Points and Passes?

[rae519]

I have noticed that often a DVC member will mention that they purchased a resale and received annual passes. I assume that the first DVC properties offered this since I didn't heard about this in my DVC presentation last year or had it offered in my resale.


If it isn't too much trouble, could someone explain this?

Thanks so much,
Rae

 

[RoutemanDan]

I think you misunderstood what you were reading or heard about.Annual passes have never been given out with a DVC purchase. The earlier buyers did get (I think) LOS passes when they stayed at WDW,but that ended in 99 or 2000.

 

[Maistre Gracey]

Well, one of the earlier OKW people will be able to help, but I don't know of any deals like this going on now.

Have fun.....

 

[Jimbo]

In the first few years of DVC, when OKW was the only property offered, they included length of stay passes with your contract. At that time timeshares were a dirty word, and Disney felt that they needed to jump start sales.

The way it worked was that you you were entitled to park passes equal to half the room capacity. So you would get 2 passes when staying in a studio or 1BR, 4 when staying in a 2BR and 6 when in a GV. You got these passes any time you stayed at OKW on points through 1999.

Two interesting things: First, the pass feature was part of your contract. So when I bought my OKW resale in 1997, the right to passes came with it. The other thing is that they weren't the same kind of pass Disney was selling. These passes specifically were for MK, MGM and Epcot. This didn't seem like a big deal in 1992, but when AK opened you couldn't use a DVC pass to visit the park.

 

[DebbieB]

I believe it was only good for the number of nights you were staying, not days, so you had to specify if you wanted to drop the first or last day. In other words, a week stay would be 7 days of passes, even though you were there for 8 days counting your arrival and departure day.

 

[Beth]

We purchased in April, 1997, and had our contract drawn for VB.

At that time, DVC was offering the park passes to purchasers at VB, also, for whenever they stayed at OKW, only. (not BWV)

We (I) got cold feet on the contract - the deal about the "developer subsidy" concerned me - and we ended up having it redone at OKW, instead. By changing home resorts - we lost the passes. It was a tough decision to make - I'm still not sure we made the right one... But, in the long run, that 11-month window for the GV's will probably make it worth it.

We've since bought 2 add-on's at VB, though. Go figure...

 

[Richyams]

I bought in '92 and '93. We averaged 11 nights in a GV for seven years of passes. 6 passes per night.

66 one day passes per trip, seven year, somewhere near 450 one day passes, somewhere near $20,000 worth of passes. We only paind a little more than that for our membership. We actually figure that we pre-paid for passes till the year 2000 and actually got our DVC membership for free!

 

[Cricket2]

Originally posted by Richyams
...and actually got our DVC membership for free!

I now have a red mark on my forehead from banging my head on my desk.

 

[Jimbo]

Originally posted by Richyams
We actually figure that we pre-paid for passes till the year 2000 and actually got our DVC membership for free!

And you can easily sell your contract for a third more than you originally paid. Early buyers really made out, didn't they? Of course, at the time, if you told anyone that you bought a timeshare you'd be laughed at. So it took a leap of faith even with the passes.

One thing I remember about the passes is that there was a mini-controversy in 1999. Disney said that only points with a 1999 use year were eligible for passes. So you could borrow Y2K points into 1999, but you wouldn't get passes when staying on those points. Some lawerly types reviewed their contracts, though, and its wording said that you received passes any time you used points at OKW before 12/31/99. The use year of the points didn't matter, just when you used the points.

So Disney was forced to back down. To save face, when they announced the policy change, and made it sound like they were doing us a favor. So like many people, we took a big family trip in fall of '99 by doing some borrowing, and squeezed some last passes out of the deal.

 

[rae519]

Wow!
Thanks everyone for the information. I guess those who were alerted to the DVC and bought early actually deserved those passes since it has paved the way for more properties and opportunites for the rest of us.

We jumped at the opportunity the first time we heard about DVC (last February).

Rae

 

[nuthut]

We were lucky enough to get six years of free passes for our family. I agree, we recieved our OKW points for free!!! According to my calculations, we recieved somewhere around 600 days of park admissions with our membership.