Restrictions are the way forward. Disney has never wavered. Wishful thinking and an erroneous belief that Riviera wasn't selling because of the restrictions has been promulgated online. It is clear that this was simply bias as evidenced by Riviera outselling VGF they had to discount VGF. If Disney was going to relax restrictions it would have been done. …
When the first couple of months of VGF2’s sales were so much higher than Riviera’s despite the fact that Riviera was cheaper at that point, came w/ prior years points, & had more years left, I hoped that
DVC would reverse course on resale restrictions.
But alas, summer told a different tale & Riv. began out selling VGF2 suggesting to me that direct buyers would flock to whichever resort cost less per point & didn’t particularly care about resale restrictions.
In mid November DVC increased the incentives on VGF2, I doubt they cared about which resort sold more v. the other but direct sales fell off a cliff for both resorts so they needed to do something to increase sales & they likely are resigned to Riv taking almost a decade to sell out, but would like the smaller VGF2 to be sold before its’ next door neighbor Poly2 opens. I’m still not sure if Poly2 will be restricted or go the VGF2 shorter contract no restriction add on route.
Since VGF2 went on sale it’s sold 966,870 points & during that time (March 2022 - March 2023) Riviera has sold 867,287 points despite being cheaper than VGF2 for 9 of the 13 months. VGF2 sold more points in 8 months (3/22, 4/22, 5/22, 6/22, 8/22, 1/23, 2/23, 3/23) and Riv sold more points in 5 months (7/22, 9/22, 10/22, 11/22, 12/22.)
DLH is an entirely different kettle of fish, it’s small, it’s based in 2 parks that are more like a 4 day vacation v. a WDW 7+ day vacation & the likely target market is west coast based folks, so I don’t see DLH sales cannibalizing WDW resort sales & I don’t see WDW resort pricing/incentives having much impact on DLH pricing/incentives because the markets are different for the west v. east coast parks.