News Disney Vacation Club announces plans for more than 350 new cabins at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort

[nickys]

I’m seeing $410 a night in September. So $2,460 for 6 nights.

Vs. estimated $2,140 annually for DVC.

I can’t see the US pricing via Disney (without a vpn) so used Mouse Savers:

2025 Fort Wilderness Cabins Rates - MouseSavers.com

2025 Room Rates & Season Dates for Disney's Fort Wilderness Cabins in Walt Disney World, Orlando Florida.

www.mousesavers.com

Your figure puts the annual savings at $790 so that’s 29 years break even point! Much harder to justify!

Although it will depend when you go. The Disney cash rates don’t always reflect the points charts.

What’s the $2140 figure?

Edit: oh, were you using 150 points? That’s going to get you more nights, say 8 at the same time of year.

So 8 nights @ 400 is 3200, less 2140 gives a saving of 1060.

I’m still confused as to how Mouse Savers are showing the rate as 50% higher though.

 

[Tony the Tigger]

I checked. The price per point is $235. And the minimum buy-in is 100 points, not enough to get you the DVV perks (“blue card”).

To get $12k off you need to buy 300+ points. That’s going to cost you 70k initially. A reduction of $10k plus you can sell your first year’s points back for the additional reduction. $58k in total.

Yikes. We were quoted a discounted price of around $29K when buying 150 points. I thought if that went lower, it might work.

One of their big selling points was the length of contract. I’m confident I won’t live that long, so the “savings” are diminished. Plus, I often rent rooms on Chase Disney Visa points, a deal no one can beat, especially when combined with FL or AP discounts.

A friend who owns DVC advised me, in all caps, not to buy.

 

[nickys]

Yikes. We were quoted a discounted price of around $29K when buying 150 points. I thought if that went lower, it might work.

One of their big selling points was the length of contract. I’m confident I won’t live that long, so the “savings” are diminished. Plus, I often rent rooms on Chase Disney Visa points, a deal no one can beat, especially when combined with FL or AP discounts.

A friend who owns DVC advised me, in all caps, not to buy.

I agree with your friend for the Cabins.

Disney are going to have loads of them to rent out to the public.

Renting points for the Cabins will be hard. Only avid FW fans are going to buy, therefore other owners will scramble at 7 months to book them. The chances of an owner renting their points out are slim.

 

[Goofyernmost]

Question: Naturewise what is the difference between "camping" in Disneyswamp and the Everglades?

 

[nickys]

Question: Naturewise what is the difference between "camping" in Disneyglades and the Everglades?

Fewer gators?

 

[BrianLo]

Imagine if you instead put that $23K in an investment vehicle and use what you would otherwise pay in maintenance fees (and then a bit more) to just rent someone else’s DVC for when it best suited you.

Generally it’s triple maintenance fees through a resale broker (about 25$/pp to rent). You’ll run your 23k investment account out by year 13 (with a 7% return AND kicking in added annual base dues so an additional 20k out of pocket over those 20 years outside of your investment fund); for a middle of the road 150p usage for a week a year and comparing to owning the product and having to kick in the maintenance fees.

By the way, NOT an endorsement of the cabins as a product, but some other contract types can be had with much lower upfront investment on resale.

 

[monorail81]

Only avid FW fans are going to buy

They are starting to lose the avid fans with these changes.

 

[Biff215]

I don’t agree with using rack cash DVC rates as the comparison to determine the value in buying DVC. Disney inflates those prices just so they can try to justify the “savings” DVC will provide. Very few will pay the full rack rate unless they simply don’t know better.

We paid $86/point in 2006 at SSR and took at least 25 trips before selling it last year for $98/point. I have no regrets on either as they were all great trips where we got to stay at deluxe resorts we otherwise wouldn’t spend the money on. Now that the AP prices have more than doubled we know longer saw the value and chose to vacation elsewhere. Can’t be mad when we were able to get our entire initial investment back though even after all those years.

At the prices they’re asking/getting for FW, no chance you’ll see any value there!

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

I wonder if that’s even true sometimes.

Not that anybody has to disclose anything - but they always say “I got a good deal” - and never actually say how much per night they are spending.

The ROFR thread on disboards does a pretty good job of tracking what people are paying resale. The 2042 resorts are still ridiculously overpriced, but you can make the math work for most of the others if you divide the buy in cost over the life of the resort and add in the dues assuming an average 5 percent increase per year. Still hard to calculate that versus the time value of money, but it probably works.

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

100 points will get you 6 nights in September. Booking a cabin through Disney costs somewhere around $600 per night, so $3600.

Assuming people are paying rack rate for the cabins in September is problematic, especially when they are no longer brand new, and also ignores the thriving rental market, including renting from owners who have points that have dues that are two thirds cheaper than CFW owners.

The older cabins historically saw some of the heaviest booking discounts and were often the last room type to sell out for any given date.

Assuming the dues will only go up 4 percent per year when the resort basically needs a ground-up rebuild after 25 years is also really problematic.

Taking away the rack rate assumption, the dues assumption, and then adding in the time value of money makes the math not work.

Edit:
And for the record, I’m not some DVC naysayer. I own multiple DVC contracts. CFW is a ludicrous scam.

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

I’m seeing $410 a night in September

This is much closer to historical rack rate discounts for the Cabins.

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

With a 23k outlay (100 points) for 49 years, that’s $470 per year. Maintenance fees are just under $12 per point. Total cost for 2025 is $1670.

100 points will get you 6 nights in September. Booking a cabin through Disney costs somewhere around $600 per night, so $3600.

Total saved in 2025 is $1930.

Maintenance fees for the cabins fell from 2024 to 2025 but let’s say they increase by 4%. And let’s assume the rack rate also increases by 4%. In other words each year the amount saved is roughly the same.

After 10 years of booking a cabin, the savings are about $19k. After 13 years the savings will be $24k +

That’s how I would calculate a break even point. Maybe I’m missing something in those assumptions.

Also, using September is a bad example since that’s lowest of low season. I picked a random week in November instead it’s 5 nights for 110 points November 2-6, Sunday-Friday. Nothing special about that weekend, it’s before Veterans Day/Jersey Week. The discount rate right now is $422 a night. So you can spend $2,110 booking directly through Disney, or you can spend $1670 for your 100 points, plus another $120 in dues for your borrowed points, plus another $47 for your amortized buy in, for a total of $1837, a “savings” of $273. There’s not going to be a true break even point, or anything close to it, at that rate.

The only people purchasing CFW are those that are bad at very bad at math.

 

[nickys]

Renting points to stay at the Cabins is going to be next to impossible. Unless you know someone who is willing to do the 7 month scramble, or even walk the reservation.

There are so few Cabins declared that demand exceeds supply.

And my guess is the %age increase in dues, when that happens, will be matched by any rate offered by Disney.

I don’t disagree the Cabins are the worst idea DVC have ever gone through with. And with the resale restrictions and high maintenance fees, with poor amenities compared to other DVC resorts, the lure escapes me.

I am puzzled though. If they are always discounted and apparently easy to book, why do they never seem to release them to their international sites for booking? I have never been able to see them available at any time of the year.

They are starting to lose the avid fans with these changes.

I know, especially with Lakeshore being built, its location especially.

But some of the most “high profile” fans of FW have bought in to DVC at the resort.

 

[Calmdownnow]

Yes.

Normally DVC resorts get a soft goods refurb after 7 years and a hard goods refurb another 7 years after that and so on. Part of maintenance fees go towards those expenses.

But the cabins have a shelf life of around 25 years. And they’ll still need a complete refurb before that. The cost of the replacement will have to come out of the capital reserves, and will be far higher than even a full refurb. So the maintenance fees need to be higher to pay more into the capital reserves each year.

Thank you for explaining so clearly. Now I understand why even fans of the Fort aren't queuing up to buy these DVC points.

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

Thank you for explaining so clearly. Now I understand why even fans of the Fort aren't queuing up to buy these DVC points.

Part of the problem is that normally the construction cost of a new resort is baked into the (absurdly high) buy-cost of a timeshare. However in this case, Disney is essentially baking the construction cost in twice, once into the buy in cost, and again into the absurdly high dues so it can be rebuilt in 25 years. There’s a reason you just don’t see timeshare schemes for this type of property, basically anywhere else.

 

[bmr1591]

Generally it’s triple maintenance fees through a resale broker (about 25$/pp to rent). You’ll run your 23k investment account out by year 13 (with a 7% return AND kicking in added annual base dues so an additional 20k out of pocket over those 20 years outside of your investment fund); for a middle of the road 150p usage for a week a year and comparing to owning the product and having to kick in the maintenance fees.

By the way, NOT an endorsement of the cabins as a product, but some other contract types can be had with much lower upfront investment on resale.

Forgive my ignorance, but maintenance fees are more expensive on resale contracts? This is the first I’m hearing of this.

 

[nickys]

Forgive my ignorance, but maintenance fees are more expensive on resale contracts? This is the first I’m hearing of this.

No, that isn’t true.

I’m not quite sure what @BrianLo meant by that. Possibly that renting will cost more than a year’s maintenance fees?