Disney Vacation Account program abruptly ended

[Nubs70]

Accountants sure do get a lot of blame around here.
Finance are actually the culprits.

You are correct. I am guilty of lumping in accountants with finance.
Accountants place "money" in each respective bucket. The finace person looks at all the buckets and finds a bucket full that is not growing in value which is waste from a finance perspective.

 

[cindy_k]

abc posted a story about this, but it doesn't include any reasons.
http://www.abcactionnews.com/news/state/disney-suddenly-discontinues-disney-vacation-account-program

 

[OliveMcFly]

I surmise it has to do with the cost associated with the administration of the program. I do not believe the money can be invested to earn interest. The money needs to be held in a idle pre paid account where inflation and administration costs eats away at the value. Since there is no expiration, a zombie account just sits there. Accountants hate idle money. WDW wants money to pass through the order to cash cycle as rapidly as possible. @ParentsOf4 would be a good resource on this question.

You make a good point. Thank you.

 

[Nubs70]

Remember, there are people who are doing anything they can to save a few more pennies towards their next trip. Doing things like watching ads online for Perk Points and taking pictures of their grocery receipts to get pennies back for buying certain goods. So spending a few minutes entering gift card numbers for a 5% return is nothing compared to filling out a survey for a quarter. Using a rewards credit card to buy discounted gift cards and then getting an additional benefit on top of those gift cards could add up. If you have a traditional savings account, or other short term investment vehicle that would still be returning north of 5% with this current financial climate, I'd love to know about it. For a die hard Disney fan, who was 100% sure of going to WDW/DLR it could have been a "good" investment. I'm using air quotes as even though the return may have been reasonable, it doesn't strike me as being very liquid if the need arose.

And as prices have escalated, the time the money sits in the idle account also increases. What were once a year visits have become every other year visits etc.

 

[Nubs70]

That's what Disney wanted you to do but it sounds like people were gaming the system.

Or maximizing available value proposition in order.to reduce impact of price increases...... something a good financial analyst would do.