Hey friends, it's Jacqueline at Pixie Dust PhD. I am filming this on Saturday, March 12,
2022. That means the channel is now officially 25 months old! In this monthly creator update
we'll go over a little bit of Disney Vacation Club news pertaining to the Grand Floridian,
and then of course we'll do monthly and lifetime stats and analytics--stay tuned!
Thanks for your patience if this gets posted a little late. Normally I like to film these on
the 11th. That's because I run my stats through the 10th, so you have to wait until the next
day to get the stats through that day fully. But yesterday, the 11th, was pretty busy; I had work,
I had a doctor's appointment, and then it was Turning Red day! So I was very preoccupied with
that. No spoilers, but Turning Red is absolutely fantastic. I highly suggest you watch it. I
am just so over the moon about that film. I’ve also got friends in town this weekend,
so I am filming today on the 12th--I hope to get this up and posted by the 13th… The captions can
take a little bit of a long time sometimes, so we'll see. But yeah, if this is going up
a little late thanks for your patience! Let's talk for a little bit about the new villas at the Grand
Floridian. We are expecting to get about 200 new studio rooms, these are going to be called resort
studios because they are going to be different from those deluxe studios. In theory these should
be opening around late June 2022, so pretty soon. These are now on sale, so we do have a pricing.
Grand Floridian DVC contracts are listed at the same price as Aulani and Riviera at 207 dollars
per point. There are of course incentives, meaning if you buy a certain amount of points you can get
some amount of dollars off. I think they may vary if you are a new member--I’ve just been
looking at the online tools; since I’m already a member I see the incentives for current members.
For current members if you buy between 125 and 149 points at Grand Floridian you get eight dollars
off per point. And this incentive scales; it's not eight dollars off no matter what. The more points
you buy the more money you quote unquote save. There's a pretty big jump in savings right at
that 200 point mark though, which I thought was interesting. So if you buy 175 to 199 vacation
points you get $13 off for this current incentive, which again I believe ends on March 30th.
But once you jump to 200 points--so 200 points to 249 points--you get $21 off per point. Once
we hit March 31st you can expect to see all these incentives decreased by three to five dollars or
so. Now, as far as booking goes, folks who have home resort priority at the Grand Floridian will
sort of get first dibs; so from March 14th through May 12th--until May 13th I believe it is--they'll
be able to book these resort studios and non-home owners will not be able to even if it's within
that seven month time frame. Starting May 13th then all owners will be able to book these rooms.
However, it looks like you won't be able to book these rooms online until it opens up generally to
all owners on May 13th. So if you do have home resort priority here I believe you'll have to
call member services in order to book during this exclusive window, from mid-March through
mid-May. That is less than ideal. And if any of you are in that situation I just highly suggest
you call member services right when they open. If you don't want to be waiting on hold for forever
going right at opening usually works out very well in your favor--not just for DVC, but just
in general if you need call member services or helpline almost anywhere. I’ll probably plan to
make and release a video in that late May time frame once it is open up for general booking and
I’m able to show everyone the interface. Because they are different rooms though, these resort
studios, they should be listed totally separately from your standard deluxe studios. I never really
had any intention of buying a Grand Floridian--no hate, it's lovely it's a great resort, it's just
not really for me--that being said, I was really, really excited when the news came out that this
was priced at $207. $207 is a lot of money, don't get me wrong, it's not necessarily the price…
what I was excited about was that it did match the other resorts they were currently selling,
so Aulani and Riviera. I could be 100% wrong, I’m totally just speculating here, but this gives me
a little bit of hope--maybe false hope--that then the Disneyland DVC resort tower whenever that gets
listed, in a year or however long it is, will also match whatever else they are currently selling.
Now, I don't think this will be at $207. I fully expect we will see price bumps for Riviera,
Aulani, and Grand Floridian if they still have inventory at all of them to sell, we'll--we'll see
one, two, maybe even more price bumps before they list that Disneyland DVC tower. But the fact that
the new Grand Flo rooms match the other resorts that were actively selling is--is really
exciting to me, because that sets a pattern, it sets a little bit of a precedence, that,
you know, if they still have Riviera for example at let's say $218 it seems more unlikely to me
now, having seen the Grand Floridian example, that they would post the Disneyland tower at like
$295 or something outrageous. I don't remember exactly what Grand Floridian was listed at prior
to them taking it away-- there was a period of time where you couldn't buy a Grand Floridian
add-on directly through Disney--but I think it was like $245 or $255, I don't know it was high. It
was much higher than $207. So then when that got taken away, and we knew they would repost it once
they were trying to sell this new inventory, a lot of people were guessing about prices. And would it
still be that high price? Would they bring it down to Aulani and Riviera? And they did the latter. So
I mean they don't have to always do that; for all I know they will post the Disneyland DVC
tower like way higher than Riviera or whatever else they're currently selling. But yeah, when
I saw this news I got pretty excited about the potential for the Disneyland DVC tower to not be
a truly ridiculous cost. I hope I’m right for all of our sakes honestly. But only time will tell!
Let me know what you think about these new Grand Floridian resort studio villas! I think they look
pretty nice, and it's great to get more inventory. And if you have any speculations about how this
might tie into the Disneyland DVC tower sales I want to hear them! Alright, let's move into
analytics. So I pulled these down from February 11 through March 10th. In month 25 the channel got
6,600 views; so that is less than the past two months, but prior to that it's still way more.
So we're still doing relatively well. Similarly, we got about 4,100 unique viewers. Again,
this is less than the past two months, but still generally pretty dang good for me. Excitingly 398
of these were returning viewers; so thank you so much for coming back, watching the channel, liking
the videos, and subscribing! I really appreciate it. This is also a record high for me since I
started looking at the stats, so it's always good to see that we're gaining viewers and they are
coming back. And even though I had less views and less unique viewers than the past couple months,
I do have a record number of watch hours for just this month at over 500. I thought this was really
interesting because I think I probably have less views from my shorts getting viewed less,
but obviously shorts don't contribute to watch hours a ton. I mean yes, every 10 seconds counts,
but the bulk of my watch hours doesn't tend to come from shorts unless they really really take
off. So yeah, I got less views, and yes it was from less people, but it ended up being more
hours, which is awesome. Percent view duration dropped actually quite a bit this month though;
we're down under 37%. That's the lowest it's been in a long time, like almost the whole entirety of
the channel. But… I don't know… it is what it is. I mean I hope to make engaging content,
but I totally understand that some of the topics I cover are a little niche, and you might click
on it and think it's one thing it turns out to be another and you click away pretty fast… like
that's how it goes. We also got a record number of impressions this month at over 76,000; so it
was very similar to last month, but in general that's like a really baffling number to me…
for one month to get over 75,000 impressions, I’m really stoked about that. Impressions from YouTube
also shot up a ton here, we're at almost 35% again. We had a couple of months in this range,
and then it dipped back down to like 25%; we're back up in the 35%. I really don't know what's
happening… part of me does think this is coming from the shorts maybe more than anything else? But
I don't know. If you all have any insights about impressions from YouTube I would love to hear it.
If you've read good articles I would love to get those links in the comments down below. My watch
time from those not subscribed this month did decrease, which is good in this case--that means
more people who are watching are subscribed to the channel--than last month. So, you know,
in theory that translates to more subscribers… maybe, I don't know. But we're at around 70%.
It's definitely not a record best month, but it's always nice to make little improvements compared
to last month. And speaking of subscribers, this month we got 38 new subscribers. So that is more
than one a day, which is great. If I can keep this pace up I should hit a thousand subscribers
around seven-ish months from now… somewhere in that time range. So we would meet our
2022 yearly goal of 1,000 subscribers. That is of course a very big “if”, but I am holding out hope.
For top videos this month, I apologize that this is a little small, but I wanted to pull the top
10 instead of just showing you top five or six or seven. Interestingly I have a Turning Red short
that was my number one video this month; I didn't even put it out this month, so it's getting really
good traction. In second we've got that PhotoPass video of course. And I thought it was interesting
to point out that four of my top 10 videos this month are room tours, even though they didn't
necessarily debut this month. Additionally, three of the videos are very Disney Vacation
Club focused. And specifically there's that seven month DVC availability video that I thought did
pretty dang well overall. It's also nice to see that the DVC room requests versus room assignment
video that I just recently posted made it into the top 10, because again it only really had
two days worth of stats to get to that level. So definitely that DVC content I think my channel is
more quote unquote known for, and then the room tours are, you know, probably where I
should be spending some time. But I like doing the vlogs and you'll keep seeing some vlogs.
Over on Twitter I’m following just over 1,000 accounts and 848 accounts are following me.
And on Instagram I am following 420 accounts and I have 307 followers.
Moving on to lifetime stats: for views we are now over 70,000 views lifetime for the channel,
and this has resulted in over 6,500 total watch hours. I’m definitely not expecting to eclipse
7,000 lifetime watch hours for the next monthly creator update, but it's pretty cool that I’ve
been getting these you know 400--500 watch hour months and they really do add up quite fast. View
duration decreased a little bit lifetime compared to lifetime from last month; so we're now at just
under 42%, but that's fine. And for impressions we have over 900,000 lifetime for the channel.
Our impressions from YouTube did increase quite a bit this month--we went from about 26%
lifetime to now 27% lifetime. And watch time from those not subscribed is pretty much the same;
it's 0.1 percent higher, so 0.1 percent worse, but I mean it's, you know, it's… we're hovering around
70%. It kind of is what it is. I truly wonder if the stat will ever change very much. I do find it
a little frustrating because that's of course 70% of my watch time is coming from people not
subscribed to the channel, and if even half of those--a quarter of those decided to subscribe
we'd probably already be at 1,000 subscribers. But that's just how YouTube goes. And in total
we are at 749 subscribers, so we better hit 750 by the time we're at the next monthly creator update.
Again, I highly doubt we'll eclipse 800, but you never know… like I could have a lucky month, so
I like to try to stay positive about these things. For overall comparisons from month 25 to month 24,
as well as the lifetime stats through month 25 compared to lifetime stats through month 24,
generally speaking we had a pretty good month. Again, views and unique viewers was down monthly
in comparison, but we got more watch hours, we got more impressions, impressions from YouTube
is way up, and those not subscribed was better. We also got a couple more subscribers this month than
we did the last month. And again, if I can just keep chucking along at like over 35 subscribers
per monthly period I will be pretty happy about that. Lifetime a couple of metrics did go down,
but they weren't huge swings so I’m not too concerned. The fact that we hit some pretty
big lifetime milestones this month, including over 70,000 views and over 6,500 watch hours I think
definitely is more exciting to me and takes up more of my brain space than maybe some of these
smaller negative lifetime analytics stats. Coming up on the channel is our very last Disney World
vlog, so day 14 from that vacation and I’m also just gonna tack on departure day to that video.
Then my partner and I will do a discussion of split stays: what we liked, what we didn't like,
what we would do again, what we would not do again. After that I’m less sure… I think we'll
probably start moving into Disneyland content. So I did end up filming quite a lot and there
was some voice over; basically like I was filming and then I had my headphones plugged in my phone
and so, you know, with a mic, and so I was talking while I was looking at stuff. But I didn't film
any like live reactions of my face, it's just my voice. So we weren't like holding the camera
talking about our day because I was with my best friend, we were there for not a super long amount
of time, and I just didn't want to like stop to vlog necessarily. So I’m still figuring out
how I’m gonna put that together… the audio for the most part, the parts that I’ve listened to,
turned out pretty good. So if you have a decent phone that will record audio from like a plugged
in headset with a mic like that's probably a great way for you to start vlogging. The Disneyland trip
was kind of chaotic though, and I think you'll be able to tell that from some of the clips.
And there definitely are just like chunks of the day that we're missing because I was just like so
caught up in what was going on, and experiencing things for the first time, and getting kind of
lost, etc. So it's not gonna be as coherent as the Disney World vlogs, but I do want to put
something together. You know, again not only for the channel, but also for me and my memories. I
probably am also going to do a video about packing wins and fails. So Disneyland was a lot easier
honestly just because like we went during January, temperatures were very easy, outfits weren't a big
deal, it wasn't gonna storm… but for Disney World there were definitely some things that
I forgot, or thought about and decided not to pack anyway foolishly, and then some things that came
in really really handy. So I want to go over that as kind of just like packing tips with you all,
and also to hear what you pack and what I can learn from you! We are back down to just one video
per week instead of two videos per week, this is purely time constraints with my job, so, you know,
I think between Disneyland content couple of these other things I mentioned that'll definitely get us
to the next month. But also I am planning on making either a single video or a small
very small series of videos--like two or three videos--sort of about how a Walt Disney Worlder
should go about Disneyland. So if you are someone that really only frequents Walt Disney World,
almost never goes to Disneyland, and you have any Disneyland questions let me know in the comments
down below! I’m still figuring out how I’m going to frame that one video, or set of two or three
videos total, but I just remain surprised how hard it was for me as someone that I think is like
pretty competent at Walt Disney World--I know what I’m doing, I understand the tech and everything,
I know how to plan it out--Disneyland I thought would be pretty easy, and I was
surprised at the things that I got tripped up on. So I want to help folks avoid that. So definitely
if you have any like Disneyland questions I’m going to start collecting those to be working
on content for the next--probably not in the next monthly period I would guess, but the one after
that. And as always if you have other questions or topics you would like to see me address please
leave those in the comments down below! I am definitely still planning on making a Disability
Access Service video; I know I’ve been saying that forever, I had it planned out, but then
they announced that they were making the changes that came with Disney Genie, so I kind of have to
redo it and relearn because that is a little bit of a new system. Yeah, that one is still high on
my list. I know a lot of you guys have asked for it, and I hear you and I promise it's coming,
it's just… everything's probably slower than you want. I hope wherever you are you're enjoying your
transition out of winter and into spring if you are in the northern hemisphere! Weather here has
been very up and down--it was like 70 less than a week ago and it's literally snowing today. So, I
don't know, I mean it's frustrating, but I always find these transition times to be really fun. I
hope the rest of your day is absolutely wonderful, and we'll see you real soon at Pixie Dust PhD!