Keeping the Faith with Disney’s Customer Service

There is so much uncertainty going on right now regarding when the Walt Disney World Resort will open back up. The information on their site all states that they’re only closed through March 31, 2020, but how can that really be? That’s just one week from today and it feels like we’re right in the middle of this Coronavirus pandemic, so my guess is that that’s not happening.

Meanwhile, I had a reservation for a quick two-night getaway from 3/25-3/27/20 at Disney’s Bay Lake Tower that was canceled when the closure was announced. Here’s the thing; the reservation was made using my Disney Vacation Club (DVC) points. A few of the points used for the reservation were banked from 2018 and some of them just needed to be used by 3/31/20. The way things usually work with vacation points is that you receive your allotment on the same date every year and if you don’t use them before the end of your ‘use year’, they disappear and you just lose them – not a wise thing to let happen.

Like Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, and others, Disney Vacation Club has tweaked their cancellation policy a bit to make it so Members have more flexibility in canceling their reservations right now amid the Coronavirus crisis we’re all dealing with.

Usually, when you cancel a DVC reservation between 30-days and 1-day prior to your check-in date, your points are returned to a ‘holding’ location in your account. Any vacation points in your ‘holding’ account need to be used by the end of your ‘use year.’ For the time being, DVC is returning points from canceled vacations without placing them into holding. Borrowed points returned due to a cancellation of a Disney Vacation Club Resort reservation will not be placed in holding and will be returned to the ‘use year’ they were borrowed from.

Vacation points in your ‘holding’ account are only good until the end of your ‘use year’ when they will expire. Under usual circumstances, you can use them like you would your regular vacation points, except that reservations must be made within 60 days of your check-in date. It’s also important to know that vacation points in a ‘holding account’ cannot be banked or borrowed.

I am just over here knowing that Disney has always taken really good care of our family over the years and I’ve never felt as though I got the short end of the stick no matter what issue(s) we happened to be dealing with at the time. As of now, I have 43 points left in my DVC account with no way of using them before they expire on 3/31/20 and I’m a bit twitchy about it.

While I have faith that DVC will take care of us and make it so that we can use our points once the Resort reopens, I have to say that I’m not 100% confident that that’s going to happen. The following statement has been displayed on the Member website with no updated as of yet:

At this time, we have not made any changes to our Points banking or expiration policy due the impact this could have on future inventory availability. We understand this is of particular concern for Members with reservations affected by closures and/or the COVID-19 situation who may be toward the end of their Use Year. We are, however, currently evaluating various options to assist Members in this situation, but will need to delay any decisions until we better understand how long COVID-19 will impact our operations.

I am still hoping for the best as we go along in these uncharted waters. I’ll put an update at the top of this post when I find out what’s happening.

Have you experienced any similar issues since this situation began? Please share in the comments below!