Riviera Resort - % Rooms Standard vs Preferred - REAL NUMBERS

[skier_pete]

I haven't been posting much here because the conversations tend to revolve around "What do I do with my points?" which I don't have much to say about....

...but I thought this would be interesting for people to know. One of the bits about Riviera that drives me crazy is not knowing what portion of the resort is standard and what portion is preffered. And I know some people have done calculations estimating it to be about 25/75 standard to preferred, but those numbers aren't real.

Through a source that I cannot share - I was able to get the total number of rooms that are currently being booked in the DVC system - at least these are the number of rooms that are currently available when the 11-month window opens up each day, so this data is actually from March of 2021. I was not able to get the 2-bedroom lock-off numbers, so what's shown here combines the dedicated and lock-offs for studios and 1-bedrooms.

Column one shows the various room types, which everybody should know
Column 2 and 3 show the number of rooms available for booking in each of the categories. Technically Tower Studios are neither Standard nor Preferred, but I put them in Standard.
Column 4 presents the total number of rooms (Column 2 + 3)
Column 5 shows what percent of the rooms are standard rooms.

As you can see - the % of the resort that is open for booking is showing between 33 and 38% of the rooms are standard rooms. Now, admittedly this does not necessarily reflect the actual ratio for the entire resort, but as they typically declare rooms in blocks you would think this would be a decent indication of the ratio of types of rooms at the final resort.

Room Type	# Standard Rooms	# Preferred Rooms	# Total Rooms	% As Standard	Currently Declared	Full Inventory of Resort	% available for DVC booking
Tower	15	0	15	N/A	9	24	62.5%
Studio	37	65	102	36.3%	49	186	54.8%
1-bed	38	61	99	38.4%	47	177	55.9%
2-bed	18	37	55	32.7%	26	90	61.1%
GV	0	8	8	N/A	5	12	66.7%

I expanded the data a little further.
Column 6 list the total number of rooms that - according to DVCnews.com - have been declared at the Riviera for DVC as of October 2019. The article link is attached
https://dvcnews.com/resorts/riviera...al-riviera-declarations-filed-in-october-2019
What's interesting about this is that the article indicates that 28.6 % of the points in the resort are declared as of October 2019, and that there has not been any additional declaration since then. A later article published in April indicates that sales at the end of March 2020 were at roughly 20.4 % of the resort, and that again only 29% of the resort was declared.

However, the numbers I have access to say there are more rooms available that 29% of the resort.
Column 7 shows the full room inventory - with the 148 lock-offs broken into studios and 1-bedrooms.
Column 8 shows the % of the rooms that are available for booking in each category.

While that final column varies by room type - it can be seen that somewhere around 55-65% of the resort is open for booking to DVC members, at least for March of 2021.

Now -what does this mean??? Well, to me it can mean a few things:
(1) Disney is planning to declare more inventory between now and March 2021 on a schedule and they have already opened that inventory to booking. This seems somewhat hard to believe since they would be predicting sales that likely are not going to be there.
(2) Disney decided to open more of the resort to booking to try and alleviate the pressure on occupancy due to COVID-19. This inventory at this point would only be available to direct members, but it would allow more opportunity for the newest members of DVC to use their points.

Anyways, let me know how else this could be interpreted. Unfortunately, this was the only slice of information I was able to get, so I have no way of knowing if this is just starting in March 2021, or if they have opened this much of the resort for all dates up to that point.

Hey, at least it's something else to talk about besides pandemics!

 

[CarolMN]

Thanks for sharing. Do you have any idea how many of each category are dedicated vs lock off?

Below is the info for the distribution of villas from the DVC Resource Center and totals don't seem to match up.

RVA - 24 Tower Studios - 38 Dedicated Studios - 29 Dedicated 1BR villas - 90 Dedicated 2BR villas - 148 Lockoff 2BR villas - 12 Grand Villas = 341 Villas / 489 Maximum Available

(I am also tired of talking about lost points and rental issues due to COVID-19, but I personally don't have anything at risk right now so I don't feel right about complaining too much about it, LOL).

 

[skier_pete]

Thanks for sharing. Do you have any idea how many of each category are dedicated vs lock off?

Below is the info for the distribution of villas from the DVC Resource Center and totals don't seem to match up.

RVA - 24 Tower Studios - 38 Dedicated Studios - 29 Dedicated 1BR villas - 90 Dedicated 2BR villas - 148 Lockoff 2BR villas - 12 Grand Villas = 341 Villas / 489 Maximum Available

(I am also tired of talking about lost points and rental issues due to COVID-19, but I personally don't have anything at risk right now so I don't feel right about complaining too much about it, LOL).

Those are the same numbers I used exactly. I has to split the lock-offs in studios and 1 BR though.
Studios = 38+148 = 186
1-bedrooms = 29+148 = 177

The data I received didn't include the # of lock-offs, so I don't know what fraction of the studios and 1-bedrooms are lock-offs. However, lock-offs make up 80% of the studios, so it's likely around that number in the available rooms.

 

[Mumof4mice]

Great distraction from pandemic talk and rentals for sure (and I have rentals caught up in the mess!) Thanks for sharing, @skier_pete .

I wonder if the higher SV percentage than @crvetter calculated, is due to the units declared so far being lower floor units? It looks like each unit has rooms that face both directions from the condo drawings. But maybe for the lower floors both directions are designated SV.

 

[ookitarepanda]

Wow, thanks Pete! Cool info.

I wonder if the % is supposed to be close to 37.5%, representing 3 floors out of 8 that are "standard" and the higher 5 are "preferred."

There are 24 tower studios (3 on each of 8 levels), but according to our guide at our tour, one of them is remaining as the official "tour" room. I'm wondering if that "one" is declared DVC or not.

 

[The Jackal]

Wow, thanks Pete! Cool info.

I wonder if the % is supposed to be close to 37.5%, representing 3 floors out of 8 that are "standard" and the higher 5 are "preferred."

There are 24 tower studios (3 on each of 8 levels), but according to our guide at our tour, one of them is remaining as the official "tour" room. I'm wondering if that "one" is declared DVC or not.

I believe it it cannot be booked, it is not declared. They still have a 1 bedroom at BWV that they show. I’m pretty sure that CM’s have said that standard rooms overlook the parking lot and preferred is everything else.

 

[drusba]

Not sure what the room totals indicate. Possibly a coronavirus decision but possibly either (a) the room totals might simply reflect anticipated room dedication totals 11 months from now, or (b) the fact that DVC reservations are not actually limited to just rooms dedicated to DVC but instead just to the percentage of occupancy time determined by total rooms dedicated to DVC. On that last point, here is something I was told years ago, but do not know if it is still followed today:

While a resort was being sold, DVC reservations were not actually limited to already dedicated rooms. Instead, if 28% of the resort had been dedicated to DVC, that means that members could get up to 28% of the reservation time available and could actually be assigned to rooms other than those dedicated to DVC. There was apparently an agreement between DVCMC and DVD, under which DVC reservations could be assigned to rooms other than those dedicated to DVC and cash reservations through Disney could be assigned to dedicated DVC rooms. The real difference was percentage of available reservation time, for which DVC's share was determined by portion of the resort already dedicated to DVC in relation to total of the resort. Thus, not clear from the numbers provided is whether the fact that DVC reservations are being assigned to about 60% of the rooms actually means the members are getting 60% of the total reservation time available for the resort, rather than just the about 28% represented by the portion already dedicated to DVC.

 

[eMoneyBug]

Enjoyed the post. Was able to snag 2 Riv standard studios for Sept around the Hollywood studios Moonlight event that we were so looking forward to staying at Riv, before C19 became reality.