For the last year and a half, the closure of Disneyland was an enormous blow to Anaheim, with tourist related businesses and city income affected even more than other cities across the country. Anaheim was in dire straits. The Disneyland Forward initiative, detailing possible expansion plans, specifically includes a huge new section referred to as “A New Kind Of Disney Entertainment Destination,” which “could include hotel, retail, dining and entertainment.” Disney clearly is hoping that Anaheim might regard these development ideas with a newfound flexibility.
If the new DVC Disneyland Tower proves to be an enormous hit, and Disney continues with its plans to potentially spend BILLIONS of dollars to expand the parks, isn’t it a bit naive to believe that they won’t try to include a new DVC component?
Both Disneyland and WDW wouldn’t exist without some pretty big dreams, which have a tendency to come true when Disney pursues them. And if they actually add hotel rooms down the line, which is pretty much a certainty, doesn’t it make sense that we’ll eventually see a greater Disney Vacation Club presence? Of course we will.
It all depends who is on the Anaheim City Council when the plans come in. Right now, the city council is more friendly to Disney (especially after the long closure). But that is not to say that at the next election, the council become anti-Disney again. The current council just came in from the last elections - the previous one was very anti-Disney and made everything hard and kept rejecting proposals. The other piece you are missing is related to the RACK tax. That is a tax on hotel rooms and Anaheim is all about getting their rack tax and that is part of why they were against timeshares so long since DVC does not pay the rack tax. So for Anaheim and the city council, converting will make them lose out on that rack tax (or lots of money) and they would not be for that.