Disney Vacation Club eliminates Membership Extras for members who purchase indirectly

Apr 05, 2016 in "Disney Vacation Club"

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Posted: Tuesday April 5, 2016 10:16am EDT by WDWMAGIC Staff

In a letter sent to members, Disney Vacation Club Senior Vice President Ken Potrock outlined a policy change for eligibility in Membership Extras.

Effective April 4 2016, members who do not purchase their ownership interest directly from Disney Vacation Club will not have access to Membership Extras, such as exclusive Member experiences and discounts.

Current members, regardless of where they purchase membership, will not be affected by the change.

The move is attributed to Disney seeking to offer a premium advantage for purchasing membership directly from Disney Vacation Club, rather than the growing number of DVC resellers.

Disney has been boosting Membership Extras this year as part of the DVC 25th Anniversary. The Magic Kingdom recently hosted an after hours event for DVC members, and a new member lounge will open this spring at Epcot.

Discuss on the Forums

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PhonedaveJan 24, 2017

Nope, they are not part of your contract (or my contact either) - when you bought DVC you got a conract to use a portion of the property you bought into. Thats it. Everything eslse, concerige collection, RCI, other resorts, cruises, parking, discounts, and anything else is subject to change. -dave

Seanual757Jan 24, 2017

I agree each park needs a members lounge, being local helps I can honestly say if I was not a local I would not have purchased DVC or AP's. It's nice being 20 minutes away and we have gone to the parks 5 times this month alone, and heading to the MK on Saturday morning too :)

GoofGoofJan 24, 2017

I'd like to see more things like the lounge in EPCOT that more members can take advantage of. Maybe a location in each park. The one off events are probably good for locals but if you only visit once a year unless you get lucky on timing you can't usually take advantage. I did read that they cancelled the merry mixers this year in favor of more in park after hours events.

Seanual757Jan 24, 2017

Bring on more events glad they added the extras this year we plan to attend all of them.

GoofGoofJan 22, 2017

Agreed. The new events are good. I was more thinking along the lines of the bulk of the extra perks like discounted APs and merchandise/food discounts.

GoofGoofJan 21, 2017

Are you saying you think they can offer more because there are less owners to offer things to? I'm not sure that there is really a correlation between additional offerings like that and restrictions on resale buyers. It's such a small portion of the total ownership that I can't see it making a big difference on cost. Maybe down the road that will be the case, but for now it probably doesn't move the needle.

GoofGoofJan 21, 2017

I'm not an expert at all, but I thought the only thing that you are guaranteed is the right to use the property at your home resort that's listed on the deed. The deed itself and the legal paperwork don't mention trading in at all. I know the additional perks are not guaranteed. Again, I'm no expert so I could be wrong. It would be highly unlikely that they would not grandfather in current owners since the whole point of removing a perk from future resale buyers is to create an advantage for direct buyers. However, I still look at any restrictions as an overall negative to all owners. It provides no benefit to current or future owners. Maybe they should consider adding additional perks to direct buyers instead of just removing stuff from future resale buyers.

GoofGoofJan 20, 2017

You are assuming that they would grandfather in all of us current owners who bought resale to any future changes but that isn't guaranteed. I know that's how it worked historically but there's no legal requirement it has to. So what if they created 2 classes of owners direct and resale and the resale class included all resale buyers current or future and was limited to 5 month reservations.

GoofGoofJan 20, 2017

What if you weren't grandfathered in?

DuckTalesWooHoo1987Jan 19, 2017

We would never sell but I can see what you're saying.

YorkshireTJan 18, 2017

Nearly a year later... It didn't affect prices much, maybe a little. If I was a Dvc owner who bought from Disney, I'd be unhappy. My contract worth a bit less, for what? Given the resale market has held up, this indicates resales held up, so demand held up, so not that many people rushed to Disney rather than resale. Disney prices are way too high. I bought a loaded SSR contract recently (with all last year's points) for $75pp. Disney charge 90% more!

YorkshireTJan 18, 2017

It's not a good thing for you, as it has affected the resale value of your contract (a bit, not much).

GoofGoofJun 07, 2016

I saw this earlier today. I agree with that guys' point of view on this. Even if it doesn't directly impact me it just feels really wrong. I wonder if he posts here. He said he got some ideas from online forums.