an echo chamber itself in some ways. That's why I decided to post this, just to give you a bit of a different perspective.

For our part, we have a few more trips planned this year on our APs. As my sig indicates, we've been many times, pre/during/post-covid. We share the mindset of "we'll do it next time," and don't have to knock everything out every trip or day. We're gracious with everybody, especially the CMs (most of whom are really outstanding). But after our current APs expire, I'm really not sure what direction we'll go. Luckily we have some time to sort it out.

Things change so much in a year. I remember posting about a year ago about how we purchased more contracts during covid when you mentioned downsizing. We found dvc a safe haven at that time. But I think we may be joining you and your family now. Here’s why:

1) Disney the corporation has succeeded in destroying the Disney vibe. Their culture change obviously influenced many employees to leave/ not return. In our experience, the majority of their “new” employees are phoning it in or worse. There seems to be a cloud of gloom at Disney. Never experienced this at Disney before and it changes everything.

2) WTH with annual passes? If we cannot buy them again, we definitely do not want to own dvc in Orlando. We will just end up doing the occasional Halloween party type event. We will not pay for individual daily tickets.

3) Nothing seems to make sense any more at Disney, and it’s gotten overly bureaucratic. There is a “government” feel to going to Disney now. We are rational, skeptical people and do not enjoy being in non sequitor environments. (ie why are some people allowed to buy annual passes? Why isn’t Disney building another park like universal if there is so much demand? Why park reservations when universal doesn’t have them? Why a four step process to get on a ride? Buy ticket, schedule park access, schedule genie, schedule lightening lane. No thanks.). I sometimes feel like I am in “no soup for you” settings at Disney now.

4) We have not been back to the parks since covid because we purchased annual passes at universal and are currently using those while staying at dvc. But I don’t know that we can survive park reservations and genie. We hate using our phones on vacation. Mine always runs out of power and DH never remembers to charge his lol. He also says he’s not going back with a reservation system, regardless of annual pass. Part of what we loved about Disney was starting in one place and going to a different park just to eat or grab one ride. So it’s not looking good for us.

5) Disney’s failure to address dvc website problems. Once you have a lot of points— we have around 1200- you are on the website a lot. That website is INCREDIBLY frustrating when you use it frequently. It crashes all the time, usually at the worst times. It lets me borrow from some resale contracts but not others (and we have three direct contracts, so it really makes no sense for us to be punished by Disney. Not that anyone should be, but that’s how Disney seems to think.). I feel like Disney has a fiduciary duty to have a functioning website, like a bank. I deal with 4 baking websites and they are a breeze to use, always reliable, accurate, accessible. The DVC website actually scares me a bit.

5). It’s just not as well run as it used to be. Poor operations and a lack of caring. And I don’t think it is because of covid, because Universal runs very smoothly. Universal has an upbeat positive vibe. I don’t know that we want to be so invested in a company where we no longer have faith in management. There is definitely a difference between being a regular customer and a dvc owner.

Anyway, it is tough for us to come to terms with the idea that we will start selling some points soon, but we just don’t see another option at this point. I cannot believe we have done a complete reversal. But honestly, it is Disney that has changed, not us!