Newbie (considering resale purchase) here... Skimmed prior posts.
Thanks for all the info. So, obviously the best bet is to buy where you want your home resort to be as cost effective as possible, BUT given this analysis....
Should I in fact be buying a low point SSR or OKW just to 'get in' to DVC and then look at adding my fave home resort as an add on later (Wilderness)?
Thank you!
So - in short you will hear people say "Buy where you want to stay". I always say it as "Buy the cheapest resort you are happy to stay at." The absolute cheapest resort is SSR, but personally I don't care for it and don't want to have to go there. So for us, we bought at AKV. It's not the cheapest, but towards the cheaper end, but we love it there. I never get "Stuck" at my home resort, because we love it there. If I had the ability to afford anything I wanted, I would probably buy at the Poly, but since I couldn't afford it, we found what works for us.
Another note, generally studios are the toughest get, so if you want to stay in a studio, then you definitely have to like your home resort - especially if you want to travel from September 15th - Jan 10th, but also some other times can be tough. However, if you plan to get enough points and want to stay in 1-bedrooms? Then you can own pretty much anywhere, because my observations are 1-bedrooms are widely available at many resorts (but not all) at the 7-month mark and beyond.
Changing the reservation system wouldn't make value and standard rooms more easily available.
It would just prevent walkers to book them. Instead of walking, everyone would be ready at 8:00 am to click in the same second, then the server would pick the fastest ones and allow them to book the room. It would be a "clock lottery" or a "who's computer and internet connection is the fastest lottery". The amount of unhappy people with the two systems would be the same.
The only way for Disney to remove the imbalanced request for standard rooms would be to reallocate points to make them less attractive: another reason to not buy just the right number of points for value rooms, points per night might increase in the future.
Totally agree with this - high demand dates would still be high demand. And "Walkers" can be taken advantage of if you are patient. I've been able to fill in nights at hard-to-get resorts by "following" the walkers....watching for a couple of days after the window as rooms are cancelled. I've also been a "mild" walker (booking a few days early and walking once - never for weeks at a time). I would love them to stop it, but there's not a great way that I can see.
I don't think they would re-balance the points - those rooms are typically less points for a reason - usually poor location and/or view. What I DO believe is you should never buy planning to get some hard-to-get low-point category every time. (Thinking AKV, BWV, and BLT here.)