DVC Points Adjustments for 2010

The big and surprising news for DVC members is the recent announcement in the DVC news (on the DVC webpage) of the adjustments to the points per night at all DVC resorts in 2010. It is big and surprising because they don't do this at all ever since we became members (2005), and supposedly, the number of points per night should not change throughout the years - only the cost of buying each point that will change. So this is highly unexpected.

Here is the DVC announcement:

To help address a growing Member interest in weekend stays and to better manage inventory of available rooms at Disney Vacation Club Resorts, Disney Vacation Club has adjusted 2010 Vacation Points charts, primarily reducing Vacation Point requirements for most Friday and Saturday nights.

In addition to better reflecting the changes in Members' vacationing patterns, the adjusted charts make accommodations more affordable during many popular Walt Disney World® events, such as Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party and ESPN The Weekend.

To make this change possible, Vacation Point requirements for most instances of Sunday-Thursday stays are now higher. However, a full week's stay will essentially cost the same amount of Vacation Points as before.

The points charts for 2010 shows that the number of points for a "weekly" stay either remains the same, or changes by up to a total of 4 points, which isn't that much. However, I decided to do a comparison with the way we normally use our points and our travel pattern, and to compare the points during two different travel season that we normally travel to WDW. Here is what we normally do:

We have two patterns: (i) stay from middle of the week to the next middle of the week, i.e. Tue to the Wed the following week, or (ii) Sat to Sun of the following week. Right off the bat, if they are raising the Sun-Thu points while lowering the Fri-Sat points, I can already guess that Option (i) is going to cost us more points than 2009. We also tend to go to WDW over two travel periods, the "Adventure Season", which is the cheapest rate, and the "Magic Season", which is their second to the most expensive rate. So what I did was to compare our two travel patterns over the two travel season to see how much this will change in 2010.

ADVENTURE SEASON

1.
2009 : Sept. 12-20 (Sat-Sun). Total points = 115
2010 : Sept. 11-19 (Sat-Sun). Total points = 114

2.
2009 : Sept. 8-16 (Tue-Wed). Total points = 106
2010 : Sept. 8-16 (Wed-Thu). Total points = 108


MAGIC SEASON

1.
2009 : Jun. 20-28 (Sat-Sun). Total points = 152
2010 : Jun. 19-27 (Sat-Sun). Total points = 147

2.
2009 : Jun. 23-Jul. 1 (Tue-Wed). Total points = 136
2010 : Jun. 23-Jul. 1 (Wed-Thu). Total points = 138

Conclusion: my initial hunch is correct. Staying weekend to weekend in 2010 will be cheaper than the same stay in 2009, while staying mid-week to mid-week will be cost most points. The point swing can be as much as 5 points, as evidenced by the Magic Season weekend to weekend stay. The mid-week to mid-week stay is still cheaper when compared to weekend to weekend stay in both 2009 and 2010, but the difference will be narrower in 2010.

I haven't quite figured out yet if this is better, or worse, for us. I also don't know if this is going to stay like this for a long time before they decide on another points "revolution".

Zz.