Great pictures! I asked for the best view on a higher floor, so we'll see what develops. Thanks for these!
Dave
But of course, doesn't "everyone" ask for the "best" view? I can't say everyone requests the high floor because, we've often found that the lower floors in some instances are as good as, if not better, than the high floors.
When it comes to unit location, Hawaii is likely one of those destinations where it's actually pretty important to the enjoyment of the trip. Because so many want the "best" view, most resorts have a hierarchy of sorts to make the playing field a little more even. In general terms it runs similar to this:
1. Owners staying on their time in their view category
1a. Points reservations are given their paid for view category
1b. status and date of confirmation act as tie breakers
2. Renters receive what they have paid for
3. Exchangers who own within the same brand
4. All other exchangers.
This is by far not a hard and fast list for every single resort or resort group out there but, in 20 some odd years of owning and exchanging, it's been a reasonable reliable gauge for us. I have seen owners at a resort complain that an exchanger received an ocean front unit when they were still assigned an ocean side unit, which is what they purchased. However every resort we own at stipulates that you will stay in the unit type and view category that you purchase. If it just so happens an exchanger gets an ocean front unit deposited by the owner of that view category, that's just the way it goes. Granted that exchanger has the lowest status and will likely get what's left over in that category, dependent upon what's available on the day they check in (read this as they could get a higher floor that was available on Friday but an owner receive a lower floor, which was all that was available on a Saturday check in).
To be sure unit location is a crap shoot when you're an exchanger with little or no status in the system you're exchanging into. Which is why we've switched things around and typically stay within the resort ownership group when we exchange. We rarely exchange our Marriott ownership for anything other than another Marriott. The exception being when we exchange back into a resort we own at in Breckenridge. Even then we're relegated to the 4th group but have slightly higher status in that group as we're actually MF paying owners at the resort (we still get less than preferred unit location but haven't ever received the dumpster view unit). With Hilton we NEVER leave the HGVC family. Our Spinnaker ownership never gets exchanged in RCI because, well, it's to expensive and Branson holds little value in RCI's exchange world. Our Breckenridge unit was purchased for personal use only and mainly because they allow owners to bring their dogs......and our dogs absolutely LOVE Breckenridge.
We use to own DRI but, MF's being what they are, we had to trim some of the fat from our portfolio. DRI was as expensive as Marriott, more expensive than Hilton and was equal in quality. So our two DRI units went back to DRI as deed backs a couple of years ago. Now when we want to go to Maui we'll have to use our Marriott ownership and stay at the Marriott timeshare. In some ways it's to bad. KBC is a very nice resort, we enjoyed our time there and it was reasonably easy to reserve the unit type/view we wanted. Unfortunately the fee's had climbed to nearly $4,000 between MF's and Club dues........so it had to go. Maui's great but not THAT great.