RUMOR: Disney Vacation Club Considering Paid Member Perks Program

[MartyParty]

The restrictions are not related to membership extras in anyway so any program wouldn’t change that as that would require the DVC resort agreement to be change.

Now, it could include the ability to pay a fee to access DVCs owned points beyond OTU limits…if that’s what you meant, I could see that being something thought about.

One idea that comes to mind occurred for us last year. We booked a 3 BR villa at Bay Lake for our daughters after graduation celebration (family, friend, WDW, etc.). Upon booking DVC reached out to us with a nice email and phone call about a beta program. I think it was called Magical Services but basically it was like a concierge service.

We had a 30-minute call, went over our full itinerary, and they in turn offered to make all the reservation bookings for us. I cannot remember all the details and what was offered. We used them for booking restaurants throughout WDW. Used them to book a reservation at the light saber shop. Consider booking one of the fireworks cruises but didn't. We did use them to book the Top of the World Lounge during fireworks at Magic Kingdom.

Essentially, we didn't have to wake up early 60 days out and hunt and peck through making all the reservations. They did that for us either right at 60 days or maybe a day before. We got everything we wanted at the times / days that we wanted.

If this is what they might offer for $100 I'd be tempted to use them. Took a lot of the stress out of the pre-trip planning.

 

[Sandisw]

Except doesn’t the Agreement say that DVC can offer a paid upgrade to make points unrestricted. I suppose that could be on an annual allotment or the entire remaining contract. I don’t recall it being clear it had to be the entire contract term.

Edit: while that isn’t blue card related I suppose they could do that. I just assumed this paid experience was going to try and creat club like experiences.

Yes they can create a paid program for allowing someone to use restricted points elsewhere. I was responding to it not being part of membership extras.

Memberships extras are incodental benefits which is different than the resale restrictions that are part of the DVc resort agreement that applies to all owners.

So, just pointing out that these are two different things as sometimes people do not always realize they sre.

 

[AstroBlasters]

Just saying - it would take a lot - can't really see it being a thing, for me anyway.

But it could be a thing for a lot of other people….

 

[ehh]

Cynically, I wonder how the paid perks program will offer yet another Nothing for Something.

What I mean by this: Disney offers something with minimal (or zero) marginal costs to them, but at a cost to guests.

Two 'classic' offerings that are examples of this: Lightning Lane and Memory Maker.

Lightning Lane: there's a cost to the guest, and a clear value to the guest, but essentially zero marginal cost for Disney for each user. It even used to be free for guests!

Memory Maker is pretty similar, though probably has slightly more marginal cost: ride photos are taken no matter what, PhotoPass photogs can take photos with your phone for free (so are there anyway), it's just the access to the photos that you're paying for.

Upgrading points is also a Nothing for Something! But I'm really skeptical of it as it doesn't seem like something you'd need to pay for on an ongoing basis, which I think is their goal.

If anything, it might be the opposite? I wonder if they broaden the options for things you can spend (direct) points on. Pay for the privilege to pay for more things, but only with your 'good' points.

 

[heynowirv]

Would definitely agree with it providing a benefit to those that are at a certain point level (or maybe even if purchased in the current year, direct). I think I remember hearing that at one time they were giving like a park ticket if you bought direct. I could see it like that where you get 1 year of membership for free if you purchase 150 direct points, for instance. I know today is much different than decades ago where they did that, but could be a great "extra" selling point.

In the beginning when OKW was The Disney Vacation Club every guest was given free admission for each day of their stay.Obviously that's not coming back.

 

[tjkraz]

Cynically, I wonder how the paid perks program will offer yet another Nothing for Something.

What I mean by this: Disney offers something with minimal (or zero) marginal costs to them, but at a cost to guests.

Two 'classic' offerings that are examples of this: Lightning Lane and Memory Maker.

Lightning Lane: there's a cost to the guest, and a clear value to the guest, but essentially zero marginal cost for Disney for each user. It even used to be free for guests!

As long as Disney is capping the number of LLs they sell each day, there's definitely a cost. Hypothetically, if you give away LL to 10K DVC members per day, that's 10K fewer to sell. If it gets to the point of Disney raising the daily cap on LL sales--or increase prices--then you're negatively impacting the experience of other guests.

In the 2000s when FP was still running off paper tickets, one of the popular incentives for sitting thru a DVC sales presentation was "immediate" FastPasses. They'd give guests a plastic card which could be inserted in the FP machines and would return an immediate ride time. I guess that was the trade off for sitting thru the DVC spiel. Rather than waiting 3 hours for your Space Mountain time to arrive, you could do it immediately. Even though there was no paid FastPass tier back then, those cards had a value assigned to them. DVC had to reimburse the parks division some $$$ for every single one of those they issued.

DVC owners often questioned why they couldn't get some bonus FastPass perk. When FP+ allowed 3 passes per day, why couldn't DVC get 4? And that's exactly why. Whether you're charging for them or not, ride reservations are a limited commodity. Any change is bound to impact hundreds of thousands of guests.

 

[tjkraz]

In the beginning when OKW was The Disney Vacation Club every guest was given free admission for each day of their stay.Obviously that's not coming back.

While this statement is true, it requires about a dozen footnotes.

First, what you describe was a purchase incentive. It was 1991's version of "buy today and save $15 per point."

That promotion only ran for a short amount of time. I THINK it was about 18 months when DVC sales first began, but not entirely certain on that. Regardless, it primarily happened because the timeshare concept was entirely new to Disney and they weren't sure how it would sell. When Old Key West was first offered, it was the ONLY DVC destination. You weren't buying points that were valid for 2 or 5 or 18 destinations. There was no guarantee DVC would grow beyond OKW (though plans were in the works for Vero, HHI and BoardWalk.)

Also this incentive had a stated end date of 1999. At the most, early buyers received about 9 years of free theme park admission. Disney's Animal Kingdom was explicitly excluded when it opened in '97, but I've heard claims that the restriction was lifted at some point in '98 or '99.

Lastly, the free passes were only valid for 1/2 of the occupancy of the villa. Buyers didn't just receive blanket "free admission" for 9 years. If they booked a studio or 1BR, they would get 2 free passes per day. If 2BR, 4 free and Grand Villa got 6.

 

[CastAStone]

OK so some kind soul posted the names of all of the slack channels into a document. About 180 mention DVC but most appear to be boring and IT related around pushing live various site updates etc.

Here are some interesting sounding ones.

If anyone wants to take one for the team and download the giant file and share with us what you learn, the codes that start with C I think are the folder names relevant to each topic.

 

[thanxfornoticin]

While this statement is true, it requires about a dozen footnotes.

First, what you describe was a purchase incentive. It was 1991's version of "buy today and save $15 per point."

That promotion only ran for a short amount of time. I THINK it was about 18 months when DVC sales first began, but not entirely certain on that. Regardless, it primarily happened because the timeshare concept was entirely new to Disney and they weren't sure how it would sell. When Old Key West was first offered, it was the ONLY DVC destination. You weren't buying points that were valid for 2 or 5 or 18 destinations. There was no guarantee DVC would grow beyond OKW (though plans were in the works for Vero, HHI and BoardWalk.)

Also this incentive had a stated end date of 1999. At the most, early buyers received about 9 years of free theme park admission. Disney's Animal Kingdom was explicitly excluded when it opened in '97, but I've heard claims that the restriction was lifted at some point in '98 or '99.

Lastly, the free passes were only valid for 1/2 of the occupancy of the villa. Buyers didn't just receive blanket "free admission" for 9 years. If they booked a studio or 1BR, they would get 2 free passes per day. If 2BR, 4 free and Grand Villa got 6.

Yes, this is how we remember it - a purchase incentive. And we took advantage of it with our purchase in 1993. It was an incentive that might've pushed us to the point of buying. It was really nice getting the park passes during that time. We were a family of 4, so cutting ticket prices in half by getting 2 tickets included was helpful - of course, passes were a bit cheaper in the 90s!

 

[VGCgroupie]

OK so some kind soul posted the names of all of the slack channels into a document. About 180 mention DVC but most appear to be boring and IT related around pushing live various site updates etc.

Here are some interesting sounding ones.

If anyone wants to take one for the team and download the giant file and share with us what you learn, the codes that start with C I think are the folder names relevant to each topic.
View attachment 877422View attachment 877423View attachment 877424View attachment 877425View attachment 877426View attachment 877427View attachment 877428

@Kailunkat was it you that was considering taking in this task? We all want to know the gossip.

 

[CraigInPA]

In the 2000s when FP was still running off paper tickets, one of the popular incentives for sitting thru a DVC sales presentation was "immediate" FastPasses. They'd give guests a plastic card which could be inserted in the FP machines and would return an immediate ride time. I guess that was the trade off for sitting thru the DVC spiel. Rather than waiting 3 hours for your Space Mountain time to arrive, you could do it immediately. Even though there was no paid FastPass tier back then, those cards had a value assigned to them. DVC had to reimburse the parks division some $$$ for every single one of those they issued.

I remember that very well. I also recall DVC giving out paper fastpasses good on any ride. I had a guy on the bus hand me 25 of them after he took the DVC tour with his family "for the free ice cream". They didn't have any park days left on their 7 day tickets, so they couldn't use the fastpasses. Towards the end of the afternoon, my wife and I still had about 20 of them left, so I picked out someone in the standby line of Tower of Terror with a wife and small children and handed them to him. It took a moment for him to realize what I gave him, and then he very excitedly thanked me.

 

[CarolynFH]

I remember that very well. I also recall DVC giving out paper fastpasses good on any ride. I had a guy on the bus hand me 25 of them after he took the DVC tour with his family "for the free ice cream". They didn't have any park days left on their 7 day tickets, so they couldn't use the fastpasses. Towards the end of the afternoon, my wife and I still had about 20 of them left, so I picked out someone in the standby line of Tower of Terror with a wife and small children and handed them to him. It took a moment for him to realize what I gave him, and then he very excitedly thanked me.

That was one of the aspects of paper FP that we miss the most - being able to grant pixie dust by giving someone a FP to an attraction that was sold out for the day!

 

[MerlinandtheMouse]

OK so some kind soul posted the names of all of the slack channels into a document. About 180 mention DVC but most appear to be boring and IT related around pushing live various site updates etc.

Here are some interesting sounding ones.

If anyone wants to take one for the team and download the giant file and share with us what you learn, the codes that start with C I think are the folder names relevant to each topic.
View attachment 877422View attachment 877423View attachment 877424View attachment 877425View attachment 877426View attachment 877427View attachment 877428

@Kailunkat was it you that was considering taking in this task? We all want to know the gossip.

Take this with a big grain of salt because I know nothing about cyber security and breach’s like this but people in the wdwmagic forum were talking about it said it isn’t worth potential legal ramifications of messing around with this for information

 

[DonMacGregor]

Take this with a big grain of salt because I know nothing about cyber security and breach’s like this but people in the wdwmagic forum were talking about it said it isn’t worth potential legal ramifications of messing around with this for information

Yeah, I'd probably be careful too. It's a really grey area of the law, and the DVC stuff probably wouldn't rise to any level of interest by anyone other than Disney (if them even). The toothpaste isn't going back in the tube. The issue, however, is what else might be buried in that mass of data. If there is proprietary information, copyrighted materials, or personal data then that might be a different story, particularly anything that is copyrighted or of some other material value. IANAL, but my understanding is that at some point it drifts more into the dissemination of stolen property (kinda like pirating DVD's or making your own Disney merch) and that's a potential legal thorn.

 

[VGCgroupie]

Take this with a big grain of salt because I know nothing about cyber security and breach’s like this but people in the wdwmagic forum were talking about it said it isn’t worth potential legal ramifications of messing around with this for information

@Kailunkat forget i mentioned you. For sure wouldn’t want anyone to get into trouble.

 

[keishashadow]

They might sweeten the deal a bit by giving it free to people at certain point levels, say 500 or more.

Or, they could charge those with multiple contracts 'more'

As in if you have enough points to visit months each year, then you'd possibly use more perks (at a higher value)

Or not lol

 

[Kailunkat]

To be clear - I haven't downloaded anything. The fact that no one has been putting the info out there (even the hackers) has given me pause.

 

[CastAStone]

To be clear - I haven't downloaded anything. The fact that no one has been putting the info out there (even the hackers) has given me pause.

I am not asking you to do anything. Just flagging this guy has been posting random things that interest him in the Disney Hack files. https://x.com/f1rstxlas7

 

[jimim]

It would have to be full Blue Card privileges (booking at restricted resorts etc) before I'd even consider it - even at that price. A bag of chips at the EPCOT DVC lounge would not cut it - not by a long shot. I saved $10K buying resale and I have never once had any regrets about not buying direct.

Word. I bought resale right after first set of restrictions. I saved a boat load of money. Boat load! Never ever regretted it. It has paid for its self 10 fold already. I can care less about paying for something else. I personally can care less about the lounges. They are a waste of money.

I save on my room I get my dis points on food and our passes and I’m good. All I need.

I will say I appreciate a new slider now and then. I’m a simple man.

 

[Lumpy1106]

Word. I bought resale right after first set of restrictions. I saved a boat load of money. Boat load! Never ever regretted it. It has paid for its self 10 fold already. I can care less about paying for something else. I personally can care less about the lounges. They are a waste of money.

I save on my room I get my dis points on food and our passes and I’m good. All I need.

I will say I appreciate a new slider now and then. I’m a simple man.

I still have never gotten a slider.

Or a magnet <ducks head>