Disney Vacation Club has an on-demand webcast available for viewing by both members and guests to watch that covers Disney’s Copper Creek Villas & Cabins.
It’s titled “Makings of a New Frontier” and it’s hosted by Sabrina Soto, an interior design expert. After you watch the video, you can enter a contest to win a 5-night stay in a 1-bedroom villa at Disney’s Copper Creek Villas & Cabins.
The webcast is available at: makingsofanewfrontier.com
This video shows the interior of the Cascade Cabins, Deluxe Studios and 1 and 2-bedrooms at Copper Creek Villas & Cabins at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge.
We shared the video below on our DVC Discussion Forum on April 14, 2017.
Disney Vacation Club has added virtual tours of the rooms at the new Copper Creek Villas at it’s disneycoppercreek.com site. You can navigate around the rooms, in some cases with a 360-degree view. It’s almost as good as taking the tour of the model rooms at the DVC sales center at Saratoga Springs Resort.
Here are the links to each virtual tour:
Tours have not yet been posted by DVC of the Grand Villas or the Cascade Cabins.
When the cost, points chart, and annual dues for Copper Creek Villas & Cabins were released on March 1st, many people were surprised by how high the annual dues are. Copper Creek annual dues are $7.3296 per point, making it’s dues higher than all other DVC resorts – except for Vero Beach.
Let’s breakdown the annual dues into the various components and compare them to all the other DVC resorts. The definition of the various components is available here.
Click on an image to view a larger version.
Here is a high-level summary of the 2017 dues:
As you can see, Copper Creek Villas (CCV) has the highest taxes per point of all the other resorts. This seems to be the main reason why the Copper Creek dues are so high. This is an estimated figure, so if actual taxes are less, owners at CCV can expect a refund to be applied to next year’s dues.
The operating budget seems in line with the other resorts. You would expect the costs to be not too different than Boulder Ridge Villas, and they are pretty close.
Here is a graphical breakdown of the operating costs for Copper Creek. The main items are housekeeping, administration & front desk, and transportation.
Looking at the capital reserves budget, Copper Creek has the highest figure at Walt Disney World. It is surpassed only by Vero Beach (VB) and Hilton Head Island (HHI). Why is this?
Finally, looking at the revenue portion of the budget, Copper Creek looks to be in line with other resorts.
So, in summary, the reasons the annual dues for Copper Creek are so high are taxes and capital reserves.
The DVC resort budget for Copper Creek Villas & Cabins is broken down here. All the resort budgets (including history for the past several years) is available here.
Here are some photos taken of the model room for the Copper Creek Villas & Cabins at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge resort. The 2-bedroom lock-off model room is located at the DVC Sales Center at Saratoga Springs Resort. A 2-bedroom lock-off can be used as a 2-bedroom villa, or subdivided into a Studio and 1-bedroom villa.
You can click on a photo to view a larger version.
Thanks to Lori (Disney13) for the photos.
Twenty-five years ago, on December 20, 1991, the brand-new Disney Vacation Club Resort at Walt Disney World welcomed the first stays by members using their points.
Now called Disney’s Old Key West, the resort was the very first DVC resort.
Let’s take a look back at how this resort came to be, and along with it, how DVC itself came to be.
In the late 1980’s, Disney Chairman Michael D. Eisner unveiled a massive and ambitious ten-year building plan, which included the development of several resorts. He called it The Disney Decade.
Eisner and team looked outside the gates of Walt Disney World and saw a booming business. Orlando had become the timeshare resort capital of the world – an estimated $400 million annual industry in Central Florida. That success was largely because of the presence of Disney, but Mickey wasn’t getting a piece of it.
In the late 1980’s, Disney executives formally recognized that hotel guests were a potential market for the purchase of timeshare products at Walt Disney World. To evaluate this market, Disney used focus groups and quantitative research methods to understand the needs of consumers and gauge consumer reaction. They didn’t want to be associated with the deplorable sales and marketing practices associated with the timeshare business. The big question was: would time-sharing fit the Disney image?
They decided they could develop and market timeshares with a Disney twist. The Disney name lent a level of credibility to their product. “There is a level of trust and expectation from people that we will deliver a quality product”, said Peter Rummell, president of Disney Development Company. To ensure a quality sales staff, some 1,600 prospects would be reviewed before the first 30 salespeople were hired.
In the summer of 1989, Disney Development selected the 150-acre site they would build their timeshare resort – next to the Lake Buena Vista golf course. Disney used market studies and competitive analysis to prepare a development program and to determine site capacity. Disney would develop 74 acres on this site into their first timeshare resort.
Disney Development asked several architecture firms to submit proposals for the timeshare project and, after a design competition among the finalists, chose Bassenian/Lagoni for the residential portion and Richardson Nagy Martin Architecture to design the Florida project’s clubhouse and sales office. Both firms were based in Southern California.
Disney specified a Key West theme that captured the flavor of an architectural style described as turn-of-the-century Victorian with a lot of Caribbean influence. Atypical of attached housing, the buildings were arranged on the diagonal so that there are windows on three sides rather than just in the front and back of each unit. Since units were designed as a “home away from home”, interiors were to have upscale designs with a casual style.
In January 1990, Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael Eisner revealed to the public that Disney planned to sell “shared vacation ownerships” at Walt Disney World. “We didn’t use the word timeshare, not that we’re afraid to use it,” Eisner said. “We’ve hired the best people in the industry to work for us,” he said. “We feel that we can do it in a really attractive, honest and capable way, and we’re very excited about it”.
Construction of Phase I of the Disney Vacation Club resort began in September 1990.
Below is the initial site plan for the resort, later referred to as “Conch Flats”. Notice the “Sales Center” (to the right of building 16), which would be the first of three at Walt Disney World (the second one would be at Boardwalk and the third one at Saratoga Springs). Building 16 would be used as model rooms.
Pre-sales started at $48 per point and rose to $51 per point when sales officially began in October 1991 at the DVC Preview Center (renamed to Commodore House on Dec 20, 1991), a 15,000-square foot sales and marketing center. As a comparison, DVC today charges $140 per point for this resort.
The marketing and sales program was intentionally low key, informative, and professional. Besides the DVC Preview Center, marketing brochures were left for visitors at Disney World’s 9,000-plus hotel rooms. Two booths, one at the Magic Kingdom and one at Epcot Center, also distributed information to those who asked for it.
No gifts or other incentives were offered for visitors to go to the Vacation Club Preview Center and hear the sales pitch. The first 30 minutes of the sales presentation consisted of an informative and entertaining ten-minute multimedia overview about the Walt Disney Company followed by two six-minute video introductions to the key features, benefits, and realities of the Disney Vacation Club.
The rooms and amenities of the resort were positioned as upscale.
Here is a photo from 1992 of the antique yellow bus under the portico at the Commodore House at the Disney Vacation Club resort. This bus was used to transport guests to the sales center and return them to their resort afterwards.
Commodore House had a covered porch that ran the entire length of the building looking over the golf pond. It had rocking chairs and was an elegant setting (and very conducive to selling a luxury timeshare). The porch was accessible from the ground as well as from the interior of the center – so guests could stroll along the porch and enjoy the rocking chairs even during after-hours for the sales center. Your DVC Guide would then walk with you next door to Building 16 to view the models.
With the benefit of Disney’s reputation for quality, a large consumer base, and a new twist on an old product, approximately one in four families who visited Commodore House decided to purchase. Around 1,500 sales were made during the first six months alone (an average sale consisting of 250 points – the minimum was 230 points). Sales in the first year totaled about $50 million. One fantastic perk that new buyers received back then was free theme park admission until Dec. 31, 1999.
The Disney Vacation Club Resort opened for members using their membership on December 20, 1991 with just 50 units open, along with Turtle Krawl, the village center, and core recreational facilities, including a main swimming pool and two tennis courts.
The resort continued to open in phases, with phase I completed in August 1992, phase II completed in October 1993, and phase III completed in May 1994. By the end of 1994, the resort was 45% sold.
With the opening of Disney’s Vero Beach Resort in September 1995, the resort’s name needed to change. On January 15, 1996, the Disney Vacation Club Resort was renamed to Disney’s Old Key West Resort.
In 1998, Old Key West Resort finally sold out, but then Disney announced a minor expansion. When DVC announced the Villas at the Wilderness Lodge in August 1998, they also announced that the Commodore House DVC Sales Center would be demolished to complete the plans for the resort. OKW buildings 62, 63 and 64 were constructed on the site of the Commodore House.
At that time, the DVC Sales Center was moved to Boardwalk Villas where it remained until sales began for Saratoga Springs in 2003. The WDW DVC sales center has been at the Saratoga Springs location ever since.
Old Key West, the original “Disney Vacation Club” resort, with its waterfront village of colorful, clapboard-sided vacation villas, created a new type of accommodation. For the first time, guests had access to an on-property resort with multiple bedrooms, several pools, a general store, various children’s play areas and outdoor barbecue grills.
The first members bought ownership in “The Disney Vacation Club” with no guarantee that additional resorts would ever be built. Yet here we are now with 13 DVC resorts available and certainly more in various stages of design and development.
For more information on Old Key West, see our OKW Resort page.
Below is a DVC promotional video from 1993 with images of the Disney Vacation Club resort.
For a comprehensive telling of the entire DVC story, please refer to our History of DVC section.
An effort to refresh fabrics and decor at The Villas at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel kicked off in 2016 and should be completed soon.
Below are some photos showing the resulting decor from this soft goods refurbishment.
luaulei321 (Jennifer) was kind enough to provide the above photos.
The new DVC expansion at the Wilderness Lodge is well under way. The cabins and villas for Copper Creek Villas and Cabins, as well as the new pool and dining for both the new DVC and the existing one (Boulder Ridge Villas), are all coming along.
Disney Vacation Club announced today that Boulder Ridge Cove (the former Hidden Springs Pool) at Boulder Ridge Villas at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge (formerly known as The Villas at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge) is scheduled to open in summer 2017, featuring a larger sun deck and zero-entry pool. The new pool will feature an abandoned rock quarry theme, including a “Boulder Ridge Railway and Mining Co.” water tower and vintage mine cart.
Here is a closer look at the pool area.
In addition to the new pool, there will be a brand-new Quick Service restaurant, Geyser Point Bar & Grill, located between the pool and lagoon.
Here is a brief video to give you an idea of the state of the construction.
Below are some photos of the current construction for more clarity.
Note: You can click on any of the photos below to see a larger version.
In 1996, Disney Vacation Club opened it’s first mixed-use resort – part deluxe hotel and part DVC villas – at the BoardWalk.
Based on the success of Disney’s BoardWalk Villas, Disney decided to take a similar but slightly different approach with it’s next development. Instead of developing another brand new mixed-use resort, it decided for the first time to add on DVC villas at an existing deluxe hotel (a pattern which DVC would end up repeating many times).
In August 1998, with Disney’s Old Key West Resort recently sold out, Disney Vacation Development (DVD), operators of Disney Vacation Club (DVC), announced it’s fifth DVC resort. The third proposed ownership development at Walt Disney World Resort would be located immediately next to and adjoining Disney’s Wilderness Lodge in the Magic Kingdom Park Resort area.
Initial plans for the proposed DVC resort called for the development of a 136-unit free-standing, five-story vacation ownership resort consisting of studio, one- and two-bedroom vacation villas on a 4-acre site adjoining Disney’s Wilderness Lodge. Development was slated to begin in the spring of 1999.
By building the resort on land immediately adjacent to the Wilderness Lodge, Disney was able to spend less on infrastructure items, such as parking and restaurants. “We’ll be able to take advantage of their front desk and all of their restaurants,” said Mariska Elia, a Vacation Club spokesman.
On April 14, 1999, Disney executives and resort industry representatives, along with a team of costumed Disney railway workers, officiated over the groundbreaking of the newest vacation ownership project — The Villas at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge (VWL) — as they commemorated the “union” of two Disney resorts.
On November 15, 2000, The Villas at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge opened and became the 5th DVC resort. Recalling the 1860’s railroad hotels of the American West, the villas offered the comforts of home amid the rustic and majestic beauty of Disney’s Wilderness Lodge.
On April 1, 2015, DVC opened Disney’s Polynesian Villas & Bungalows, which featured unique over the water bungalows.
In May 2015, Disney filed plans for an expansion of Disney’s Wilderness Lodge which included 26 standalone cabins. Plans included demolishing the Hidden Springs quiet pool. Besides the Hidden Springs pool, the beach, marina and playground were all closed as a result of the construction.
It wasn’t until September 22, 2015 that Disney confirmed that the expansion would be DVC’s 14th development and the second at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge.
In May 2016, DVC announced that the proposed new Disney Vacation Club Resort would be known as Copper Creek Villas & Cabins at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge.
DVC also announced that the original Disney Vacation Club property at the resort – The Villas at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge (VWL) – will be renamed Boulder Ridge Villas at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge (BRV).
Three years ago – on October 23, 2013 – The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa opened and became the 12th Disney Vacation Club resort.
Back in 2011, Disney was selling points at three DVC resorts at Disney World — Bay Lake Tower, Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas, and Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa.
On March 23, 2011, news broke that Disney had filed plans on March 8 for an expansion at the Grand Floridian – Disney’s flagship resort at Walt Disney World.
The plans showed a T-shaped building.
The expansion, which was widely rumored to be a DVC resort, would be placed in between the Grand Floridian and the Wedding Pavilion.
In August 2011, Disney filed a notice of commencement for the project.
On December 8, 2011, DVC officially announced a project to build a DVC addition next to the Grand Floridian at the DVC Annual Meeting.
Concept art released by Disney showed the resort would be as upscale as the hotel.
The public watched as the new DVC resort began to take shape.
The following time-lapse video shows the construction from start to finish.
Sales to existing DVC members began on May 23, 2013. “When Disney Vacation Club members and guests stay at our newest resort, they will have access to all of the wonderful amenities available nearby at the jewel in the crown of Disney’s vacation kingdom – Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa – including spectacular pools, award-winning dining, extensive recreation options, and transportation to all of the amazing theme parks at Walt Disney World,” Ken Potrock (senior vice president and general manager, Disney Vacation Club) said.
VGF sales grabbed a large share of DVC’s sales in 2013 and 2014 – until it sold out in 2015.
Members were excited to see the model room, as it showed an elegance not typical of previous DVC resorts.
On October 23, 2013, The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian opened.
The video below shows the grand opening ceremony.
As the smallest DVC resort at Walt Disney World (100 units with a maximum of 147 rooms), it can be difficult at times for DVC members to book VGF.
The current price per point when purchasing direct from DVC is $180 per point (the initial price per point for members back in May 2013 was $145).
People who are not DVC members can book stays at VGF either direct through Disney, or by “renting points” from DVC members.
The lake view rooms offer a great view of the Seven Seas Lagoon.
For more information, please refer to our resort page for The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. Or, ask DVC members questions on our discussion forum.
