Cancellation due to Hurricane Sandy

[paceluv]

My family recently had to cancel our vacation due to Hurricane Sandy. Our flights were cancelled and full refunds were received for our park tickets. Our purchased DVC points were held instead of refunded. I think this was unfair due to the extraordinary circumstances. Do I have any recourse? Thanks for your response.

[Dean]

Originally Posted by paceluv

My family recently had to cancel our vacation due to Hurricane Sandy. Our flights were cancelled and full refunds were received for our park tickets. Our purchased DVC points were held instead of refunded. I think this was unfair due to the extraordinary circumstances. Do I have any recourse? Thanks for your response.

It depends. Was the hurricane warning issues for your local or did it just affect your flight? The determining factor seems to be that a hurricane warning had to be issued for your area of residence. This was a fairly recent change, prior these issues were handled on a case by case basis without a formal policy.

[tjkraz]

Not clear about your reference to "Our purchased DVC points..."

Are you an owner or did you rent points from a third party?

[DMKEDM]

First, mega-sympathy about your hurricane-ruined vacation. That stinks.

However, storms--hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, etc.--ruin people's Disney/DVC vacation plans pretty regularly (it happened to me w/"Snowmageddon" 3 years ago)...the situation really isn't particularly "extraordinary" from a DVC booking point of view.

If you own the points you used for the canceled vacation, and if you canceled w/DVC/Disney at least the day before your arrival, your points are now in holding--meaning you cannot book using those points any earlier than 60 days prior to arrival, or outside the current use year. Restrictive to be sure, but hopefully you can use the points within those restrictions.

If you rented them, then the owner you rented from faces the same restrictions if he/she were to try to re-rent them. In this case you could ask the owner if he/she or you could try re-renting, and possibly get a refund (at least partial) if you're successful. But it is, generally, much harder to rent within the holding points restrictions...even if you (or the owners) find a renter, there's a reasonable chance it will be at a lower (to reflect the restrictions) cost per point. It's certainly not particularly "fair" to expect the owner to absorb the hurricane-related loss...

Anyway, some folks would tell you that weather cancellations are what travel insurance is for. I'm not a fan of travel insurance for DVC points (it doesn't return you points; it only gives you a maintenance fee-baesd value for them), but each person will make his/her own determination about that.

Bottom line: Sandy stunk and still stinks. But with the frequency of bad storms and disrupted travel as a result, it's neither unusual nor unfair to enforce a policy that dictates the degree to which--if any--a refund is possible.

Once again, my sympathy to you & your family. Hope you do have holding points that you can use to "make up for it."

[My5Mouseketeers]

I am certainly no DVC expert.

I do know that one of my friends had reservations at BCV during the storm. When she had to cancel do the storm, they let her rebook another trip.

We have reservations for HHI over Spring Break. I had borrowed points for the trip. Since my kids missed 8 days of school, I was afraid they would take away Spring Break. I was thinking of changing to November. When I called DVC to see what my options were, they said that since my issues were due to the storm, they would let me "unborrow" the points. ONLY because of the Superstorm. They did tell me that there was nothing they could do about the points that would expire before November.

Turns out they are going to make up the days without taking Spring Break away. Everyone I know has been talking about how wonderfully accommodating Disney was through the storm. Sandy hitting during "Jersey Week" certainly messed up a lot of peoples plans.

I would call Disney again

[Brian Noble]

Our flights were cancelled and full refunds were received for our park tickets. Our purchased DVC points were held instead of refunded.

I'm wondering the same thing Tim is: did you rent this stay from another owner, or are you a Member?

If you rented the stay, the terms should have been specified in the rental agreement. In the few instances I have rented my (non-Disney) timeshares to others, the rental agreement clearly stated that there would be no refunds for any reason other than the timeshare itself being uninhabitable. I further encouraged any renters to buy travel insurance if they are not willing to self-insure. I suspect many DVC owners have similar terms. After all, this is exactly what travel insurance is for.