High prices, the impending sale of points for Villas at Disneyland Hotel and a competitive resale marketplace all contributed to a lackluster month for Disney Vacation Club direct sales in February 2023.
Villas at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa
DVCNews has been tracking direct sales of Disney Vacation Club points for almost 13 years. Before the global pandemic and the brief closure of all Disney parks in 2020 point sales for the DVC resorts located at Walt Disney World averaged over 173,000 points a month. The high point came in July 2013 when 364,416 points were sold. Ignoring the months in 2020 and early 2021 when the pandemic had a significant impact the pandemic had on sales, the low point occurred in December 2015 when only 93,235 points were sold.
But now, a new low point has been reached. In February 2023, 88,472 points were sold for the 11 DVC resorts at Walt Disney World. It represents a 33.2% drop compared to sales a year ago in February 2022 and a 47.1% drop compared to the average for the last 12 months.
Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa outsold Disney’s Riviera Resort for the second month in a row but both resorts recorded over 25% declines in their sales over the prior month. Moving into third place with 5,220 points sold in February was Disney’s Polynesian Villas & Bungalows. This was the best month for the Polynesian since 6,566 points were sold in April 2018.
The single largest deed sold in February 2023 was for 700 points at Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa. The next largest deeds were two 600-point deeds, one each for Grand Floridian and Riviera. There were also two new DVC members who each bought 600 Grand Floridian points split into three 200-point deeds.
Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort — Grand Floridian sales continue to benefit from having slightly better price incentives than Disney’s Riviera Resort. In February, for the second month in a row, it led all resorts with 41,549 points sold. February’s sales total the second lowest number of points sold in a month since sales resumed in March 2022.
Disney has now sold 895,414 points, slightly more than half of the 1,779,822 points that have been assigned to the 202 Resort Studios located in the Big Pine Key building. Disney must retain at least 2% of the Grand Floridian’s total points, which means that it still has about 866,000 points it can sell to the general public.
The Big Pine Key building is comprised of two Residential Units, each containing 101 resort studios and the same number of DVC points. Unit 11 was declared for the DVC inventory before sales began and Unit 12 was declared on June 10, 2022. Disney has sold 96.6% of Unit 11’s points and, beginning in February, began selling more points from Unit 12. No points have been sold from the 36 Residential Units in the original Grand Floridian DVC building since August 2021.
No Fixed Week deeds for Grand Floridian were sold in February 2023. So far, Disney has sold 39 Fixed Week deeds for the new Resort Studios. Since sales resumed, Disney has not sold any Fixed Week deeds for the Deluxe Studios or larger accommodations at the original Grand Floridian DVC building.
Disney’s Riviera Resort — In February, Riviera sold only 30,905 points, almost 11,000 points less than the Grand Floridian. It is the fewest number of points sold for the resort since sales began in April 2019, except for the four-month period in 2020 when all DVC sales were depressed by the Covid pandemic.
Disney has now sold 3,541,721 Riviera points, or 52.6%, of the resort’s 6,739,966 points. There are still over 3 million Riviera points that Disney can sell to the general public.
For the fourth consecutive month, no Fixed Week deeds were sold for Riviera. Disney has sold 111 Fixed Week deeds for the resort: 93 Fixed Week deeds have been sold for Deluxe Studios, eight for one-bedroom villas, eight for two-bedroom villas, and two for three-bedroom grand villas.
On December 16, 2022, Disney declared 25 more vacation homes for the DVC inventory, increasing the number of declared vacation homes from 199 to 224. There are still 117 vacation homes that have not yet been declared and are still under the control of Disney. The declared inventory accounts for about 4,458,999 points, or 66.2% of the resort’s total points.
The sales data includes all 11 DVC resorts at Walt Disney World, as well as Disney's Vero Beach Resort, and Disney's Hilton Head Island Resort. Point sales data is not available for the Villas at Disney's Grand Californian Hotel. The data is compiled from deeds filed by Disney Vacation Development and recorded with the Orange County (FL) Comptroller, the Indian River County (FL) Clerk of Court, and the Beaufort County (SC) Register of Deeds. Thanks to Chris for assisting in the compilation of the sales data.
Wil Lovato is a contributor to DVCNews.com and has been a Disney Vacation Club owner since 2009. His DVC Home Resorts include Copper Creek Villas, Bay Lake Tower, Animal Kingdom Villas, and Aulani. He can be found posting on many Disney discussion forums under the username of “wdrl.”
