In April 2023 Disney announced the Cabins at Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground would convert to a Disney Vacation Club (DVC) property and become the 17th DVC resort. This announcement generated a wide of range of emotions from Disney World fans from unadulterated joy from those who are thrilled the resort of their childhood is becoming affiliated with DVC to outright disgust from those who are afraid (if not outright terrified) the unique character of Fort Wilderness will be ruined by making it yet another DVC property. Additionally, this announcement also led to speculation that Disney was expanding DVC to the resort properties classified as Moderate Resorts – Port Orleans French Quarter, Port Orleans Riverside, Caribbean Beach, and Coronado Springs, along with the Cabins at Fort Wilderness.
While this leap of logic is easy to understand, it is highly unlikely we will be seeing new DVC Villas added to any of the Moderate Resort Hotels or existing rooms at those hotels repurposed to DVC Villas. For one thing, even though the Cabins at Fort Wilderness were binned under the Moderate category for purposes of pricing and perks they are not a good comparison to other Moderate Resorts, all hotels. This is because staying at Fort Wilderness, whether it is in a cabin, a motor home, or a tent, is a unique experience completely different from any other Disney World resort. Simply put, due to its unique history, character, and amenities, Fort Wilderness cannot be easily compared to or evaluated against any other resort accommodations at Disney World.
A more compelling reason why DVC will not be expanding to the Moderate Resorts beyond the issue of how particular resorts are classified by Disney is the fact that if Disney was going to do this, they would have done it already. In fact, Disney made a conscious decision not to expand DVC to Moderate Resorts on two separate occasions. The first instance where Disney could have easily expanded to a Moderate Resort is the Grand Destino Tower at Coronado Springs. Opened in July 2019, the Grand Destino Tower is a 15-story tower with over 300 rooms and its own dining facilities along with easy access to the rest of what Coronado Springs has to offer. Had Disney wanted to they could have made the Grand Destino Tower a DVC resort attached to Coronado Springs in the same way that Bay Lake Towers is a DVC resort attached to the Contemporary. That they chose not to go this route is significant.
The second example is the Riviera Resort. Opened in December 2019, the Riviera is a magnificent DVC resort near EPCOT themed along the lines of the French and Italian Riviera. However, the Riviera is also an easy walk to another Moderate Resort, Caribbean Beach. It would not have been difficult for Disney to give the Riviera a Caribbean theme and attach it to Caribbean Beach. Instead, they made it a separate resort with its own theming and no shared amenities with Caribbean Beach beyond a common walkway connecting the two resorts. As with the decision to not make Grand Destino Tower a DVC resort, the fact that Disney chose to not attach the Riviera to Caribbean Beach should be viewed as significant in terms of how Disney views expanding DVC to the Moderate Resorts.
With the opening of the new tower at the Disneyland Hotel in December 2023, the initial opening of the new cabins at Fort Wilderness in July 2024, and the opening of the new tower at the Polynesian in December 2024, DVC is currently undergoing a significant expansion and this is evidence of DVC’s ongoing popularity and Disney will certainly add additional DVC resorts in the future. Disney has also restarted construction on Reflections a Lakeside Lodge, the once and future DVC resort on the old River Country water park grounds at Fort Wilderness. The resort is now going to be named Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge and it will be the 19th DVC property with a planned opening date in 2027. For further DVC expansion, Disney could also fall back on the practice of repurposing existing rooms at Deluxe Resorts as DVC Villas, as was most recently done with the Big Pine Key building at the Grand Floridian. One easy and almost painfully obvious option for this approach is the turn one or more of the buildings in the South Garden Wing of the Contemporary Resort Hotel into DVC Studios.
However, given the fact that in over 30 years of DVC’s existence, Disney has not shown the slightest inclination to expand DVC to its Moderate Resort Hotels and more important, given Disney’s decisions regarding the theming and DVC affiliations of the Riviera and Grand Destino Tower, we should not expect to see DVC expanding to Coronado Springs, Caribbean Beach, or Port Orleans at any time in the foreseeable future.