2013 Point Chart Changes

[Dean]

I thought the total number of points could not change? If Disney raises points in one season/room type they have to lower it in others..keeping the total value of all points equal?

I just added up all the seasons for all the room types and came up with a total of 7,957 in 2012. The total I get for 2013 is 8,130. Maybe I calculated wrong, maybe my math is off...I hope so...because I am officially confused.

The numbers only have to match in the base year which I believe was 1991 and matching years. There will be some year to year variation due to when seasons and weekends fall.

I still don't get it. Why adjust due to demand? Members have to stay somewhere and if they want to wait list for THV so be it. If it doesn't come through, they are still staying somewhere else. How does increasing the required points help the members?

Along the same lines, why increase the required points for popular seasons? There would still be a 95% occupancy during all seasons.

What would be the impact if there weren't any seasons?

Bill

Bill, if I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying ignore demand because members have to use their points somewhere/sometime and either they use them or they lose them. Technically that's true so they don't have to micromanage the demand but if there is a major discrepancy, they are required to balance it when the difference is too great. They real question isn't why they've done it several times recently but why they didn't do it around 2000/2001 when they should have. Plus as noted, their not all at the 95% anyway.

It's not as easy as just adding up points on the chart. It's the number of points available for the entire resort in a year. The number of units in each category is a factor. To give an example, if there were twice as many 2BRs as THVs, then reducing 2BRs by one point and increasing THVs by 2 points would result in no net change. Maybe somebody has prepared an elaborate spreadsheet or program to total up all of the available points, but otherwise, it's probably close to impossible to verify that the total points haven't changed.

It's not difficult. All you have to do is take the number of each unit and construct a spreadsheet for the year for each unit type that is dedicated (ignore the lockoff portions). I did this for 2 resorts the last reallocation and it came out to be "the same". The difference was something like 0.0001% or so IIRC. Now there are those unreasonable souls that will say that's not the same but that's their problem.

Isn't this pretty much standard operating proceedure for Disney, if something is very popular they raise the price (in this case, points) and keep raising it until there is a breaking point. If demand on the THV doesn't diminish rapidly, you'll probably see another 15% increase again.

It seems you post this like it's a problem or personal. It's neither, it's what they are supposed to do. They're not pocketing anything related to this change, they're simply fulfilling their required oversight based on the good of the membership over the desires of a minority.

I think this maybe setting a sales trend. Lets think about Grand Flo. Are they going to artifically set the points charts low, then once it sells out in about 2 years or so, reallocate the points chart due to demand (or what ever excuse they want to use)? I see this as being a potentially fraudulent sales tactic if these reallocations repeat themselves with Grand Flo.Its one thing reallocationg once in 15 years, quite another once every other year.

They could change them yearly if they want/needed to and be legal and appropriate. Practically it wouldn't make sense because there are costs involved and it takes time to establish new trends, but not 15 years.

I think it's amusing when people say that such things are motivated by sales. There are situations with timeshares where this is the case but outside of the reduction of benefits to resale buyers, I can't think of another change one can relate to sales as a factor in the change itself. Certainly not reallocation in any form or valet parking, which have been the 2 big talk items the past few years. OTOH, it's sale's job to take the current situation and spin it in such a way to try to make a sale.

According to my back-of-a-napkin math, for 2013 a Treehouse Villa will cost about 2000 more points than it did in 2012. (2012 year-long cost was 15,100 points and each night went up 10-15%.)

If DVC had set the Treehouse points to their 2013 level when they first began to sell, it would have given them about 120,000 more SSR points to sell. (2000 x 60). At $99 per point, that's nearly $12 million in added revenues that COULD have been generated if the points were set higher from Day One.

Honestly I think you would have a really hard time convincing an impartial third party that Disney committed fraud by intentionally turning its back on $12 million in revenues.

And I suspect they could provide data showing that, with identical costs, demand for the Treehouse Villas has been greater than demand for Two Bedroom villas.

This was the point I was trying to make earlier. The same thing happened (in reverse) when BWV came on board with what amounted to an increase in points that was in part due to location/resort type but in part an acknowledgement that the OKW points structure was TOO LOW.

Yes they COULD have generated more revenue, but that assumes sales would have stayed the same. I don't think they would have. They got the sales at $99/pt. and able to stay at the Tree Houses for the price of a two bedroom. Hard to pass that up. Seriously don't think they would have generated the same sales figures if points were like they are today, assuming the THV's were the big selling factor.

Since they don't see a villa, but rather simply points, such an increase would have made little difference in the sales they did have, they would have had additional sales on the additional points and thus additional revenue and profit. I don't think the actual points tables for THV would have cost them enough sales to even register.

DVD doesn't take booking costs into consideration in determining how many points to allot to a Unit. It is strictly determined by a formula based on the square footage of the underlying real estate interest. This approach is necessary because of the formulas used by the condo associated to distribute operating and maintenance costs in an equitable manner to all owners based on the percentage of real estate ownership in the association.

A BWV Standard View two-bedroom Unit is allotted about 17,340 points, the same as a Boardwalk/Preferred Unit. If DVD were to build and add more Vacation Homes to the BWV condo association that were the same size as the existing Units, then its hands are tied: Those new Vacation Homes will be allotted 17,340 points. It wouldn't matter whether those Vacation Homes were classified as Standard View, Boardwalk View, or given a new category such as Concierge or Dumpster View.

We understand it differently. My info suggests that DVC has a far more subjective view and determination of what a given villa type should cost. I think you're confusing how they allot the points for sale vs how they arrive at the total points to sell and then how they implement selling them. My understanding is that they look at multiple factors including size, amenities of the resort and known demand issue compared to other options. Once they have that info and do the math, then they redivide for sale based on the concept that all units of a given type COULD end up being the same with a reallocation. Otherwise SSR would have been the same points as BWV/BCV/VWL. Of course they also want simplicity where they can get it so they will give some leeway, otherwise VWL would not have been the same points as BCV/BWV preferred when it was introduced.

Look at BCV when it came on board as a good example and compare it to BWV. Same unit size, roughly the same layout, similar location, similar amenities overall and same expiration date. If size were a major factor, the points there should have been in between BWV SV & pref. Were view the major factor, it should have been the same or closer to BWV SV. Why was it the same as BWV BW view, simply because they could, it was a way to raise the price incrementally. Same for SSR, which should have been around the same costs as OKW but it was not, again as an incremental price increase.

The seasons are still far out of whack (IMO)...and I say that again as someone who is making his third straight early-December stay in 2012.

Maybe, I don't have that info. It would seem so for certain short segments. My guess is that DVCMC is trying to macro manage and not micro manage and thus they'll give a fair amount of leeway for short segments they are outliers.

Rather than blaming the SSR reallocation on the fact that the THVs are too popular, I think the reverse is true: The real culprit might be that the non-THV SSR Vacation Homes are not achieving the desired occupancy rates.

Same thing isn't it. All options are compared to the other available options (resort, unit size, time of year, etc). Outliers on both sides are looked at and decisions are made. I doubt you'll see much change related to the concierge simply because it's such a specialty with only 5 units, that it'd be impossible to rebalance any change even if they wanted to.

The guessing games about what drove the change are interesting. But, at the end of the day, you have only a couple of choices. One is: you can assume that DVCMC is acting in their fiduciary duty, as they are required to. Under that assumption, while some changes might not benefit you personally, they are for the betterment of the membership overall, and so you can begrudgingly accept them as "right".

Alternatively, you can instead assume that something nefarious must be going on. But, if you go with Door #2, your only real recourse is to live with it or sell. The program has to be audited annually. The auditors repeatedly issue clean bills of health. If they can hide shenanigans from the auditors, they can also hide them from you.

True, I've made this point a number of times over the years. I'll go a step further in that if I believed the latter, I wouldn't own, period, no matter any other factors. It's been interesting to see this group (in general) go from blind followers to unreasonable opponents over the past 4-5 years or so.

 

[luckyman_apd]

But, the question I'm getting at is: were those honest but avoidable mistakes, or did someone intentionally cook the books to gain a few more pennies? Occam's Razor suggests the former is more likely, because the latter requires quite a few people to collude *and* keep the collusion a secret for many years. That's not "simple". But, even if you take the position that they were intentionally done, your only recourse is to live with the fact that the company is crooked, or sell, because the Membership just doesn't have access to the information it needs to uncover other wrongdoings, short of a lawsuit complete with subpoenas.

WOW, and Occam's Razor reference. Haven't heard that since an undergrad psych class. I'm pretty much under the assumption already I bought into a "crooked" company. It is a huge corporation run by profit and greed. Crooked like all other's in this country.

It's like Vegas. You know they are doing everything to separate you from your wallet. Only Disney does it through you kids......so it's worse in a way

 

[BeccaG]

Rather than blaming the SSR reallocation on the fact that the THVs are too popular, I think the reverse is true: The real culprit might be that the non-THV SSR Vacation Homes are not achieving the desired occupancy rates.

If the goal is to increase demand for the non-THV SSR Vacation Homes, one way is to reduce the point costs. A Dream Season two-bedroom at SSR is dropping from 285 points to 269 points for the week, a drop of 5.6%. Perhaps such a drop will generate demand for SSR villas which, in turn, will raise the occupancy rates for those Vacation Homes.

The difficulty is that SSR has 792 Vacation Vacation Home (not including 36 Grand Villas) but only 60 THVs. With a ratio of 13.2-to-1, each drop of 1% in point costs for the SSR villas requires a substantially large increase in the THV costs.

If the SSR Vacation Homes had had better occupancy rates, then would there have been a need to reallocate points at SSR?

There are plenty of examples in the DVC system in which specific accommodations are very popular. AKV's Concierge villas and Values are very popular, perhaps as popular as the THVs, if not more so. If "popularity" was the driving factor in reallocations, then AKV should have had a reallocation similar to SSR's 2013 reallocation. However, I suspect that the rest of the AKV categories have acceptable occupancy rates and there is no need to boost the occupancy rates for the Standard or Savanna categories. If, however, AKV begins to experience unacceptable booking rates for its Standard and/or Savanna View villas, I can see AKV Concierge and Value point charges increasing to fund dropping the costs for the underperforming categories.

That is a different way to look at it and definitely a possibility. I like that you came at it from a different perspective. I guess there is no way to know which view is right, but I like the angle you took, it seems plausible.

 

[Sammie]

I think huge corporations can have crooked employees without everyone being in on it and I think that was and is the case with DVC and Disney in general.

 

[bookwormde]

I guess I aked my question about BLT room changes without enough explanation. Yes DVC anounced 10 room changed from MKV to STV, but with that alone there is a loss of points (somewhare between 10 an 20K depending on if or how many rooms were declared as 1br and a studio in stead of a 2br).

to make if balance with my spreadsheets I am having to also move 3 to 6 2br lock off rooms from standard view to lake view.

The obvios suspects are

7506 thru 7514 on the north outside on the 5th floor and 7406 thru 7414 on the north outside on the 4th floor .

Anyone else running a total point verification spreadhseet getting it to balance without changing some SV to LV????



bookwormde

 

[bookwormde]

Dean,

From what I have been able to tell by running the balancing spreadsheets, every resort has its own base year. OKW is 1991 but the others appear to be the year of or 1 year before sales started.

bookwormde

 

[Dean]

I guess I aked my question about BLT room changes without enough explanation. Yes DVC anounced 10 room changed from MKV to STV, but with that alone there is a loss of points (somewhare between 10 an 20K depending on if or how many rooms were declared as 1br and a studio in stead of a 2br).

to make if balance with my spreadsheets I am having to also move 3 to 6 2br lock off rooms from standard view to lake view.

The obvios suspects are

7506 thru 7514 on the north outside on the 5th floor and 7406 thru 7414 on the north outside on the 4th floor .

Anyone else running a total point verification spreadhseet getting it to balance without changing some SV to LV????



bookwormde

They don't declare components of a lockoff. All units are declared as their largest possible option. Ignore the lockoff portions and assume all as 2 BR for balancing. The legal requirements don't even govern changes to the smaller lockoff portions (from what I see) other than the 20% change per year. I'm assuming that when they say they moved 10 rooms, they moved ten 2 BR but it's possible in that situation they could have represented it differently. For example, they could have moved say eight 2 BR units but 2 of them lockoff's and represented that as 10 rooms for simplicity. Someone may have to call them to get more info.

Dean,

From what I have been able to tell by running the balancing spreadsheets, every resort has its own base year. OKW is 1991 but the others appear to be the year of or 1 year before sales started.

bookwormde

That may be, I've never heard anything from DVC that would suggest which one and I've never looked to try to figure it out. I had assumed that it was likely that 1991 was it for OKW and that they'd used the same one for consistency and simplicity but I guess it doesn't matter since it's only applicable which year that one time. Thanks for passing along the info.

 

[Brian Noble]

It's been interesting to see this group (in general) go from blind followers to unreasonable opponents over the past 4-5 years or so.

My thoughts exactly. This place is starting to sound more and more like TUG...

 

[bookwormde]

It is interesting they do never break up lockoffs when they are declaring, but nothing stops DVD from counting them as a studio and a 1br which give DVD more points to sell.

I have to sometime go back and refigure blt if I can ever get an accurate total points sold.

IF BLT was declared as 2brs only then changes the studio and 1br night rates would not figure into the point balancing. ALso if would take a lot more than 3-6 2brs moving from Standard to lake view to balance if my spreadsheets are correct. Guess I will have to call QA to get an answer.

bookwormde

 

[Dean]

It is interesting they do never break up lockoffs when they are declaring, but nothing stops DVD from counting them as a studio and a 1br which give DVD more points to sell.

I have to sometime go back and refigure blt if I can ever get an accurate total points sold.

IF BLT was declared as 2brs only then changes the studio and 1br night rates would not figure into the point balancing. ALso if would take a lot more than 3-6 2brs moving from Standard to lake view to balance if my spreadsheets are correct. Guess I will have to call QA to get an answer.

bookwormde

They don't declare the lockoff portions and they don't sell points based on the lockoff portions directly. You are correct that technically the lockoff portions wouldn't figure into any rebalancing, however, it could figure in to how they represented it. For example, say they only actually changed eight 2 BR units but 2 were lockoff's. They could appropriately say that they actually changed the view on 10 units. Not saying this is what happened, don't know, but it's very feasible and it would throw off your numbers.

What the lockoff portions do, reserved independently, is eat up points and generate unused inventory, esp at resorts with out dedicated smaller units.

 

[bookwormde]

Just curious how you know that they do not at time count points of some of the lockoffs as separate, since if they do not in cases like the currnet BLT rebalance what is required to make it balance is almost impossible if they do not.

bookwormde

 

[WebmasterDoc]

Just curious how you know that they do not at time count points of some of the lockoffs as separate, since if they do not in cases like the currnet BLT rebalance what is required to make it balance is almost impossible if they do not.

bookwormde

BLT is pretty simple to balance (along with all other non-sold out resorts since DVD can just adjust the number of points they will retain). The "2-4%" they hold gives them a great deal of flexibility to modify the total points sold so that everything is in balance. By changing their holding from 3% to 4%, enough points could be freed up to change the few villas affected by the category change made at BLT. As long as active sales are ongoing, I think they can also sell fewer (or more) points to keep everything in balance as they did at BWV when the "Standard View" category was added early on in the sales process.

SSR could be managed the same way to raise the 60 THV units since they do have unsold points at that resort in addition to whatever number has been held back by the developer. Reduce the SSR holding from 4% t0 3% and enough points could likely be freed up to balance the total even with the increase for the 60 THVs.

With points still available for sale at BLT and SSR, they would not even need to modify their holdings at all to keep things in balance.

AKV and ARS could also have been affected, but the decision was made not to affect those point charts at this time.

 

[Dean]

Just curious how you know that they do not at time count points of some of the lockoffs as separate, since if they do not in cases like the currnet BLT rebalance what is required to make it balance is almost impossible if they do not.

bookwormde

They count what's declared how they're declared. If you're having trouble making the rebalancing work by moving five 2 BR, there are several possibilities. The possibility I gave above, that it's not really a full five 2 BR units, that you have the wrong numbers to start for the various categories, you're using the wrong base year or simply some mathematical issue. Does BLT have dedicated smaller units, my recollection is that it does not? I was thinking it was 14 3 BR and 280 or so 2 BR with about half lockoff's. You may also want to throw in another column if you haven't already, one that works out the points if all days are rebalanced to the same as is spelled out in the POS. This should be the same number of points as was declared but will include points not sold, as long as you use the correct base year.

To Doc's point, I'm not sure that's correct and I'm certain it's not if all the units are declared even if not sold. I believe any not yet declared unit would have to have the same flatline rebalancing points associated as the similar units. What they could do would be to not declare them or to make them a separate resort within the same complex or I guess they could make them a separate unit type some way. I've posted before that I'm surprised they didn't do this with THV anyway, to make it a technically separate resort and sell and reserve it as such. But then again, maybe we're now seeing the reason they didn't.

 

[Starr W.]

My thoughts exactly. This place is starting to sound more and more like TUG...

as The Orange Cone on Twitter says #nailedit!

 

[Sandisw]

They count what's declared how they're declared. If you're having trouble making the rebalancing work by moving five 2 BR, there are several possibilities. The possibility I gave above, that it's not really a full five 2 BR units, that you have the wrong numbers to start for the various categories, you're using the wrong base year or simply some mathematical issue. Does BLT have dedicated smaller units, my recollection is that it does not? I was thinking it was 14 3 BR and 280 or so 2 BR with about half lockoff's. You may also want to throw in another column if you haven't already, one that works out the points if all days are rebalanced to the same as is spelled out in the POS. This should be the same number of points as was declared but will include points not sold, as long as you use the correct base year.

To Doc's point, I'm not sure that's correct and I'm certain it's not if all the units are declared even if not sold. I believe any not yet declared unit would have to have the same flatline rebalancing points associated as the similar units. What they could do would be to not declare them or to make them a separate resort within the same complex or I guess they could make them a separate unit type some way. I've posted before that I'm surprised they didn't do this with THV anyway, to make it a technically separate resort and sell and reserve it as such. But then again, maybe we're now seeing the reason they didn't.

No, I believe they only have dedicated 2 bedrooms but all studios and 1 bedrooms are lock offs.

And, I am speculating that the 10 rooms that were reclassified are the 10 2 bedroom lock offs on floors 3 and 4. This would make TPV begin on floor 5 and keep everything below that level either SV or LV--depending on the actual location of the room.

 

[Dean]

No, I believe they only have dedicated 2 bedrooms but all studios and 1 bedrooms are lock offs.

And, I am speculating that the 10 rooms that were reclassified are the 10 2 bedroom lock offs on floors 3 and 4. This would make TPV begin on floor 5 and keep everything below that level either SV or LV--depending on the actual location of the room.

That was my understanding. In this situation you'd ignore the smaller components related to points calculations.

 

[Deb & Bill]

... It's been interesting to see this group (in general) go from blind followers to unreasonable opponents over the past 4-5 years or so.

Some of us have been questioning DVC for a lot longer than 4-5 years.

 

[WebmasterDoc]

Dean,

From what I have been able to tell by running the balancing spreadsheets, every resort has its own base year. OKW is 1991 but the others appear to be the year of or 1 year before sales started.

bookwormde

Why would OKW's base year be 1991? They added three more buildings in 1997/1998 which increased the size of the resort. The same thing happened at BWV when the sales office was closed and moved to SSR. The space used by that office was converted into additional DVC inventory.

I don't think a base year is critical when figuring out the number of points available at a resort. It is just based on the number of villas and how the points have been assigned to represent the units holding those villas.

 

[Dean]

Some of us have been questioning DVC for a lot longer than 4-5 years.

I know, but that's different, I too have been critical of DVC where appropriate. What I'm talking about is the jilted lover syndrome. You had far too many people too trusting and making far too many assumptions and many of them have gone off the deep in the other way. Neither positions are appropriate or accurate and it's often the same people. That's often what happens when you think with your emotions. Just go back and read the two previous reallocation thread's, the valet parking thread and the thread related to booking a full week at a time.

Why would OKW's base year be 1991? They added three more buildings in 1997/1998 which increased the size of the resort. The same thing happened at BWV when the sales office was closed and moved to SSR. The space used by that office was converted into additional DVC inventory.

I don't think a base year is critical when figuring out the number of points available at a resort. It is just based on the number of villas and how the points have been assigned to represent the units holding those villas.

They'd have to use one base year for the entire resort and that's likely either 1991 or 1992 but all they really had to do was pick a year. They'd use the same base year when they enlarged the resort and very likely just use the original numbers and info. For BWV that info was processed as part of the original planning, not sure about OKW. The bigger question would be for BWV related to the Standard View units however, the fact it was an enhancement to the resort makes it not really matter. They couldn't have gone the other way legally without a vote of the membership themselves as I understand the process.

It's not critical to have the base year to get an idea but it is to be 100% accurate because where weekends and seasons fall will cause minor alterations in a different year compared to the base year.

 

[Deb & Bill]

I know, but that's different, I too have been critical of DVC where appropriate. What I'm talking about is the jilted lover syndrome. You had far too many people too trusting and making far too many assumptions and many of them have gone off the deep in the other way. Neither positions are appropriate or accurate and it's often the same people. That's often what happens when you think with your emotions. Just go back and read the two previous reallocation thread's, the valet parking thread and the thread related to booking a full week at a time. ....

I definitely agree with you on that. "But the guide told me...."