SSR was the result of 9/11. Before 9/11, DVD had already announced a different resort to be built in the Bonnet Creek area where the Osprey Ridge and Eagle Pines golf courses were, not far from Fort Wilderness. That area now is divided between the Four Seasons resort and Disney's Golden Oak community of multi-million dollar homes. There is only one golf course left, now called Tranquillo (the Osprey renamed), which belongs to the Four Seasons.
As a result of 9/11, demand for Disney rooms went down significantly and Disney temporarily closed the Disney Institute resort (which traditionally had issues getting a large percentage of the rooms rented), which closure became permanent when four months later, in late January 2002, DVD announced that SSR would be built in the area. The proposed resort for the Bonnet Creek area was never mentioned again by DVD. SSR, when finished, had 35% of all DVC points that existed anywhere at the time. Even today, it is still near 18% of the 13 total resorts and has more points than any other single resort, including point-huge Aulani. It was sold using the promotion that one could buy there and always stay anywhere else in the DVC system at 7 months out. Before SSR, finding rooms at the near park DVC resorts (BCV, BRV and BWV at the time) at 7 months out was often fairly easy except for some higher demand times like first two weeks of December, Christmas and Thanksgiving, and some other times isn fall or other holidays. As more and more of SSR got sold over the years, the ability to actually reserve near park resorts at 7 months out began to decrease significantly.
The purchasers of SSR are not to blame for its impact on ability to get other resorts at 7 months out. The blame goes to DVD for such problems. It built a real nice resort. However, it was much bigger than OKW and was sold with the specific representation that purchasers could easily reserve any near park resort at 7 months out. Moreover, it had a major problem due to DVD's desire to sell more points than it should -- its nightly point structure was significantly higher than OKW, which resulted in its having little demand from owners of other resorts at 7 months out, e.g., for that to happen SSR needed a point structure close to OKW's. That point structure was partly corrected effective 2017, except that now it has preferred buildings that are even more overpriced. Nevertheless, from what I have seen lately, the demand for SSR at 7 months out, at least for standard, has improved since the change.
The concern I have about SSR and those purchasing SSR now with the belief they can stay elsewhere is that those purchasers are unaware of the new DVC, which has management that in the last ten years has become more and more anti-member and wants to fix problems mainly caused by DVD by doing injury not just to resale purchasers but to members generally. One of those problems has been DVD's oversell in the last ten years of studios resulting from: (a) raising price per point about 100% despite a total 20% inflation effect and stagnant wage levels, (b) further increasing the actual price of each new resort by creating higher and higher points per night needed per room; (c) creating huge numbers of extra points to sell by adding point-ridiculous bungalows and cabins to the mix; and (d) abandoning the 160 point minimum rule for new buyers ten years ago and going to minimums of 100 points, 75 points, and even 50 points. The result is that the percentage of purchasers who can afford to buy enough points to usually get rooms larger than studios has steadily decreased while the percentage of total points being sold to those who can afford only studios has significantly increased.
What has developed in the last ten years is that there are now far more owners who desire to use their points to get mainly studios, and studio demand has reached the point that for some rooms there is even an 11-month issue, and it is continuously becoming harder and harder to get studios at 7 months out. At the end of December 2019, the new DVC came up with a solution to fix the excess studio demand that had developed over the last 10 years. That solution did not include DVD's raising the total points required of new purchasers or lowering the price per point, both of which would have impacted DVD's profits. Instead, DVC created new
point charts that significantly increased the points needed for studios and 1BRs almost year round. DVC did that despite that a main cause of excess studio demand was DVD's actions in the last ten years. In raising studio and 1BR points year round, DVC dismissed provisions in the applicable controlling documents that required any raise in points for rooms for any nights had to be met by an equal decrease in other nights. Moreover, DVC dismissed express, written representations that it provided to purchasers in the past, which said DVC would do point adjustments only to correct changes in seasonal demand, not room size demand, by declaring it was not bound by any such prior representations. Moreover, it claimed further that it included 1BRs in the reallocation because demand for them was too high, while refusing to provide evidence it purportedly had to show that was true, and despite that it is well-known that 1BRs are usually the last to fill.
DVC withdrew those new point charts after complaints from DVC members. However, it conceded nothing in doing so and left open the possibility it would do the same or something else in the future to fix the excess studio demand problem.
That brings me to what the current (and many past) purchasers of SSR are likely unaware of. DVC actually has a possibly legal way that would significantly modify the demand for studios or other rooms that it has heretofore never used, but if it does so, it will significantly limit the desire and ability of SSR owners (and others) to reserve any near park resorts, and possibly other resorts, at 7 months out. Unbeknownst to many, the provisions of the controlling POS documents and exhibits actually contemplate that there can be two separate point charts applicable to each resort, one for home resort reservations and one for reserving non-owned resorts, and the 7-month, inter-resort charts for each resort can have different per night requirements than the 11-month charts. Moreover, the rule stated in the documents about keeping total points for a resort the same and setting off any increase by a decrease elsewhere in the charts, is not stated as being applicable to the inter-resort, 7-month chart, That 7-month chart can be changed at DVC's "discretion" (or actually the discretion of Buena Vista Trading Company, the entity responsible for the inter-resort reservations)
The Florida legal requirement prevents selling more points to purchasers of a resort than necessary to fill the resort for a year, and thus requires in DVC's case that any point increase made for any given time be offset by a like decrease at other times, Once that requirement is met, and the owners have an exclusive period reserving rooms for their home resort, the legal requirement for multisite reservations, where members are reserving at a different resort other than their own, becomes more amorphous, and simply states that the reservation system and rules set up should be in the best interest of all the multisite plan owners as a whole (meaning in the interest of all DVC members not just those at one resort), and that the rules should provide that adjustments can be made from time to time in response to changes in demand among the multisite resorts. In essence, DVC could create inter-resort (7-month) point charts to raise the points needed for near park resorts without the need to lower them in the same resort. In fact, if it wanted to, DVC could also act to equalize demand among the resorts by lowering points needed at 7-months out at SSR and raising them at the near park resorts. That could significantly help in spreading out studio demand as bargain hunters from the near park resorts would have a increased incentive to move their reservations to a resort like SSR.
One may hope that such a drastic change will not occur, but with the new DVC, which has already demonstrated how far it may be willing to go to accomplish whatever it wants to accomplish, the possibility cannot be ruled out.
