May 2022 direct sales of Disney Vacation Club points continued to outperform the recent 12-month average, however the initial bump inspired by Villas at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa has begun to fade.
In May 2022, 179,821 DVC points were sold for the 11 DVC resorts at Walt Disney World. This is a decrease of more than 61,000 points compared to March 2022 and a decrease of more than 131,000 points compared to April 2022. However, May’s sales total stands as the third best month for direct sales since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. It also represents a 23.3% improvement over the sales numbers for the 12 months from May 2021 to April 2022.
Every resort except Disney's Beach Club Villas sold fewer points in May 2022 than it did in March or April. Excluding the four months at the start of the pandemic in 2020, Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa and Disney’s Old Key West Resort — two sold out resorts that normally help bolster Disney direct sales — had usually low sales in May. Saratoga Springs sold only 2,425 points, which is the fewest number of points sold for that resort in the 12 years DVCNews has tracked direct sales and may be the lowest monthly amount since Saratoga Springs debuted in 2004. Old Key West sold 2,880 points, which was the fewest for that resort since January 2017.
Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort — 100,178 points were sold for the Grand Floridian in May 2022, less than the totals for both March (115,999 points) and April (177,819 points). Disney has now sold 393,996 points, or 22.1% of the 1,779,822 points that have been assigned to the 202 Resort Studios located in the Big Pine Key building. If the resort continues to sell approximately 100,000 points per month, DVC would exhaust its supply of Grand Floridian points sometime in the summer of 2023.
So far, all of the points sold have been drawn from Residential Unit #11, which makes up half of the Big Pine Key building. Disney has not sold any deeds that were drawn from the residential units located in the original DVC building.
Disney sold 6 Grand Floridian Fixed Week deeds in May, bringing to 25 the number of such deeds sold for the new Resort Studios. Nine of the Fixed Week deeds have been for Standard View Resort Studios, 12 for Lake View Resort Studios, and 4 for Theme Park Resort Studios.
Disney has declared exactly half of the 202 Resort Studios for the DVC inventory. This means that 101 resort studios can be booked using DVC points on any given Use Day.
Disney’s Riviera Resort — In May 2022, 59,282 points were sold for Riviera, the fewest sold for the resort since 58,294 points were purchased in September 2021. While the May sales total may appear disappointing for Riviera, it comes at a time when DVC is heavily marketing both Riviera and Grand Floridian as purchase options at Walt Disney World. On June 2, DVC unveiled new incentives for both Riviera and Grand Floridian which result in lower net prices than offers from May 2022. This is likely to have a positive impact on sales in the coming months.
Disney has sold 2,933,100 points, or 43.5%, of the Riviera’s 6.7 million points. The resort has averaged 77,693 points in monthly sales, which includes several months in 2020 when sales for all DVC resorts were severely impacted by the COVID pandemic.
On April 15, 2022, Disney declared additional vacation homes for the DVC inventory at Riviera. 180 of Riviera’s 341 vacation homes are now available for DVC members to book using points. The declared inventory accounts for about 3,605,940 points, or 53.5% of the resort’s total points.
No Fixed Week deeds were sold for Riviera in May. Disney has sold 102 Fixed Week deeds for Riviera. 63 Fixed Week deeds have been sold for the last six weeks of the year, including 16 deeds for Week #52, which normally falls between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
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.”
