Hey everyone, it's Jacqueline from Pixie Dust PhD. Happy New Year! I hope the start of 2023
has been kind to you. In this video though we're going to turn the page a whole year and talk about
2024 a little bit. That's right, it's time to go over the Disney Vacation Club 2024 points
charts. Leading into that we'll also discuss some general information about point charts,
as well as highlight a few key moments in points charts history--stay tuned!
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Thanks for supporting my YouTube journey; I really appreciate it. This will be my first full calendar year with
over 1,000 subscribers on the channel, and I can't wait to see where we go together. If you
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like the video, comment down below, and share with your friends. All the engagement helps me out so
much. To today's main topic: points charts. Let's start with a little bit of background information,
because I think there's some myth busting we need to do. Disney absolutely does reserve the right
to modify the points charts to better reflect reservation patterns year to year. Generally
speaking, if a time period has more demand it's going to more points, and if there's lower demand
for a time period that's going to cost less points. You can see this very clearly with the
week of Christmas and New Year's and spring break time costing quite a lot of points. In contrast
to that, September costs the least amount of points. This is likely because a lot of folks
simply aren't traveling because school has just started back up in session. As I just stated,
Disney can make changes. However, they are somewhat slowly implemented. Year to year the
points cost for a single room can't increase more than 20 percent. This means for larger changes to
the points charts, those have to be spread out over a few years. And Disney can't just increase
the points cost in perpetuity. The annual points total for a single resort unit can't change unless
new units are added. Generally speaking for any given resort, if the point charts are changing
such that some units are increasing cost then other units need to be decreasing in cost. Disney
can't just make up points out of nowhere. The exception to this is if they are adding new units,
new points, into the system. Overall, yes Disney can change the points charts--that's totally
well within their rights. They do have to do it somewhat slowly though, and prices cannot just
infinitely increase. The overall number of points is stagnant unless they are adding new units.
Next, let's do a very brief history of some of the bigger changes we've seen to points charts. This
will not be exhaustive; I just wanted to do a few highlights. 2010 was a really big shake up to the
points charts. In 2010 adjustments were made to make weekend nights cost less and weeknights cost
more. Presumably before this, they were seeing a pattern of booking where DVC members were staying
Sunday night through Thursday night because it was much more economical than Friday and Saturday
night. Once you've got that clear pattern of booking, then point charts adjustments can be made
to try to even that out. So even though currently weekend nights still are more expensive than
weekday nights, it's definitely not as dramatic as it once used to be. The flip side of that same
coin means that weeknights, Sunday night through Thursday night, aren't as much of a deal as they
used to be. But hey, at least on average it's a little bit cheaper to stay on the weekends now.
2019 had a notable change specifically at Animal Kingdom Villas. Here the club level
room price increased, and to compensate for that they decreased those value room prices.
Now staying club level is pretty expensive, not gonna lie. But it's still a really good
deal when you're considering your point to money value compared to the cash price of a
club level room. And those value rooms truly are a steal, and this change partly is what made that
happen. Nothing big in 2020, but 2021 had a big restructuring. Prior to the 2021 point charts,
things were divvied up into five different seasons and these had cute names like the dream season and
similar. 2021 onward, what you are used to now, it's just seven travel periods. There's no names,
there's not even really numbers, but, you know, travel period one is generally thought of to be
September--the cheapest, travel period seven--the most expensive. Going from five seasons to seven
travel periods essentially gave Disney a little bit more room to play with the points. And you saw
some point adjustments here, including decreased costs in September and increased costs around peak
holidays like we talked about before. 2022 had another change, nothing super dramatic but you
started to see this trend of the summer and fall month cost equaling out. Summer months used to be
very expensive, and I think canonically looking back at some recent history of Walt Disney World,
but pre-pandemic, summer was super popular. People traveled to Disney World during that time,
presumably because kids were out of school. But for whatever reason, with time that has shifted,
and so the points charts were shifting too. More and more people were traveling during the fall,
so Disney Vacation Club started adjusting their points charts to reflect that pattern
of reservations. In 2023 we saw essentially the same thing: October and November prices
increased. To compensate for that though, May became more economical. Excluding holidays,
now summer is definitely not the most expensive and Fall’s getting up there. Now that we're caught
up to the present, let's talk about 2024. For the first time in a few years there's actually
really no meaningful changes in the 2024 points charts compared to the 2023 points charts. So
it seems like we've reached sort of a steady state or homeostasis for a while now of those
fall month prices increasing, summer and other months decreasing. Hooray! Makes it easier to
plan. Definitely check out the official points charts for yourself, but generally speaking
if you're used to looking at the 2023 points charts but you're thinking about a 2024 trip,
you don't need to make any big mental adjustments. As always, some dates in the travel periods did
move to accommodate moving American holidays. Here are travel periods five, six, and seven,
and we can see some differences between 2023 and 2024. Starting with travel period five, this is
explained essentially by American Thanksgiving moving. American Thanksgiving is not a set date;
I believe it's always the fourth Thursday of November, which moves. In 2023 it's going to
be on November 23rd, versus in 2024 it won't be until November 28th. You can see this first
chunk of travel period 5 stops just before peak Thanksgiving crowds start coming in. Skipping
travel period six for now, let's look at travel period seven. 2023 includes a week in April--April
2nd through 9th, whereas 2024 it's now a week in March. This is explained by American Easter,
which again moves. The anchor dates for both of those travel periods literally is American Easter,
so these are basically peak spring break crowds. A lot of schools take off around Easter for spring
break. And now if you combine your knowledge of American Thanksgiving and American Easter moving
around, that explains what's happening in travel period six. The first change, extending the back
half of February through February 29th, is simply because it's a leap year. But the other shifts
you're seeing around March or April or that late November time frame are accommodated by American
Easter/spring break crowds and Thanksgiving crowds. But overall your takeaway message is
that Disney can change the point charts, and they have and they probably will continue to
in the future. But prior to that 2024 release we had seen a few years in a row really of changes
to the points charts to reflect their reservation patterns. Personally, I'm really happy to see that
there's no real meaningful changes in the 2024 points charts, and we might be in a good place
for a while. If you have any questions leave those in the comments down below and I'll do my best to
get back to you with a helpful answer. I hope this makes your 2024 trip planning easier, and thanks
for watching. May the rest your day be magical, and we'll see you real soon at Pixie Dust PhD!
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