RCI Platinum upgrade question

[Todd425]

I have an RCI Platinum membership and have a 2 BR booked with our points at the Sheraton Vistana in Orlando from June 3-10. When we booked online we had the option of selecting up to 5 resorts in the area to upgrade to if they were available. I selected a bunch of Disney resorts and as of today 2 of them have 2 BR suites available per the Disney website.

This sounds too good to be true - can someone elaborate on how these Platinum upgrades work? If a 2 BR suite is available at say Animal Kingdom Lodge and we have that selected as an upgrade resort and RCI doesn’t notify us within 3 days that we got the upgrade can we “complain”? Any insight would be appreciated- thank you in advance!

 

[bizaro86]

I have an RCI Platinum membership and have a 2 BR booked with our points at the Sheraton Vistana in Orlando from June 3-10. When we booked online we had the option of selecting up to 5 resorts in the area to upgrade to if they were available. I selected a bunch of Disney resorts and as of today 2 of them have 2 BR suites available per the Disney website.

This sounds too good to be true - can someone elaborate on how these Platinum upgrades work? If a 2 BR suite is available at say Animal Kingdom Lodge and we have that selected as an upgrade resort and RCI doesn’t notify us within 3 days that we got the upgrade can we “complain”? Any insight would be appreciated- thank you in advance!

Those 2 bedroom suites aren't available to RCI. RCI only gets what Disney deposits to them, which hasn't included any 2 bedrooms at Disney World for years.

 

[tschwa2]

RCI hasn't had any 2BR Disney Deposits in the last 4 or more years. It doesn't matter what a resort has available, platinum upgrades are only into RCI deposited inventory. Even then it has to be available at 14 days or less and has to be available during the one or two times a day when RCI runs its batch search for matches. Even on the crazy off chance that a 2 br DVC is deposited and doesn't match to someone with an ongoing search it is likely going to get snapped up within minutes or seconds of appearing online and won't stay around long enough to match to a platinum upgrade request.

 

[Eric B]

There are a couple of 2 BR DVC Hilton Head weeks available in the Registry Collection. They’re listed there as being “RCI Signature Selections” but don’t show up when I look on the RCI side. I would guess that if someone deposits a 2 BR DVC week, RCI segments it into Registry instead of making it available to just anyone in RCI.

 

[Todd425]

Thank you everyone for helping me understand how this works! As a follow up - is there a section on here where there is some sort of ranking of favorite resorts in the Disney/Universal area of Orlando? Even better would be any information on resorts in this area that Platinum RCI members have had success getting upgraded to. I’m sorry for all the questions, just trying to learn the ropes!

 

[tschwa2]

There are a couple of 2 BR DVC Hilton Head weeks available in the Registry Collection. They’re listed there as being “RCI Signature Selections” but don’t show up when I look on the RCI side. I would guess that if someone deposits a 2 BR DVC week, RCI segments it into Registry instead of making it available to just anyone in RCI.

DVC owners don't specify what they deposit. They deposit x number of points. DVC decides which resort, week and what size unit to deposit. If it is a higher number of points they simply deposit more 1 BR units. They also bulk so it isn't as though Jo Smith deposits today and DVC makes good on that the following week. DVC and RCI have an agreement about the minimum deposits that occur per year. If at the end of the year if owners have deposited significantly greater or fewer points then the standard they will make an adjustment likely the following year. DVC probably has a separate agreement with registry collection which may require a few larger units again based on the averaging that DVC owners deposit into the Registry collection for other Registry inventory.

 

[mdurette]

Unless RCI gives you the option to upgrade to DVC 1BR (and you are ok with that) I would pull DVC from my upgrade request and look for something else to add (if you need/want it)