Question about our membership #'s.

[KNWVIKING]

Prior to selling BCV's, the figure of 60,000+ members was the most commonly stated figure.I'm interested in knowing what that 60000 represents. For instance, DW & I own a contract at OKW. Are we One member or two.We have two DS, are we counted as four members. We hold an additional contract at OKW,are we counted again ? We also own at VWL and now BCV, are we new additions to the total ? I guess what I'm trying to determine is just what is our population, how many people are we really. Several topics on discounts have dealt with how little "60,000" people really figure in to the grand picture at WDW. I'm thinking we are a much larger number to reckon with. Any opinions or facts on the subject ?

 

[RobDoc]

I don't know exactly how the memberships are being counted. I think the 60,000 figure represents the number of unique memberships (your family of 4 wold still be counted as 1 member).

DVC has tried to consolidate ownerships where popssible, so that owners at multiple resorts would still be counted as truly one member, but I suspect the 60,000 figure (or whatever it has risen to at this time) does include duplicates and is actually somewhat smaller.

We have 4 different contracts at 2 different resorts and have been receiving 4 mailings of DVC documents (4 VMs, 4 guidebooks, etc.)

As for the discount "power" of the DVC membership, possibly a better way of thinking of the relative strength is to consider the number of rooms occupied at WDW on any given day using DVC points.

At most there less than 1700 rooms at WDW/DVC resorts. This represents less than 7% of the total rooms owned by Disney. Even these rooms are not all occupied by DVC members, since many rooms have been "traded" for II resorts, cruises, Concierge Collection resorts and other WDW resorts. Since I dont have any figures to use for true numbers involved, I'll be generous and use a 90% occupancy for DVC resorts, with 90% of that actually by DVC members and an average room occupancy of 5 per room. This amounts to a total of about 6900 total DVC members (including family and guests) actually staying on points on any given day in DVC resorts. This is the number I would use as a basis for any negotiation for discounts (and I really believe the number to be much lower than that).

It would be interesting to have some actual data to use in computing these issues. I know Disney has the data to use- including purchase habits of those staying in each resort (they have a viable sampling from those who use room ID's to charge purchases for some very exact data).

Good question. I'm sure we'll have some other considerations here too!

 

[PamOKW]

While 60,000+ or even 60,000 x 5 is not a small number....WDW attendance appears to be at over 30 million visitors per year. We're still a pretty small fish in that pond.

 

[KNWVIKING]

Pam, I believe I read WDW did 15 mil in 2000.If you devide that figure by 365 days,you get 41,000 visitors per day. If Doc's figure of 6900 DVC members on property per day is in the ballpark,that puts us around 17% of WDW's everyday busness.

 

[Lyndarella]

If this means anything, our bus driver a month ago said that 50,000 people IN THE PARKS was a slow day, and 400,000 is the maximum allowed. I don't know how that corresponds to anything else, or if he is even correct.