Poly Bungalows - just visited March 2017

[LoveMickey]

Hello Folks,

Thought I'd give a short review of our stay at the Poly Bungalows, pre and post cruise. there were 4 adults and 2 children, 11 and 8.

We stayed one night pre cruise and had Bungalow # 17, third from the TTC. I had requested towards the other side due to comments about people being bothered by the horns from the Ferry boats but this was all that was available.

The noise was no problem for us at all. The Bungalows are beautiful. We had the 2nd bedroom and it was quite comfortable. This bedroom has a view of the Poly itself, if you open up the shade, we kept it close. The view from this Bungalow was ideal. You could sit at the table (for 8) or the couch and see the Castle and Space Mountain. Loved the feel of the Bungalow. You could hear the 'noise' from the tank emptying when it was full, but since we knew what it was - it was not a concern. Loved the nightlight feature on the lights since I'm one to get up once or twice during the night. Which was cool to see the Castle and Space Mt. lit up.

Post cruise we were near our requested location and were in Bungalow number 7 (7th from the small boat transportation dock) . This Bungalow was flipped - the 2nd bedroom was on the right not the lefthand side of the unit. No biggie. To be honest, we like the first Bungalow better because you could see MK better.

The temperature was not hot when we were at Disney and it was comfortable in the Bungalow. There were no window type air conditioning units in the master bedroom, so I'm assuming they may have fixed that issue.

We loved staying at the Bungalows.

Any questions, please feel free to ask.

 

[chicagodisneyguy]

Happy you had a good time! The bungalows are definitely on my WDW bucket list...it's too bad they so many points. Do people think at some point they might realign and reduce the points per night for the bungalows? I think a solid argument could be made that they are the coolest rooms on property and most desirable so I understand why they are priced at the very top of the system (along with VGF Grand Villas). But judging by their pretty much wide open availability, they just are too expensive for most DVC members. Of course, I am using just the small amount of data that the DVC website shows. For all I know the wide open availability we see is just for 1 unit...and the others are all reserved. But I'm guessing that's not the case. Does anyone have an insights on how well the bungalows sell on the CRO side?

 

[bluecruiser]

Happy you had a good time! The bungalows are definitely on my WDW bucket list...it's too bad they so many points. Do people think at some point they might realign and reduce the points per night for the bungalows? I think a solid argument could be made that they are the coolest rooms on property and most desirable so I understand why they are priced at the very top of the system (along with VGF Grand Villas). But judging by their pretty much wide open availability, they just are too expensive for most DVC members. Of course, I am using just the small amount of data that the DVC website shows. For all I know the wide open availability we see is just for 1 unit...and the others are all reserved. But I'm guessing that's not the case. Does anyone have an insights on how well the bungalows sell on the CRO side?

Doubtful. Since the total number of DVC points at the Poly is required to stay the same, in order to reduce the points per night at the bungalows they would have to increase points for the studios.

 

[chicagodisneyguy]

Doubtful. Since the total number of DVC points at the Poly is required to stay the same, in order to reduce the points per night at the bungalows they would have to increase points for the studios.

But the ratio of bungalows to studios is pretty low (20 vs 360 if I'm not mistaken). Maybe I'm doing the math wrong, but wouldn't a 1 point increase to all 360 studios per night allow an 18 point decrease per night for the 20 bungalows? For a longer stay, that decrease really would make it more attainable for more people while one point per night for the studios wouldn't be a horrible increase. I guess the only way it would anger people is if they bought the exact amount of points for a specific time and the one point per night would leave them short.

 

[drusba]

As to the bungalow's reserving activity via DVC, so far this year they have generally filled at a pace similar to SSR GV's. First part of January through marathon weekend (the end of DVC's high season) filled mostly at 4 months out, and the following week leading into and including the MLK holiday filled before 60 days out, the breakage point after which Disney can rent any DVC rooms still open. Most of the rest of January filled less than 30 days out. A couple days around Presidents Day and a couple days around the the Princess half marathon weekend in Feb filled about 3 months out, but the rest of Feb and all of March was open at 60 days out and about half the days were still open 1 day out, indicating Disney had not been able to fully rent them. For April 2017, a couple days in the second week filled before 60 days out, most of the first week and some other days in the second week filled about 20 days out. The rest of April is still open, as is most of May despite being 60 days out for any time before Memorial Day weekend, which filled about four months out. As far as summer goes, only July 4 is currently filled. Some dates have already been filled in DVC's high demand season, the last quarter of the year (last year, most of those filled by three to four months out).

We are in the lower DVC demand time of the year and I expect some improvement as time progresses and Oct to Dec time will likely fill for most days well before 60 days out like they did last year, similar to SSR GV's.

Though demand for the bungalows has not been overwhelming, I doubt we will see any point change shifting bungalow points to studios. The high cost units like bungalows and GV's are supposed to have less demand because of the high cost. In the past, Disney has not made changes to the those high cost units because of low demand. I would assume we won't see a bungalow decrease unless it is done to correct excessive demand for the studios, and thus far that is not happening, e.g., the studios have displayed no problems with being open at 11 months; they have issues at 7 months out during the high demand season from late Sep to marathon weekend in Jan but are still doing better during that time than studios at VGF, BCV, BWV, BRV and BLT.

From Disney's perspective, it is happy to have more breakage period dates to rent the bungalows for its own profit, but does not really suffer if the bungalows do not always rent, since the members cover the mainrtenance and upkeep of the bungalows through dues.