Spirited News, Observations & Thoughts IV

[Clever Name]

What is the best reason you could give for owning DVC?

You have more money than other assets.

 

[ford91exploder]

I tell you what....All this DVC talk.....it might as well be Flynni talking tech. Is there a Rosetta Stone program for DVC? Anyway....I know one thing. If I paid all that money and was 11 months out and couldn't get a room at my home resort....I would be 74 mad! Even if there is no monkey business with occupancy, it still does not smell right. So what you are saying is that DVC can sell the rooms to a cash ressie but cant do it the other way around? or they don't want to do it the other way around? ie. sell a cash room to DVC?

Sure you DVCers might have a clear picture of this but if I am in a presentation and I ask about it....they start giving me the explanation given here. I am running out of the room. I have a question.... a serious....honest question. What is the hook? What is the best reason you could give for owning DVC? I just don't see it.

The reason is before DVC i did not take vacations, Went to the parks if I had business in CA or FL with DVC we had a FL vacation home that we HAD to use. Hence I take vacations now and am better for it. Your mileage may vary

 

[asianway]

I tell you what....All this DVC talk.....it might as well be Flynni talking tech. Is there a Rosetta Stone program for DVC? Anyway....I know one thing. If I paid all that money and was 11 months out and couldn't get a room at my home resort....I would be 74 mad! Even if there is no monkey business with occupancy, it still does not smell right. So what you are saying is that DVC can sell the rooms to a cash ressie but cant do it the other way around? or they don't want to do it the other way around? ie. sell a cash room to DVC?

Sure you DVCers might have a clear picture of this but if I am in a presentation and I ask about it....they start giving me the explanation given here. I am running out of the room. I have a question.... a serious....honest question. What is the hook? What is the best reason you could give for owning DVC? I just don't see it.

Cash rooms come from the rental of points that Disney still owns(they will always own some), to cover owner exchanges to DCL, WDW hotels, and outside collections, and as mentioned before, breakage.

The only strong argument I have seen for owning is if you always know when you plan on traveling and can book your home resort 11 months out(say you always want Boardwalk in food and wine) - preferably in off season.

Higher seasons, larger accommodations all erode the value proposition imo.

 

[JimboJones123]

FWIW, WDW1974 did like my post where I suggested Star Trek as a possibility....

And it wouldn't be the first time having Star Trek in a Universal Park, as they had that Star Trek show in Cali in the past -- where audience members were part of a film spliced with members from the original series. I don't think that was ever in Orlando, was it?

Wasn't Smurfs on the list? After their latest bomb, I can see them backing out of that one.


Besides, what's wrong with a 100% Smurfland movie? That would sell tons of tickets.

 

[Captain Chaos]

Wasn't Smurfs on the list? After their latest bomb, I can see them backing out of that one.


Besides, what's wrong with a 100% Smurfland movie? That would sell tons of tickets.

Smurfs was in a survey, asking people if they would prefer a Smurfs ride or Lorax ride... I believe they are going with Lorax, not Smurfs... I hope not Smurfs.. No, no Smurfs.. Then again, Disney is failing at this point with their large blue creatures... Maybe universal can take the small blue creatures and show Disney how it is done LOL...

 

[doctornick]

I have a question.... a serious....honest question. What is the hook? What is the best reason you could give for owning DVC? I just don't see it.

Honest answer is the obvious one: it saves your money. A person who is planning to go to Disney frequently (at least every other year) for a very long time and stay in Deluxes is going to benefit financially from "locking in" to DVC and using it to stay at Disney resorts. If that describes a person, then it could make sense to buy. But if one buys in and uses the points for other things -- especially trading to outside companies like RCI -- then it ends up not being such a value. And often what it does it is encourages people who might go to Disney less frequently or stay in cheaper resorts obligated to "upgrade" their stays to more expensive places and longer/more frequent visits -- so, yes, you would be saving money if you would have been going to the Poly every year and staying for a week and not you stay at the BLT stay for a week every year. But if you were going every 3rd year and staying at All Star, well, you're "getting" more by going to the BLT every year but you are not making out financially.

I don't like timeshares and don't recommend people buy it typically. But there is a small segment of people for which it makes a lot of sense. Personally, I'd rather have my money and be able to be flexible with how I use it.

 

[ChrisFL]

FWIW, WDW1974 did like my post where I suggested Star Trek as a possibility....

And it wouldn't be the first time having Star Trek in a Universal Park, as they had that Star Trek show in Cali in the past -- where audience members were part of a film spliced with members from the original series. I don't think that was ever in Orlando, was it?

Yes they did have it...right next to Kongfrontation in Orlando

 

[ford91exploder]

Hi, I haven't used our points at WDW in a number of years, so I haven't experienced villas being moved in and out of breakage, nor was I aware that this year is different than the past. What is your opinion of what is going on?

I really don't know and Disney is not giving us information, The last annual member meeting where the DVC execs USED to have a LONG Q&A period was totally scripted and they took NO questions, They also glossed over the financials and in the past they used to go into great detail.

With these changes it's hard NOT to think DVC is not playing by the rules, I have no evidence either way.

It could also be that the new NGE changes to computer system have broken the scheduling algorithm So where it used to be able to assemble reservations from fragments of inventory it now may only have an 'exact match' system ie there is no inventory unless a single room has EXACTLY what you are asking for.

 

[JimboJones123]

Cash rooms come from the rental of points that Disney still owns(they will always own some), to cover owner exchanges to DCL, WDW hotels, and outside collections, and as mentioned before, breakage.

The only strong argument I have seen for owning is if you always know when you plan on traveling and can book your home resort 11 months out(say you always want Boardwalk in food and wine) - preferably in off season.

Higher seasons, larger accommodations all erode the value proposition imo.

Honest answer is the obvious one: it saves your money. A person who is planning to go to Disney frequently (at least every other year) for a very long time and stay in Deluxes is going to benefit financially from "locking in" to DVC and using it to stay at Disney resorts. If that describes a person, then it could make sense to buy. But if one buys in and uses the points for other things -- especially trading to outside companies like RCI -- then it ends up not being such a value. And often what it does it is encourages people who might go to Disney less frequently or stay in cheaper resorts obligated to "upgrade" their stays to more expensive places and longer/more frequent visits -- so, yes, you would be saving money if you would have been going to the Poly every year and staying for a week and not you stay at the BLT stay for a week every year. But if you were going every 3rd year and staying at All Star, well, you're "getting" more by going to the BLT every year but you are not making out financially.

I don't like timeshares and don't recommend people buy it typically. But there is a small segment of people for which it makes a lot of sense. Personally, I'd rather have my money and be able to be flexible with how I use it.

Maintnence fees are more expensive than a value resort.

No go for these cheap folks that love 2.5 week vacations over squeezing in 5-6 days.

 

[flynnibus]

The other key issue is that there are only a fixed number of points and the DVC system is set up to allow ALL members to use ALL their points in any given UY. So there CANNOT be more DVC member requests than point availability UNLESS points are going prematurely into breakage in which case you will have too many points chasing a artificially small inventory.

Uh no... the point model does not guarantee availability within a set time. Breakage or not, not everyone can use their points at the same time... they must be distributed across the year.

 

[ford91exploder]

Uh no... the point model does not guarantee availability within a set time. Breakage or not, not everyone can use their points at the same time... they must be distributed across the year.

OKW in september!!!! Disney is a ghost town then, Not talking about getting reservations at peak periods i'm talking about the 'off seasons' It would be insane to expect that you could get christmas or thanksgiving week at anything but the 11 month 0 hours mark.

But OKW in late Jan or mid Sept - having NO AVAILABILITY is fishy at best, Could Disney be having a liquidity crunch hence all the emphasis on CASH rooms???

 

[flynnibus]

OKW in september!!!! Disney is a ghost town then, Not talking about getting reservations at peak periods i'm talking about the 'off seasons' It would be insane to expect that you could get christmas or thanksgiving week at anything but the 11 month 0 hours mark.

But OKW in late Jan or mid Sept - having NO AVAILABILITY is fishy at best, Could Disney be having a liquidity crunch hence all the emphasis on CASH rooms???

I don't have anything to explain the lack of availability in that period - I don't have any insight into the happenings, nor claim to be. I was just responding that the postulation I responsed to was crap. The idea that points are fixed and the points charts are derived from the fixed capacity... does not make it so rooms should always be available as was claimed - the thought ignored the time dimension.

 

[doctornick]

OKW in september!!!! Disney is a ghost town then, Not talking about getting reservations at peak periods i'm talking about the 'off seasons' It would be insane to expect that you could get christmas or thanksgiving week at anything but the 11 month 0 hours mark.

But OKW in late Jan or mid Sept - having NO AVAILABILITY is fishy at best, Could Disney be having a liquidity crunch hence all the emphasis on CASH rooms???

Well, some of the "off season" times are the most in demand for DVC because of the cheaper rates. I don't know about Sept/late Jan though and would typically expect those to be more available.

 

[ford91exploder]

I don't have anything to explain the lack of availability in that period - I don't have any insight into the happenings, nor claim to be. I was just responding that the postulation I responsed to was crap. The idea that points are fixed and the points charts are derived from the fixed capacity... does not make it so rooms should always be available as was claimed - the thought ignored the time dimension.

We can all agree that the premier DVC resorts generally will have no availability at peak times unless booked at 11 and 7 month windows, That being said having the LARGE resorts SSR/OKW/AKL report NO availability at off season times when parks are running reduced hours defies logic unless one of several things are happening

- its as 1974 states and resort has taken a third of rooms out of service
- Disney is playing with breakage
- the stripped contracts have been used for 'Spec Reservations' commonly flogged on Ebay
- computer system upgrade now only searches for exact match it cannot assemble rooms with less than full availabilty into a reservation

 

[luv]

RFID door locks...
Touch to pay Point of Sale Terminals everywhere...
New web infrastructure and sites...
New mobile applications...
Online wait times...
All the related infrastructure changes to support integrated customer info into ADR, FP, and resort systems
Field mobile applications and terminals for cast members...
Wifi across all the parks...

All of those do not hinge on bands... the bands are just one token for these systems. The bands are really the keystone for the location and customer modeling portion of the project.

IMO...

Most of that is unnecessary, wristband-related tech for the sake of tech. Nobody needed new door locks. None of it is worth a billion dollars. It isn't worth 1/1000 of that. In 20 years or less, people will be chuckling about Disney spending a billion dollars on that old technology.

A better website would have been nice for users, but the new new one is equally slow and I can't hook my pass up to it now, so it's actually worse for me than the old one.

Wifi would have been nice...but I've had nothing but trouble. I actually stopped trying to use it, though, so it may have improved and I didn't notice.

They'd have been better off investing that money. It would have worked out better for me, personally, if they'd just set it on fire.

Eta: I take it back. The new APs are plastic and work much better than the old, paper ones. So it wouldn't have been better if they'd set the money on fire.

 

[flynnibus]

IMO...

Most of that is unnecessary, wristband-related tech for the sake of tech. Nobody needed new door locks. None of it is worth a billion dollars. It isn't worth 1/1000 of that. In 20 years or less, people will be chuckling about Disney spending a billion dollars on that old technology.

A better website would have been nice for users, but the new new one is equally slow and I can't hook my pass up to it now, so it's actually worse for me than the old one.

Wifi would have been nice...but I've had nothing but trouble. I actually stopped trying to use it, though, so it may have improved and I didn't notice.

They'd have been better off investing that money. It would have worked out better for me, personally, if they'd just set it on fire.

You asked.. I listed The point is it's more than just the wristbands.. and this is just the customer facing stuff.. not even counting everything that is internally facing. You may not like the outcomes or their choices - but they do exist.

 

[luv]

You asked.. I listed The point is it's more than just the wristbands.. and this is just the customer facing stuff.. not even counting everything that is internally facing. You may not like the outcomes or their choices - but they do exist.

I appreciate the list!

(But not the money spent on current tech doodads that will soon be outdated and are of little use, IMO.)

Thank you for posting it!!!

 

[FigmentJedi]

Hey look, the Magic Band can be used on the Disney Infinity portal to unlock the Fantasyland Dragon for the Toy Box. It's a potpourri of marketing gimmicks!

 

[GoofGoof]

I admit I skimmed a lot of the last few pages so I don't know what started the discussion and maybe this was already cleared up, but I think maybe the DVC issue could have been a technical glitch or something. I checked the member website and SSR has availability for every night in Sept but 9/1 for both a 1 BR and a studio. OKW had availability most nights except for a few scattered weekend nights.

Sept and Jan are value season for DVC points (along with the first 2 weeks of Dec). You get the most bang for your buck those times by using less points for the same room. Especially popular on the weekends for local owners looking for a weekend getaway. It's been my experience that sometimes DVC rooms are tougher to get in value season than the summer.

 

[stlphil]

<---Late to the conversation here.

Couldn't the amount of DVC rooms available for cash be because more and more owners are trading out to stay at other resorts (non-disney, out of state resorts)? I believe when that happens, the inventory those points represent are switched to cash rooms.

Bingo! Finally a post from someone who gets how DVC works. Less people using their points at WDW for DVC = more DVC rooms available for cash.