What does Disney do when they want more Disney Vacation Club (DVC) availability but don’t want to make a new resort? They take rooms away from one hotel and make them DVC units. That’s what is now happening to The Grand Floridian, according to the Orlando Weekly.

Disney is setting aside regular rooms to be transformed into new DVC options by next year. There will be two hundred studio suites that will be added to the Disney Vacation Club from this.

If you are someone who’s been trying to get hotel rooms on property, it’s been becoming harder and hard to find them, and now Disney is going to make it even harder on guests, unless you are part of their time-share program.

The Big Pine Key building is the unit that is being “transformed.”

Although the Orlando Weekly says that it will have “the same number of rooms” and “no major updates are expected.”

“Last week Disney confirmed it would be making the rare move of shifting some existing rooms at the Grand Floridian Resort from the hotel to the on-site Disney Vacation Club timeshare company. The Big Pine Key building will be transformed into the latest DVC offerings, opening next year.”

My first thought was about the now cancelled, or postponed, the ‘Reflections- A Disney Lakeside Lodge.’

It seems the Orlando Weekly thought the same thing.

The ‘Reflections- A Disney Lakeside Lodge’ was supposed to go in where River Country once stood. It was set to open next year, 2022, with 900 rooms.  The site has started to be cleared and prepared for the construction project, but then the pandemic hit and it was shelved.

So instead of building the new resort, Disney’s answer to claw more money out of guests, is to take rooms away from not time-share guests to sell more DVC offerings.  To be fair, Disney does seem to have a harder time filling the rooms at the deluxe hotel, but that could be because their rates are ridiculous. Same for the Riviera.

Maybe if Disney stopped charging so much for their rooms, they would have more guests in their higher priced resorts, especially if the demand isn’t there to warrant it.

So now there will be fewer rooms for normal guests but more availability for DVC guests, and you can bet they will likely start charging far more than they are now, for the rooms that are left.

Sounds about right.

What do you think? Comment and let us know!

Source: Orlando Weekly