The people I feel bad for is those who were planning to do a 25 point add on with their current resale contracts and are now suddenly having the rules changed on them. I get why Disney is doing it, but it must be very frustrating for them. I am glad to hear that same guides are doing their best to help some of these people out.
As for those who have not yet started the resale process, all that this does is change the equation in Disney's favor a bit more. I personally think it is a more fair than not change once all the dust settles.
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I agree - those of us lucky enough to buy the 25 point add-on are grandfathered for the perks that I really care about - AP discounts and access to the even-more-expensive-than-usual member cruise (for which we would pay cash). And for buyers going forward who haven't bought in yet, it may tip the scales more in favor of buying direct. But for the people who were in the process of executing the +25 plan, it TRIPLES cost the direct add on part of the plan.
That works if you’re looking for 200 plus points overall.
If you’re looking for 100 or less, you’re stuck with direct for all of them, if you want perks.
But those in between 100 and 200 (where most people should be starting out)?:
It’s too many points to justify buying all direct for perks.
It’s too few points to split them up and find a reasonable 50-125 point resale to match the 75 direct.
For the average 100-200 point need, the math no longer works for perks. These people are going to have to decide between no perks or no DVC at all.
I could see someone who is in the 100-200 point range thinking that they can make DVC work for them, for now, by buying 75 points direct and then adding more later if they need. Also remember that while we here on the DIS tout paying cash for DVC, there are many, many who don't. The difference in monthly payments may not seem as painful to someone who was planning to finance the purchase anyway. (I haven't run the numbers).
I agree with this statement. It's easy to forget that you are not buying this for the perks - you are buying for the cheap hotel rates.
... But still, the cost combined with the quality of the resorts and the quality of my vacation is the reason to buy DVC and specifically DVC resale. NOT because you can go to a 3 hour after hours event once every 5 years that you happen to be there, or because you get $100 off an AP. It's important to remember these things when changes like this come along.
Totally agree with you here. (We started contemplating DVC as early as 2015 and I spent much of last year thinking, why didn't we just buy resale before 4/4/16?? ARGHH!!) It'll be an interesting few months to see how resale prices are affected (or not) - also interesting to see what (if anything) happens with the recent market "correction" and what happens with our economy. No doubt DVC has caused us to vacation differently already, and we haven't even stayed on our point yet!
I suspect (warning: armchair economics with no economics background here) Disney will probably not be inclined to ROFR small contracts because the profit potential just isn't there. So those prices will likely stay stable or go down *a little.* By raising the direct perks to 75 (while getting ready to open Riviera in a year), I think is also a message that they don't really wanna be in the business of selling their older resorts direct - it distracts from selling the new resorts in larger chunks and changing MORE people's Disney vacation habits. So I don't expect to see much change in ROFR patterns. Potentially resale prices may drop, but with new direct pricing so much higher, there should be room for sellers to make some $ if they decide to resell their contracts, and for Disney to maintain a floor by ROFR and still make some money selling those direct. They have nothing to gain by killing the resale market; they just want new-to-DVC buyers to be incentivized to buy direct. I have no doubt that there were many bean counters and models who were contemplating whether the minimum should be 50, 75 or 100 points.
As for us: we bought 160+25 BLT and 200 VGF in the last 11 months, at a total cost of about $50,000. (OMG don't let DH see this total...!! lol). We haven't even stayed on our points yet. Disney got almost $5000 in our direct purchase. We bought 2x3 PAPs for about $3600 that will cover us for 4 trips from August 2017-sometime in 2019. In those 4 trips, we will spend/have spent several thousand $ in meals, souvenirs, incidentals. It's crazy seeing how much we have spent on Disney already in the last 12 months. We likely only would have gone once a year (if that) if we hadn't bought DVC. We are already close to "making up" the $5000 spent on the direct 25 points, because of the 6 PAPs - that's about $1500 and next time we'll "save" $1000 once DD2 is 3. But if we were in the position now of having to decide whether 75 points direct is worth it, we would hold off and see if "Riviera is awesome" enough to make it worth getting 75-100 points direct there - in 2019 or 2020 or later, and if our current points are enough for our now-changed vacation styles.
But even with that first resale purchase, Disney was getting a family of 4 that was going to be visiting the parks at least annually for the long term - our girls are young and into princesses so ... we might as well upgrade/maintain our vacation experience. Direct points and the membership extras were worth it for the small buy in.
@Bing Showei, your post cracked me up! I do think tiered member levels are coming, and this is a way to ease people into it. Maybe the first level starts at 100 points so the recent slew of 75-pointers (and 25-pointers like me) add on 25-75 points direct to "keep" the benefits we have come to depend on (like AP discounts). Under-100-pointers get 10% discounts and that is all. When that happens, we'll take another look at how we use DVC and see if it's worth it for us.
Bill
