What the Past Few Years Have Told Us about DVC’s Future

We don’t think about the calendar in these terms, but we’re more than halfway through the 2020s. Sure, some of them have felt like dog years, yet we’ve survived and persevered. 

For its part, the Disney Vacation Club program has thrived and occasionally surprised. Let’s discuss what the past few years have told us about DVC’s future.

DVC Loves Magic Kingdom

In 2027, Disney Lakeshore Lodge will open, a development DVC members should have seen coming. I’m not saying that because DVC previously intended to build on this site, either. That’s more of a tangential point to what we’re witnessing.

In 2022, DVC claimed a building at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa and converted it into new program inventory. Two years later, Disney doubled down on this move by adding new DVC hotel rooms at The Cabins at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort and the Island Tower at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort. 

What do all three of those properties have in common? Two of them are monorail resorts, while the third sits on land Disney has deemed the Magic Kingdom area. Long story short, most of DVC’s 2020s projects at Walt Disney World shared a purpose.

DVC wanted to provide owners with more hotel options at Magic Kingdom, the most trafficked theme park in the world. That’s the place where a disproportionate number of vacationers want to stay, and Disney makes plenty of money from the DVC program. 

So, this sort of expansion makes perfect sense. Not coincidentally, DVC will define Disney Lakeshore Lodge as a Magic Kingdom area resort, too. Will that be the last property DVC adds near Magic Kingdom this decade? I wouldn’t be on it. 

DVC Prefers Add-Ons

Circling back to the Grand Floridian and Polynesian expansions, they tell a different story, too. Disney saves money when it doesn’t start from scratch on a hotel project. 

The high cost of infrastructure forces DVC officials to make a few practical decisions. Disney’s return to Lakeshore Lodge represents one of them, as construction crews had already cleared that area. It was ready to build by the time DVC returned to the idea. 

Similarly, construction at the Polynesian didn’t require as much work since it was already a fully formed campus. Sure, Disney needed to demolish the previous tenant, my beloved Luau Cove, but building a skyrise hotel on that land didn’t cost anywhere near as much as starting from scratch.

That same statement applies to The Villas at Disneyland Hotel as well. Disney could connect many of its needed utilities to the existing ones, saving on costs. Plus, the hotel doesn’t offer its own restaurants unless we count the pool bar. Rather than creating an expensive-to-operate dining option, park officials could merely point guests to Downtown Disney.

You’ll find the most extreme example of this strategy at the former Big Pine Key building at the Grand Floridian. As mentioned, DVC repurposed that entire facility to turn it into new program inventory. That saved the company a fortune, as it didn’t even need to build out any part of the site. DVC took those existing facilities and enhanced them to make them suitable for discriminating owners. 

Economics matter as DVC explores new properties. You can expect more expansion towers at existing Disney resorts, and another reclaimed building or two wouldn’t be too surprising.

DVC Still Needs More Disneyland Inventory

With the introduction of The Villas at Disneyland Hotel, Disneyland Resort received 344 new rooms. For DVC members, that addition felt like the gust from a fan on a scorching day. It was that much of a relief after roughly 15 years of inventory issues. 

The Villas at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa offers only a small number of rooms that are available to DVC members. Historically, those booked so quickly that unless you owned at the Grand Californian, you didn’t even need to bother. 

The arrival of the Disneyland expansion tower more than doubled the DVC inventory at The Happiest Place on Earth. Even then, we could still use more, though. You’d struggle to book anything at the seven-month window if you tried today, forcing you to hope for the best with a  Waitlist. 

So, at some point, DVC will expand more in this area. We know this from the DisneylandForward plans, which explicitly mention future Disneyland Resort hotels. This one’s a question of when, not if. 

DVC Transportation Will Get Better

Finally, the immediate success of Disney’s Riviera Resort underscores DVC’s new strategy. When Disney cannot build hotel buildings right by theme parks, it’ll do the next-best thing. It’ll add better logistics at other DVC properties. 

When guests stay at the Riviera, they can hop on the Disney Skyliner and be at EPCOT or Disney’s Hollywood Studios in a matter of minutes. Even better, it’s a scenic, relaxing ride, unlike some of the stressful bus trips we’ve all had at Disney.

At some point, a Disney Skyliner expansion is inevitable at Walt Disney World. If not for the pandemic, we probably would have already had one by now, as the blueprints exist. Remarkably, that may not be all. 

As part of the upcoming Summer Olympics, Anaheim and Los Angeles officials have explored the possibility of gondola transportation. Should that happen – and the tight timeline makes me quite skeptical – Disneyland Resort would host a gondola station. After all, there’s no point in doing this project unless at least one route transports tourists to Disneyland. 

Whenever Disney and DVC officials contemplate expansion, these sorts of logistics are at the forefront of the conversations. Disney either wants to build resorts near the parks or offer transportation that makes traveling to and from them effortless.

Access all available Disney Vacation Club resale listings, or learn more about buying and selling with DVC Resale Market.