Mouse Extra

It appears the Disney Vacation Club is in the process of designing a rewards program for their members.  Last night I received a survey in my email that dealt entirely with the name of this program and not the program’s specifics.  But the introduction paragraph to the survey included this…

…the program would be available to a select group of members who qualified by reaching a certain threshold through their own purchases and by referring friends and family.  The program would give this qualified group of members access to additional and/or highly sought after benefits.

Like I said, the survey itself was pretty silly as it only dealt with potential names for the program, like the Commodore Club, Legacy Club, Club 91 and others.  The questions centered on whether or not I felt the names were posh and impressive sounding, not whether I thought the program was a good idea.  One can easily assume now that the program’s concept will soon be a reality.

From the nature of the questions, DVC is obviously going for something that is exclusive to only the high spending members.  I understand the point with this type of thing, but it never gets me excited.  I personally am turned off by anything that sounds privileged or ritzy, even if I am a member.  Almost every single member of the DVC spends enormous amounts of money with Disney, excluding one from the other is insulting at any level.

But I won’t judge a book by a cover that isn’t even finished yet.  Soon we will know more and you can be sure that I’ll have an opinion about it!

As we reported last week, yesterday marked the official groundbreaking for Disney’s much anticipated new Vacation Club resort in Hawaii.  Our colleagues over at the terrific DVCnews.com website have the full press release for you.  Usually these are pretty boring, but this one provides some nice hints of how beautiful this resort can be.

Additionally, Hawai‘i’s aloha spirit will influence the many intricate details for which Disney resorts are famous, with stories woven into the architecture, interiors, art, graphics and three planned signature gardens all brought to life through carefully selected colors, patterns, materials and forms. Wood, thatch, lava stone and coral will be among the materials represented in the resort’s two 15-story guestroom towers, each oriented perpendicular to the ocean to maximize ocean views from the strategically angled guest rooms. Façade murals will add to the distinctive look of each tower and will begin to portray some of the stories and legends of the islands.

At the heart of the resort, an open-air lobby building — dubbed Hale Aloha — will draw its design inspiration from a traditional Hawaiian canoe house, visually connecting families to the sea and beyond.  Window designs, wall graphics and other details will welcome families with tales of adventure, myth, legend and more, while twin streams flow through the building before uniting as a single cascade into the center garden below.

What makes this so exciting is that there seems to be an awful lot of detail and research going into the design here.  And when Disney does that, it usually results in something extremely impressive.  Just from this description, it seems as though we have a design and theme that may be on par with some of Disney’s most impressive, like the Animal Kingdom Lodge.

The website Los Angeles Business is reporting this morning that ground-breaking for the Disney Vacation Club’s Hawaiian Resort is scheduled to take place in one week.

Walt Disney Parks & Resorts will break ground Nov. 19 at its new family resort in Hawaii.

The oceanfront resort is located on 21 acres at Ko Olina Resort & Marina in West Oahu.

Scheduled to open in 2011, the resort will have more than 800 units, including hotel rooms and villas, for Disney Vacation Club, Disney’s timeshare division.

So far things appear to be on schedule for this pretty exciting new property.  But we can only imagine that the economic downturn will rear its ugly head in this project as well.  Will budget cuts and delays be imposed in Hawaii?  Only time will tell, but don’t be surprised if they do.

copyright Disney 2008

Regardless, the resort is moving forward and being built.  The real question, since it is now only a matter of time before it opens, is how popular will it be?  Disney is rolling the dice here on an estimated $800 million project that is not at all connected with its theme parks.  The future of these types of properties depends largely on success in Hawaii.

More information has come out regarding the resort being built for Hawaii in the form of a recent press event. Here is a story from DVCNews.com with a picture of the model. Its a bit bigger than I thought I will say. The project is adding about 830 hotel and vacation time-share rooms, a “fantasy-laden water play area” and a huge spa to the Ko Olina resort area on West Oahu. It appears there will be about 350 hotel rooms and nearly 500 vacation villas. The Ko Olina area already house luxury condos and a Marriot complex.

The time share villas will, of course, be a part of the DVC family of resorts much like the stand alone resorts at Hilton Head and Vero Beach. And the joint is expected to be done by 2011. For those of us who are DVC members, this is an exciting project. I, for one, have never been to Hawaii and would love to go. Now, I can use my points.

Today’s posting is from Mike, contributing writer to Mouse Extra

The Orlando Sentinel reports this morning that Disney will finally admit today that Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort and the newly refurbished Treehouse Villas will become part of the Disney Vacation Club’s selection of resorts.

Disney this morning will formally reveal plans for its Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort, confirming earlier reports that the 15-story tower rising just beyond the Magic Kingdom will be used for time shares. The company also will unveil plans to sell time shares at the Treehouse Villas at Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa, a secluded community of 60 units that is being rebuilt in a forested pocket of Walt Disney World.

The twin announcements ensure that Celebration-based Disney Vacation Club, which has grown to nine resorts and more than 350,000 members, will have more time shares for sale in 2009 than it has ever had before.

With the ever worsening economy, I do worry that this may be too much too quickly.  And one also has to wonder how much the opening of purchasing at Bay Lake Tower will hurt numbers at the Animal Kingdom Lodge.  If things slow down for the DVC, it becomes much harder to handle if you have four properties you’re trying to sell rather than one, including Disneyland’s Grand Californian which is also on its way.

As expected, Bay Lake Tower is set to be the club’s most expensive buy-in…

…prices at Bay Lake Tower will begin at $18,000 — the most expensive starting point of any Vacation Club resort. Prices at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas, which opened its first phase last year, begin just below $17,000.

But for me and my fellow DVC’ers, this is certainly good news.  Each one of the four resorts now under construction all add something truly unique to the already amazing collection of places to vacation.  I can only imagine that Bay Lake Tower will be tough to get into for a while, but if this economy doesn’t turnaround it may not be that hard after all.

Yesterday, the Orlando Sentinel reported that the “mystery tower” going up next to the Contemporary Resort has undergone a name change.  The building that will most likely be the flagship of the Disney Vacation Club was reported earlier this year to be called “Kingdom Tower”.  However, now it seems that has changed into “Bay Lake Tower”.

“Bay Lake Tower” has replaced “Kingdom Tower” as the name of the project, at least in filings with the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

What’s more, earlier this month Disney filed paperwork to create a “Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort Condominium Association,” presumably to manage the resort once it is sold off to individual owners. Disney had created a “Kingdom Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort Condominium Association” in January.

Disney had to know that there was no way they would escape criticism on this project no matter what they did.  And the name is no different.    People didn’t like the name Kingdom Tower and now people won’t like Bay Lake Tower.  As soon as they decided to build something this big they released the hounds. It is just too close to the Magic Kingdom and way too close to the Contemporary to escape criticism.

Personally, I like the new name a little better.  Kingdom Tower was fine, and I think the idea of it sounding too much like a Jehovah’s Witness church is just ridiculous.  But it didn’t fit such a modern design.  Kingdom Tower should be something that looks more like a castle than a suburbia office building.  But at the same time, Bay Lake Tower sounds more like a retirement community in Coral Gables than a resort at Walt Disney World.  At least that name doesn’t seem counterintuitive the theme of the building. 

What’s in a name?  Everything is in a name.  Think of how perfect nearly every name Disney uses at their resorts fits the theme.  This would be the first one that didn’t accomplish this.  However, until I see more concrete plans for the décor and theme of this new project I can’t really make much of a suggestion.

By the way, the photos that you see here were taken by me late last week.  This project appears to be moving along fairly quickly.