The demise of unrestricted resorts, by year.

[kilik64]

It would be much easier if they keep ROFRing the 2042 contracts, extend them to 2057 and have occasional firesales on them like they did last year to make sure they are mostly resold before 2042 comes

That only gets them so far, where I came up with 60-70%. Not everyone is going to sell, most will keep to expiration. Could be lower on my estimate, more like 50%, but its still a ton of points for DVC to have.

 

[hhisc16]

I think a kink in all of it is OKW. 60-70% (based on estimates of how many took the ext plus attrition over time of more okw-e being resold direct) of the owner points will revert back to DVC via the quitclaim deeds on those. But all the points got extended to 2057, so what will dvc do with the ~5m or so points they are gonna get stuck with?

Will they do a massive fire sale on points only good for 13 years just to get out of the dues? Would people even buy them? At that point they would also be direct points, so would be good at any resort for trade and most likely get you membership extras too depending on requirement at that time for it.

Oh and not to mention that the dues by then are gonna be like $20/point or more if they continue at the same current pace.

I wonder if DVC could dump the OKW points that return in 2042 to the trust?

 

[LoveToDisney]

I think they will just close some of the buildings in OKW at 2042 and run it as a smaller resort until the final end date.

 

[sethschroeder]

The buses are a PITA compared to walking. But *other than those* you can’t find a deluxe resort closer to Epcot.

The original comment was that nothing is going to be close to Epcot. OKW/SSR are not close to Epcot in WDW terms.

They literally are only accessible via bus and it has multiple stops around your resort on the way.

I know that. And you know that. But the bourgeoisie can't bring themselves to step on a bus.

We go to Epcot almost every evening over the course of our trip. During a stay at AKV as an example we had multiple 40/50+ min waits on busses to/from Epcot. I dont want to deal with trying to get room on a bus (especially if we have a scooter with us) where it might have already filled up at the previous stop.

I would be fine with doing a bus if they were for sure on schedule and you could track the bus like an Amazon delivery driver to know when the next would actually show up by looking on a map with live GPS tracking.

At least with the TTC monorail I am fairly safe on it coming every 20-25 mins if not less. You also are not standing, you don't need to fold up strollers, and always had room for scooters (when we went during our stay at VGF).

 

[CVG]

They literally are only accessible via bus and it has multiple stops around your resort on the way.

They don't have multiple stops if you get on and off at the right place! OKW owners have preferred location which enables us to avoid this issue.

 

[hhisc16]

I think they will just close some of the buildings in OKW at 2042 and run it as a smaller resort until the final end date.

Can DVC do this?

 

[sethschroeder]

I think they will just close some of the buildings in OKW at 2042 and run it as a smaller resort until the final end date.

Depends on how sales are going is my thought. I am also not positive if they can because you have a deeded interest in specific units. Now those deeds relate to points that you can use anywhere but I am not sure they can just "close" your specific unit that you have a deeded interest in.

 

[WinterSolider]

The buses are a PITA compared to walking. But *other than those* you can’t find a deluxe resort closer to Epcot.

One piece of data I'd love to know is the percentage of DVC guests who have a car, whether rented or their own.

When you have a car, resorts like Old Key West and Fort Wilderness move way up the convenience scale because you can literally park right outside your door and leave exactly when you want to. Still not quite as convenient as walking right to a park, but people often forget the 10 minutes it takes to walk to a bus stop or monorail station when calculating their transit times.

 

[Brian Noble]

No resort is close to everything, and there is no pixie dust in transportation.

The Crescent Lake resorts have fantastic access to Epcot and good access to Studios. To all other destinations one needs to deal with Buena Vista Drive. That's gotten better now that they've widened it in some spots, but it is still a traffic light gauntlet. I haven't been at RIV long enough to experience its connectivity to the rest of the World beyond the Skyliner destinations. I suspect it is a little better than Crescent Lake, but only just. I happen to like the Skyliner, but I also don't visit during the rainy season, so YMMV.

The Monorail resorts are extremely convenient to MK. Wilderness Lodge is also very good. Poly is convenient to Epcot (the longhouses more than the tower). Any other trip from the MK area requires you to pack your patience, because it is going to take a while---and this is the same reason every other resort is not particularly convenient to MK. The new flyovers have helped a lot in both directions.

OKW is conveniently loacted to a main artery, but the internal bus route is a pain with all the dead-end turnarounds---staying somewhere where you can get off at Pensinsular and on at Carriage House helps a lot. SSR is only slightly less convenient to an artery, but its internal circulation route is much less frustrating, so I've found it to be better overall. The easy access to Disney Springs is a big plus, IMO. AKV is much closer in time than in space to most other destinations, because there is only one traffic light (at Sherberth) between it and any other theme park, and the rest of the trips are all on aterial roads.

I do usually rent a car. It is my second "splurge" after hoppers, and I generally drive most places not named Magic Kigndom or Disney Springs---for both of those, the parking lot is either far (MK) or painful to get in/out of (Springs). I will sometimes skip the car if I am staying in Crescent Lake or RIV, because the only route that driving helps with is AK. I will also usually drive one afternoon to MK to take the ferry over and back if the weather is nice, unless I'm at the Lodge where boat access is an everyday thing.

 

[Tatebeck]

I wonder if DVC could dump the OKW points that return in 2042 to the trust?

I think they will just close some of the buildings in OKW at 2042 and run it as a smaller resort until the final end date.

I don't think they can feasibly do this. DVC is declared into units comprised of groups of rooms. From what I have read and seen discussed on here before, I believe entire "units" must be fully owned by Disney in order for them to close a unit/building entirely or to put it into the trust. So unless they manage to ROFR entire units with 0 remaining other owners of any points in that unit, they won't be able to do anything with the entire unit.

 

[cruisehopeful]

I keep wondering if at some point, DVC will decide to charge to book a different resort. With the current resale restrictions, it seems like the next step towards making people stay where they bought.

 

[Brian Noble]

the next step towards making people stay where they bought.

I don’t think this is a goal.

 

[WinterSolider]

No resort is close to everything, and there is no pixie dust in transportation.

The Crescent Lake resorts have fantastic access to Epcot and good access to Studios. To all other destinations one needs to deal with Buena Vista Drive. That's gotten better now that they've widened it in some spots, but it is still a traffic light gauntlet. I haven't been at RIV long enough to experience its connectivity to the rest of the World beyond the Skyliner destinations. I suspect it is a little better than Crescent Lake, but only just. I happen to like the Skyliner, but I also don't visit during the rainy season, so YMMV.

The Monorail resorts are extremely convenient to MK. Wilderness Lodge is also very good. Poly is convenient to Epcot (the longhouses more than the tower). Any other trip from the MK area requires you to pack your patience, because it is going to take a while---and this is the same reason every other resort is not particularly convenient to MK. The new flyovers have helped a lot in both directions.

OKW is conveniently loacted to a main artery, but the internal bus route is a pain with all the dead-end turnarounds---staying somewhere where you can get off at Pensinsular and on at Carriage House helps a lot. SSR is only slightly less convenient to an artery, but its internal circulation route is much less frustrating, so I've found it to be better overall. The easy access to Disney Springs is a big plus, IMO. AKV is much closer in time than in space to most other destinations, because there is only one traffic light (at Sherberth) between it and any other theme park, and the rest of the trips are all on aterial roads.

I do usually rent a car. It is my second "splurge" after hoppers, and I generally drive most places not named Magic Kigndom or Disney Springs---for both of those, the parking lot is either far (MK) or painful to get in/out of (Springs). I will sometimes skip the car if I am staying in Crescent Lake or RIV, because the only route that driving helps with is AK. I will also usually drive one afternoon to MK to take the ferry over and back if the weather is nice, unless I'm at the Lodge where boat access is an everyday thing.

100% agree with this.

Most people who aren't familiar with the geography of the resort seem to assume that Magic Kingdom is the "center of the World" (pun intended) which is why you hear things all the time like "Animal Kingdom Lodge is far from everything." The thing that's far from everything is Magic Kingdom. Everything else is clustered along Buena Vista Drive and Magic Kingdom is the outlier all the way in the North.

When families visit with young kids, they're spending a disproportionate amount of time at Magic Kingdom which reinforces the perception that close to MK = convenience, and that mentality sticks around even when their families have gotten older and Magic Kingdom is no longer getting 50%+ of their park time.

To circle this all the way back to DVC, I'm very happy with this misperception because it's a big part of the reason why the resorts I prefer have very reasonable points charts.

 

[supercarrie]

I keep wondering if at some point, DVC will decide to charge to book a different resort. With the current resale restrictions, it seems like the next step towards making people stay where they bought.

If you are talking about direct points, I do not see this happening. One of the biggest selling points of DVC relative to other timeshares is that there is no exchange fee to use other resorts (within the DVC system at least, I'm ignoring the $95 fee to exchange your points to other offerings) and your points can be used anywhere.

If they were to institute this, I'd simply buy resale contracts at a variety of home resorts, and likely save money over a direct purchase. I think it would make the resale market more attractive, not less.

 

[that1jeff]

If you are talking about direct points, I do not see this happening. One of the biggest selling points of DVC relative to other timeshares is that there is no exchange fee to use other resorts (within the DVC system at least, I'm ignoring the $95 fee to exchange your points to other offerings) and your points can be used anywhere.

If they were to institute this, I'd simply buy resale contracts at a variety of home resorts, and likely save money over a direct purchase. I think it would make the resale market more attractive, not less.

Yea, can't imagine they would do this to direct points.

But for those with restricted resale points, giving a paid option to book outside your home resort does sound interesting.

 

[Tatebeck]

No resort is close to everything, and there is no pixie dust in transportation.

The Crescent Lake resorts have fantastic access to Epcot and good access to Studios. To all other destinations one needs to deal with Buena Vista Drive. That's gotten better now that they've widened it in some spots, but it is still a traffic light gauntlet. I haven't been at RIV long enough to experience its connectivity to the rest of the World beyond the Skyliner destinations. I suspect it is a little better than Crescent Lake, but only just. I happen to like the Skyliner, but I also don't visit during the rainy season, so YMMV.

The Monorail resorts are extremely convenient to MK. Wilderness Lodge is also very good. Poly is convenient to Epcot (the longhouses more than the tower). Any other trip from the MK area requires you to pack your patience, because it is going to take a while---and this is the same reason every other resort is not particularly convenient to MK. The new flyovers have helped a lot in both directions.

OKW is conveniently loacted to a main artery, but the internal bus route is a pain with all the dead-end turnarounds---staying somewhere where you can get off at Pensinsular and on at Carriage House helps a lot. SSR is only slightly less convenient to an artery, but its internal circulation route is much less frustrating, so I've found it to be better overall. The easy access to Disney Springs is a big plus, IMO. AKV is much closer in time than in space to most other destinations, because there is only one traffic light (at Sherberth) between it and any other theme park, and the rest of the trips are all on aterial roads.

I do usually rent a car. It is my second "splurge" after hoppers, and I generally drive most places not named Magic Kigndom or Disney Springs---for both of those, the parking lot is either far (MK) or painful to get in/out of (Springs). I will sometimes skip the car if I am staying in Crescent Lake or RIV, because the only route that driving helps with is AK. I will also usually drive one afternoon to MK to take the ferry over and back if the weather is nice, unless I'm at the Lodge where boat access is an everyday thing.

That's probably one of the reasons that I never really want to stay at OKW or SSR. We never rent a car if we don't have to. I hate driving in cities I am not familiar with and A $50 quick lyft from the airport and back is all we need if we are just going to Disney. One more if we go to universal for a few days. So the idea of a resort with no park access besides busses and with an internal bus route bigger than AKV with just the 2 stops really seems like a huge drag for me.

I will have to disagree with the "no pixie dust in transportation" though. Walking to a Disney park? Amazing in so many ways. A boat ride, monorail ride, or skyliner ride? Whimsical and different with usually great views (depending on what side of the skyliner you look lol). And they just seem like the wait times are shorter than busses for the boats and skyliner after using all the methods various times. Maybe that is not actually 100% true for the wait times but that is always how it feels to me.

I don't have any problems with the busses once getting on usually, they are fine, but the wait times seem longer and the other methods just seem to have some more "pixie dust" in your words compared to busses. Thinking back on my last few trips, the majority of the worst bits that stick out were waiting what seemed like forever for busses. So the other methods definitely feel more magical to me.

So I will likely avoid OKW and SSR unless something crazy with availability happens and I forget to book a room, or I want to say that I have stayed at ALL of the DVC locations someday. If I had to choose one, SSR seems like the better choice to me as well, with a bit better theming and being closer to Disney Springs.

But OKW just gives me "going to see my grandparents in a retirement village" vibes and not Disney "magic". But that is subjective I know. I can go to a retirement village anywhere and ride the bus in any city near me, I'm not going to Disney to do that every time I want to go somewhere personally. But some may love it there, to each their own.

 

[supercarrie]

Yea, can't imagine they would do this to direct points.

But for those with restricted resale points, giving a paid option to book outside your home resort does sound interesting.

Yes, that or a broader point washing plan, I'd be very interested.

We own a combo of resale and direct and I wish I had bought more direct. We really enjoy the restricted resorts, and I'm already mildly annoyed with having to conserve my precious direct points after only a year and a few months of ownership.