Originally posted by kweaver
I find it interesting that OKW and SSR have the exact same rack rates, while there is a significant difference when you are staying on points.
You really have to consider DVC and Disney resort pricing as two seperate entitites. The total number of points a resort has to sell is figured out based on what it actually costs to build the resort and also make a profit. They then divide up the points to make reservations. I know others disagree, but the number of points needed to make a reservation doesn't really have much to do with whether DVC thinks resort "A" is in a better location than resort "B". Selling the points is how Disney made their money and using points for making reservations is why we buy them.
(All figures are for example only -- not actual).
Now, WDW can put whatever price they want on different resorts and then can change them up (or down) whenever they want to. If Pop Century suddenly became wildly popular because Brad Pitt said it was his favorite resort, they could start charging $400 a night -- even though the GF is a clearly a nicer property.
When OKW opened they determined that they would sell "X" number of points at "Y" dollars to come up with a 50% profit over their construction costs. When BWV opened they had to decide whether they would sell more points at a lower price or fewer points at a higher price to cover the increased costs of building BWV. Because all the resort points are the same price -- they did a combination of raising the price a little and selling more points. If you sell more points, it takes more points per room. The same calculations were done with every DVC resort. DVC has to decide going into the sale of each resort what price they need to hit. The reservation schedule is set before sales begin -- they can't create more points once the resort starts to sell and they can only raise the price per point to levels that the market will bear.