Buying Points vs Going Through Disney About This Page:

[bcuinohio]

How does Disney allocate DVC units between DVC members and the general public? A friend of mine is a DVC member. He sold me points and booked me a studio at OKW at the eleven month mark. Today was the 7 month mark so he called to see what else was available. We were able to get one of the last two studios at the Wilderness Lodge Villa. They told him that there was nothing avavilable at BLT, BWV or BCV. When I go on the web and try to book the same room through WDW, the web shows that these rooms are available. What gives?

[tjkraz]

Disney maintains some ownership at each of the DVC resorts and uses that ownership to offer villas to cash guests through CRO.

CRO also gets access to rooms whenever members trade out of the program. Examples of these trades are using points for things like Disney cruises, Adventures by Disney, stays at non-DVC Disney resorts (Polynesian, Disneyland Hotel, Tokyo Disneyland hotels, etc.) and a group of non-Disney hotels they call the Concierge Collection.

The process goes something like this:

* Member books Disney cruise which costs 400 points. DVC takes members's points.

* For the sake of argument, let's assume that the cruise costs $2500. DVC pays $2500 to Disney Cruise Line.

* DVC is now out $2500 and they are holding 400 points. From a bookkeeping standpoint, DVC has to balance its books by recouping at least $2500 for those points. The only way to do that is to give 400 points' worth of villa rooms to CRO and rent them to cash guests. The proceeds come back to DVC and hopefully cover the cruise cost.

So essentially there IS a member USING those cash villas--it's just that the member opted to trade the villa stay for a cruise.