Major Change to Disney Vacation Club Member Benefits for Resale Buyers

Earlier today, Rick Note posted a letter from Ken Potrock, Senior VP & GM of Disney Vacation Club, that outlined a major change for the DVC resale market:

[E]ffective April 4, 2016, Members who do not purchase their ownership interest directly from Disney Vacation club will not have access to other Membership Extras, such as exclusive Member experiences and discounts. (emphasis added)

This is a huge change. It means that if you buy DVC on the resale market going forward, you no longer will be eligible for things like AP discounts. (I emphasize going forward in the previous line, since the letter makes it clear that current DVC members are not affected by this change, regardless of where they purchased their membership. Relatedly, Lisa Truesdell received confirmation from Disney that people who are currently in the “right of first refusal” stage of purchasing DVC via resale will also not being impacted. Recent updates indicate that if you hadn’t closed on your resale DVC update by April 4, that you will not get benefits. ANOTHER UPDATE! Now Disney says you will get the benefits. Hopefully, this will be the last of these updates.)

There are obviously a bunch of ramifications to this change that we going to start seeing shortly. For example, how many people who were interested in small (50 point-ish) DVC contracts as a way to “dip their toe” in the DVC waters are going to simply avoid buying DVC at all? Personally, this probably pushes out any potential DVC purchasing for Elyssa and me by at least a year.

I am also interested in seeing how this change impacts the recent “flat” or declining point purchase trends that have been reported over the past 4 months. Will people who would have purchased resale be driven to purchase directly from Disney? I think it will be a few months before we even start to see any impact, but I am really interested in seeing how this plays out.