Direct sales of Disney Vacation Club points tend to slow down toward the end of the year and October 2019 continued that trend.
Disney's Rivera Resort
In October 2019, Disney sold 147,386 points for the 11 Disney Vacation Club resorts at Walt Disney World, the second consecutive month that sales failed to surpass the 150,000 point mark. October’s sales were the fewest since 140,877 points were sold in December 2018. It was also 11.9% less than the sales total for October 2018 when 167,258 points were sold.
It is not unusual for sales to drop off toward the end of the calendar year. DVCNews has been tracking direct sales since July 2010 and Disney has averaged direct sales of 173,736 points a month during that nine-year period. As seen in the chart below, the last four calendar months of the year tend to underperform the other eight months.
Overall, direct sales are still performing better than in the recent past. So far in 2019, 1,958,053 DVC points have been sold for the Walt Disney World DVC resorts, a 5.0% increase over the comparable period in 2018. In fact, 2019’s sales represent the best year since 2011 when 2,087,097 points were sold in the first 10 months.
Disney’s Riviera Resort — In October 2019, Disney sold 97,100 points for Riviera, which is scheduled to open on December 16, 2019. Since sales began for the resort, 674,244 points have been sold, about 10% of its 6.7 million total points.
In the seven months since sales began, Riviera is averaging about 96,320 points a month. By comparison, Copper Creek Villas & Cabins at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge averaged 110,108 points a month from the start of sales in April 2017 through June 2019 when it was officially considered to be “sold out.” However, Riviera is actually outperforming Copper Creek if viewed by their comparable ages. Copper Creek sold only 374,089 points during its first seven months, over 300,000 points less than what the Riviera has sold in its first seven months.
Now that Disney is offering the same sales incentives for Fixed Week deeds as it does for traditional point deeds, there has been a slight increase in sales for this product. Five Fixed Week Riviera deeds were sold in September and another four were sold in October. Disney has now sold 21 Fixed Week deeds for the resort.
On October 4, 2019, Disney declared another 29 vacation homes for Riviera’s DVC inventory. The resort now has 98 vacation homes declared which account for about 28.6% of its total points. There are still 243 vacation homes that have not yet been declared and are under the control of Disney.
The sales data includes all 11 DVC resorts at Walt Disney World, as well as Disney's Vero Beach Resort, Disney's Hilton Head Island Resort, and Aulani, Disney Vacation Club Villas. 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.
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.”
