In July 2012 and April 2014, DVCNews.com published a set of charts showing the distribution of Disney Vacation Club points across the eight Use Years for select DVC properties. Since the last update, all of the points for the Villas at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa have been assigned a Use Year and Disney has begun assigning Use Years for points at Disney's Polynesian Villas & Bungalows,; thus, its time to update the Use Year Distribution charts.
New with this update is a chart for Aulani, a Disney Resort & Spa. Aulani and the Polynesian Villas & Bungalows, which are actively being sold, are the only DVC resorts for which all of their points have not yet been assigned to a Use Year.
The first chart below displays the cumulative distribution for the nine DVC resorts located at Walt Disney World. Following it are charts for 12 of the 13 DVC resorts. Unfortunately, data is not available on the distribution of points by Use Year for the Villas at Disney's Grand Californian Hotel, so there is no chart for that resort.
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A Disney Vacation Club Member's Use Year is determined at the time an ownership interest is purchased, and marks the period over which points may be used for a resort stay. Disney Vacation Club designates eight different months as the start of a Use Year: February, March, April, June, August, September, October, or December. The months of January, May, July, and November are not used as the start of a Use Year.
A further explanation of Use Years can be found in the DVC for Beginners section on DVCNews.com.
Once the points in a Unit are assigned to a specific Use Year, the Use Year for those points will never change. Even when Disney Vacation Development reacquires points via foreclosure proceedings, exercising its Right of First Refusal, or other buyback reasons, the Use Year cannot be changed.
Disney's Old Key West Resort, which was the first DVC resort, is the only one that has a fairly equal distribution of points among all eight Use Years. At Old Key West, all eight Use Years are within a narrow range of 10.5% to 14.6%. However, as new DVC resorts have opened, Disney Vacation Development no longer attempts to have all points at a resort evenly distributed among the eight Use Years. Bay Lake Tower at Disney's Contemporary Resort has 37.8% of its points in the February Use Year and only 5.1% of its points in the October Use Year. A similar uneven distribution is occurring at Disney's Animal Kingdom Villas where the December Use Year accounts for 32.8% of the points assigned.
The Use Year distribution for the Polynesian Villas & Bungalows is typical of a DVC resort that is early in its sales history. So far, only 16 of the Polynesian’s 86 Residential Units have been used to support sales. When Polynesian sales began in January 2015, Disney Vacation Development assigned one Residential Unit to each of the eight Use Years. Most new members initially were offered points with a December Use Year, and recently Disney Vacation Development began offering new members points with a February Use Year. Thus, the Polynesian’s chart shows December as the most common Use Year with February as the second most common Use Year.
Wil Lovato is a contributor to DVCNews.com and has been a Disney Vacation Club owner since 2009. His DVC Home Resorts include Bay Lake Tower, Animal Kingdom Villas, and Aulani. He can be found posting on many Disney discussion forums under the username of “wdrl”.
