I am highly suspicious of the MF difference between VGF and PVB this year - since labor is the largest expense you would not expect such a discrepancy,
Suspicious of what? The amount of increase? The disparity between the two?
In shared locations, Disney has a couple different measures it uses for dividing costs. Some budget items are allocated to
DVC vs hotel on the basis of "keys" or the number of rooms in the facility. If 40% of the rooms are DVC and 60% hotel, the DVC budget will is hit for 40% of the costs. This is the case for housekeeping, though I'm unclear as to what adjustments they make for hotel rooms vs larger villas and daily cleaning vs the more limited DVC schedule.
Most items are based upon average guest counts--how many actual guests are staying in DVC villas vs hotel rooms. And this is an area which has slowly weighed heavier on DVC over the years. Many long-time members will tell you that Studios and One Bedrooms were often pitched as being most suitable for two occupants, and larger groups should consider a Two Bedroom.
But over time, members got more and more aggressive about packing rooms to their limit. DVC aided this--some would argue selfishly--by permitting 5 guests in rooms that only sleep 4 and later formally adding the 5th sleeper to many Studio and 1B rooms. Higher occupancy has the potential to shift more costs to DVC.
Imagine a resort's transportation budget is $10M and historically DVC members represent 60% of the resort population. DVC owners would be billed for about $6M in transportation costs. The next year transportation goes up to $10.5M AND Disney recalculates the guest balance and finds that DVC members are now about 63% of all guests. (They do this about every 3-5 years). DVC is asked to pay $6.6M for transportation, an effective increase of about 10% on that line item because of the double-whammy of higher costs AND a greater share earmarked for DVC.
Hard to argue with the logic because if DVC guests are taking up more seats on buses, more chairs at the pool and more seats at the evening movie under the stars, they should pay a higher share.
This is frequently mentioned during dues discussion at the annual meetings, and is referred to as "changes in the guest balance" or words to that effect. No additional detail is shared. No specific percents. But it's a real phenomenon that has contributed to dues increases over the years. And it's a differentiator when comparing two resorts. I would bet that Poly tends to attract more groups of 5 because of the second bathroom. (GF deluxe studios are similar, but Resort Studios are not.) Also as a studio-only facility, Poly is a lot denser than most DVCs. It doesn't have those 1 and 2 bedroom units gobbling a lot of points while hosting a more moderate number of guests.
