What happens if Disney goes bankrupt?

[Cfabar1]

What happens to our contracts if at some point DVD/Disney went bankrupt? Would a new management company be appointed? What would happen to our ownerships?

Realize this is a highly remote possibility, but am wondering what happens out of curiosity.

 

[garalex]

they will give us Disney+ subscription for life and buy back all residual value of contracts haha

 

[Cfabar1]

I wonder if we would be treated any differently than the owners of Swan and Dolphin or the Government which owns Shades of Green.

 

[MyDogTink]

Is there a Florida statute for timeshares that would talk about how its dissolved?

I could see a private equity/hedge fund buying it or even another time share company. Don’t know where we, as owners, would fall in the waterfall.

 

[Sandisw]

I believe it is mentioned in the POS. I’ll see if I can find it.

 

[NY Pirate Princess]

If Disney goes bankrupt we will all have much bigger problems than our DVC contracts.

 

[fla4fun]

I think they would break up the company and sell the parts before they got to the point that they had to file for bankruptcy. They could sell DVC to another timeshare company, the resorts to a hotel management company, and the parks to someone else.

If it ever came to that, I would be out. No desire to visit a Disney that is no longer Disney.

 

[Sandisw]

The contract says this.

 

[Jwaire]

I wonder if we would be treated any differently than the owners of Swan and Dolphin or the Government which owns Shades of Green.

Absolutely.

The Department of Defense owns the Shades of Green Resort and leases the land from Disney.
Tishman and MetLife own the Swan and Dolphin resorts and lease the land from Disney.

We own nothing. It's just a leasehold. We "own" a deeded interest in a lease. We will not be treated the same as someone who owns a physical building on Disney property.

 

[RoseGold]

This isn't a "remote" possibility. It has a whole, whole lot of precedent, with timeshares and theme parks.

Disney, including DVC, would sell all the assets. Just like they will when HH/Vero/Aulani expire, or even earlier maybe. They could sell it all right now, if they wanted to.

If Florida is underwater, or theme parks in general are worthless, maybe it's all worthless.

 

[ocdb8r1]

We own nothing. It's just a leasehold. We "own" a deeded interest in a lease. We will not be treated the same as someone who owns a physical building on Disney property.

But this is the wider point....don't be deceived by having a "deed"; there is no ownership of anything here except the right to occupy. If the property is unusable, or Disney goes bankrupt, all you have left is effectively a contractual claim against a bankrupt company. Get in line; there will be no recovery.

However, I agree, this isn't going to happen. The Parks and Resorts are consistently profitable and those "business units" would be sold off to someone (along with the obligations to continue to honor the DVC contracts we have) to allow them to continue to operate as normal. As such, even if the Disney "group" got into financial trouble, I think DVC would continue on much as it has.

 

[Genie+]

In the worse case scenario, we either get to use our ownership interest or stop paying dues. No?

If the whole WDW resort was no longer operating or something else prevented the need for transportation, wouldn’t that part be cut from dues?

I’m not worried. Chances are somebody else steps in. The pieces may not be what they once were but I doubt we’d be left paying dues for a goose egg.

 

[TheDailyMoo]

Apple Vacation Club doesn't have the same ring to it

 

[Genie+]

Apple Vacation Club doesn't have the same ring to it

iDVC

 

[Stargazer65]

The contract says this.

View attachment 789284

I only understand DVC like this: "Me pay lots of money, me get points and stay at Disney".

Can someone translate the above for me?

 

[Brian Noble]

There was a study done a while back during the "peak oil" conversation: At what point does flying become so expensive that WDW is no longer tenable as a vacation destination?

I don't remember when this MiceAge editorial was published, but this is one report on it:

https://web.archive.org/web/20211203230730/http://micechat.com/miceage/kevinyee/ky091807a.htm

But then fracking happened, and oil got super-cheap again, so no worries I guess!

 

[kilik64]

Might be the best outcome...imagine if the domestic parks operated like oriental land company instead of having to subsidize their failing media arm.

Apple buys up all the media stuff to expand their tv+ services. As part of the deal the Parks side of disney is spun off into its own company with a lifetime licensing agreement between the parks entity and the media company. The parks (resorts etc are a part of this) are then their own thing making money hand over fist (its the only real profit center for TWDC) and the parks only company can reinvest heavily in the assets vs having to fund the billions in losses for movies. Imagine if Imagineering had a real budget to work with...

Edit - also this aint a pipe dream really, apple has enough cash alone to just buy disney media, thats whip out folding money to apple.

 

[Brian Noble]

At what point does flying become so expensive that WDW is no longer tenable as a vacation destination?

I was thinking about this some more.

Orlando is the only Disney Parks destination that is reliant on air travel to make it work. The others are all in major population centers. Plus, the non-US resorts are served by high-speed rail.

I suppose there is a chance that the US also moves towards high speed rail as electrification of the economy gains steam (heh), but that's a long way off, and it is not clear that Orlando will be part of that.

 

[AstroBlasters]

This isn't a "remote" possibility. It has a whole, whole lot of precedent, with timeshares and theme parks.

Disney, including DVC, would sell all the assets. Just like they will when HH/Vero/Aulani expire, or even earlier maybe. They could sell it all right now, if they wanted to.

If Florida is underwater, or theme parks in general are worthless, maybe it's all worthless.

Would anyone be sad if the Oriental Land Company (Disney Tokoyo) took over the parks and Aulani and leased the rights to Disney characters from a newly emerged from bankruptcy Disney?

 

[tjkraz]

There was a study done a while back during the "peak oil" conversation: At what point does flying become so expensive that WDW is no longer tenable as a vacation destination?

I don't remember when this MiceAge editorial was published, but this is one report on it:

https://web.archive.org/web/20211203230730/http://micechat.com/miceage/kevinyee/ky091807a.htm

But then fracking happened, and oil got super-cheap again, so no worries I guess!

That was an entertaining read. The URL suggests a September 2007 publication date, which seems about right given the mention of AKL (Kidani) being under construction.