I think long term things will be OK but I doubt they will ever be anywhere near the same either for DVC or the parks. But if they are to be roughly 80-85% of the people who are likely to visit would have either have had to have had either Covid the disease or the vaccine. And I suspect it's likely in a few years they will require either vaccine or proof of a positive antibody to attend a park.
Nobody hopes I'm wrong more than me..
I like to hold out the hope that while it may never be the same, that when it returns, Disney goes over the top in trying to make it a unique experience in order to draw the people who want an escape. It may be years, of course, but I'm hoping it will be *better* and that maybe all of this will reduce the "nickel and diming" that was happening, and get us back to the "wow" factor that made me fall in love with Disney all those many long years ago.
I would say this is an over-simplification. What just happened is completely unprecedented in the history of WDW.
Well... he's not necessarily wrong. The crowds are much more significant in the last few years than they were 10-15 years ago (and I have tons of pictures to prove it). When we went with our kids when they were little, the parks were regularly open to midnight or later, and you could pretty much guarantee low crowds in the evening, and early morning. We'd often get up, go morning to early afternoon, go back to hotels for naps, then go out for dinner and hit the parks again until we were ready to collapse. We loved the evenings for the sparse crowds, especially as those "extra hours" were resort guests only and much less crowded (AND FREE). And they had great things like the ice cream social with characters that went by the wayside (and we won't even talk about the tragedy of closing the Adventurer's Club!). We had found that over time, many of the things we loved became "pay extra for" which definitely took away from the experience, and we realized that to have the same experiences that we did when our kids were little, we'd need to pay a LOT of extra money for those experiences. And that's on top of how crazy high ticket and hotel prices had raised over the last 10-15 years.
This is the Disney we know too. They stopped the late hours pretty recently actually. Maybe 5 years ago when they introduced the paid events? It used to be open to like 2am sometimes for extra magic hours (free for hotel guests). My dh hated it!!! Because I would drag him around trying to get in a “last” ride. He would say, what is wrong with you? Aren’t you tired?!
I think you really kinda hit the nail on the head with AKV cost versus SSR/OKW cost. If we are being honest SSR resale is probably 80% just for SAP. And AKV is the "next best stand alone resort". So it makes sense that it gets a $10-$15 premium on SSR. And how SSR prices have increased up, so have AKV prices.
It's still so unpredictable. There had been a lengthy ROFR pause, followed by some SSR buybacks of as high as $104.
Extremely good article and honestly a must read for anyone thinking of buying in for the first time right now.
Great article. Definitely echos what our family is feeling. We are looking to be first time DVC buyers (resale), and are definitely not comfortable buying right now. Will wait at least a year or two and see what happens.
The DVC sales trends have always had their ups & downs. This year has been an anomaly, and hopefully normalcy will return soon.
I agree. I wonder if it would make more sense if Disney lifted the restriction on borrowing for the short term. If many are banking their points into 2021/2022, it makes sense (to me) to allow borrowing for current reservations to use up those points and then reintroduce the restriction if necessary.
I suspect they're trying to allow members to use up points they would lose otherwise and spread out the impact of the recent months over the next few years.
Yes that was the plan but there's still lots of availability in the near future. So it doesn't seem to be working. If they lifted it for awhile it might help, and then they could restrict again if necessary.
