Why the Villas at Grand Californian Refurbishment Fell Short: A Look Inside

Paul and Amy Krieger recently posted a Room Tour of a refurbished Deluxe Studio at the Villas at Grand Californian (VGC) and Lauren De La Cruz recently ranked VGC as the worst refurbishment in recent history.  I also stayed in a Deluxe Studio at VGC in July for Disneyland Resort’s 70th Anniversary and came away underwhelmed by its supposed hard goods refurbishment.

So what happened at VGC to cause such a disappointing refurbishment?  Let’s start with a little background.

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What Was Expected from the Grand Californian Refurbishment?

How Often Are DVC Rooms Refurbished?

Who Pays for DVC Refurbishments?

What Was Actually Refurbished at VGC?

Was There Enough Money for a Proper Refurbishment?

How Does VGC Compare to Other DVC Refurbishments?

What Might Explain the Disappointing Outcome?

What Can DVC Owners at Grand Californian Do Next?

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How often are DVC rooms refurbished?

DVC tries to operate a 100% occupancy, meaning that every room is occupied 365 days a year.  With this high volume of traffic, DVC rooms experience high usage and therefore need to be refurbished often.

There is no official policy for DVC refurbishments; however, DVC refurbs tend to follow an every-7-year schedule.  The first refurbishment is what is called a “soft goods” refurbishment and generally occurs 7 years after a resort’s opening.  A “soft goods” refurb usually replaces items that are most likely to be worn out and generally speaking are soft, such as carpeting, bedding, accent pillows, drapes, shower curtains, and other textiles within the rooms.  In recent years, we have also seen sofa beds get replaced with pull-down Murphy beds during soft refurbs such as the ongoing Copper Creek soft goods refurb. 

The second refurbishment is what is called a “hard goods” refurbishment and generally occurs 14 years after a resort’s opening.  This is a more thorough refurbishment and generally includes new lighting, furniture, bathroom tile and fixtures, floors, appliances, paint, and decor.  A hard goods refurbishment can often make a room look completely different.  After this, the cycle repeats, and 7 years from its hard goods refurb, a soft goods refurb will be scheduled.  These timelines are rough outlines, as in recent history, due to the pandemic and in some cases due to inventory shortages or scheduling delays, some refurbishments have been delayed.

Who pays for refurbishment on DVC rooms?

The short answer to this question is owners pay for it.  The longer answer is that each year when you pay your DVC annual dues, some part of that goes towards a fund which is put away for refurbishment.  This amount is documented every year in each resort’s condo association budget and is called Capital Reserves.  You can think about it like an escrow fund for your Mortgage but instead of using it to pay property taxes and home insurance it is put aside to be used to pay for the long term maintenance of each resort.  Capital Reserves generally are used for things like roof replacement/repair, interior refurbishment, exterior building painting, Common Element Renovation (which can include exterior and interior refurbishment of shared items such as transportation, pools, hallways, etc) and pavement resurfacing for parking lots.

It is interesting to note that for the Grand Californian, shared items such as roofing, exterior painting, Common Elements and pavement resurfacing is shared between the 48 DVC Vacation Units and 203 Hotel Units and DVC carries about 30% of the costs for these shared items.  The Grand Californian Resort has more than 203 Hotel rooms, so it is likely that the costs are only shared with the hotel rooms that share the same “wing” of the Grand Californian with the Villas.

What was refurbished at VGC?

The Villas at Grand Californian was opened in September 2009 and received a soft goods refurbishment in 2017 roughly 7 years after its opening date.  Based on the pattern of refurbishing DVC rooms, VGC should have received its hard goods refurbishment in 2023 or 2024 but as I said earlier, the pandemic and other delays have often pushed refurbishments out further than normal.

So in early 2025, DVC began what should have been a hard goods refurbishment for VGC.  However the majority of things that you would expect to be changed with a hard goods refurb were non-existent.  For the Deluxe Studios, the major changes were the addition of a murphy bed, and a change from carpet to vinyl flooring.  The bathrooms are exactly the same, the lighting is the same, the furniture is the same, even the coffee pot and microwave are the same.  

So why did VGC not receive the same kind of significant refurbishment that went into other DVC resorts?

I have heard a lot of reasons why the VGC refurb wasn’t as thorough as other DVC resorts, from higher construction costs in Calfornia than Florida to DVC themselves telling owners that this was only a soft goods refurbishment.

Was there enough money to refurbish the VGC rooms?

I did a bit of research here and what I found in the 2025 Annual Budget for VGC, there was $10,668,696 in the Capital Reserves fund with an additional $1,800,718 expected in 2025 from annual dues and other sources such as interest income.  This means there should have been $12,423,333 available in the Capital Reserve fund when the refurbishment of Grand Californian started.  Additionally, in the 2024 Annual Budget for VGC there was $13,231,387 available after Annual Dues, meaning that $2,562,691 had already been spent from Capital Reserves in 2024 or $53,389 per unit (48 units).  I think it is safe to assume that at least some of this was spent in anticipation of the refurbishment as in prior years the Capital Reserve fund had been going up.  

While Capital Reserves can be used for a number of different things and not just interior refurbishment, it is useful to look at how much money could be allocated to each unit for comparison’s sake.

Using the 2025 budget, we can estimate that there was $258,819 available in Capital Reserve funds for each of the 48 units for the Villas at Grand Californian.  

To put that into perspective as best as we can, lets look at two other recent refurbishments in Walt Disney World, Bay Lake Tower and Boulder Ridge Villas.

Comparing Grand Californian to Other DVC Refurbishment Costs

Bay Lake Tower Refurbishment Cost

Bay Lake Tower opened in August 2009, just 1 month before VGC, and received a soft goods refurb in 2016-2017.  It is currently finishing up a hard goods refurb that started in late 2024 and will be completed in 2025. The BLT hard goods refurb changed nearly everything in the room, with the Deluxe Studios receiving a murphy bed, new platform bed, new flooring, updated lighting, updated outlets with USB ports, a new backsplash for the kitchenette, new appliances, new furniture, a fully refurbished bathroom/sink area and I’m sure more that I am missing.  It truly felt like a hard goods refurb as the rooms look completely different after the refurbishment.

While Bay Lake Tower is a much larger resort than Villas at Grand Californian, dividing it by the number of units makes this a more apples-to-apples comparison.  BLT is a relatively good comparison to VGC as well because it has 120 dedicated 2-bedrooms, 147 2-bedroom lock-offs, and 14 Grand Villas, making up its 281 units, while VGC has 23 dedicated 2-bedrooms, 23 2-bedroom lock-offs, and 2 grand villas.  So each unit is relatively comparable.

In the 2024 Annual Budget, BLT reported roughly $45.7M in Capital Reserves with an additional $7.66M added via annual dues for 2024 – meaning $190,154.58 could be allocated across its 281 units.

Following up in the 2025 Annual Budget there was $36,672,352 in Capital Reserves before the annual dues, that is to say they spent $16,761,084 of the Capital Reserves or $59,647.99 per unit. BLT’s refurbishment was started but not completed in 2024 – so it is likely that more money will be spent on the refurbishment – but that amount is not too far off from the $53,389 spent per unit in 2024 out of VGC’s Capital Reserve fund.

Boulder Ridge Refurbishment Cost

Boulder Ridge Villas is a smaller resort that received a hard goods refurb in 2022, still larger than the Villas at Grand Californian, but let’s look at the BRV Capital Reserve fund.

In the 2021 budget, BRV reported $17.8M in Capital Reserves and an estimated additional budget of $2.97M or a total Capital Reserves balance of $20,800,155. For the 2022 budget, the Capital Reserves were $15.88M with a $3M budget for dues or total Capital Reserves of $18,933,561 meaning $4,915,080 was spent. Then in the 2023 budget, $6.29M was left, meaning $12.64M was spent.

For BRV, almost everything needed replacing, though – roof, interior, external painting, and common areas – but a total of $17.5M was spent across 2 years. 

There are 136 Vacation Units in BRV, but lots of standalone studios and 1-bedrooms. For a more apples-to-apples comparison, there are 44 2-bedrooms, 45 2-bedroom lockoffs, 20 standalone studios, and 27 standalone 1-bedrooms. So let’s call it 114 units for a fairer comparison to VGC, which is divided into 2-bedrooms and 2 Grand Villas.

That gives us roughly $154,000 per unit spent on the refurb, including all of the other things they did, like roof replacement, etc.

At its peak, BRV had $20,800,155 in Capital Reserves or $182,457.50 per unit (using 114 units).

If VGC spent $154,000 per unit, the refurbishment would cost $7,392,000, and there would still be $5,839,387 left in the Capital Reserve fund, and that isn’t including the $2.5M that was already spent in 2024.

Was the Grand Californian Capital Reserve Underfunded?

One question I did see raised was about the “Estimated Current Replacement Costs” listed in the VGC Budget.  This amount shows a $35M cost for interior refurbishment and has led some to believe that VGC was underfunded because $35M was needed, and at its peak, the Capital Reserve fund only had $13.2M.

However, the “Estimated Current Replacement Costs” is actually the amount it would cost to replace everything on the interior.  Think for insurance purposes if they were calculating how much it would cost if they needed to replace the building.  It includes everything, even the plumbing, electrical wiring, drywall, etc.  A hard goods refurbishment replaces a lot, but it does not replace everything.

Just to prove that this number is not what it takes for a hard goods refurb, lets look again at BLT and BRV.  Bay Lake Tower’s Estimated Current Replacement Costs is $81M and BRV’s Estimated Current Replacement Costs is $27.5M.  In both cases, BLT and BRV did not have anywhere close to the amount listed in the “Estimated Current Replacement Costs”.

So what really caused the refurbishment to be so lackluster?

The truth is, we really don’t know why the VGC refurb was so lacking. I believe I have established that there were sufficient funds in the Capital Reserve fund as of the 12/2024 budget to pay for a refurbishment of the rooms.  But, there could be a very logical explanation.  Maybe there was something more important than the room refurbishment, such as a structural issue that needed to be addressed and the only way to pay for it was to pull from Capital Reserve funds.  There was also a refurbishment of the hotel side going on at the same time, which has been completed, so I don’t think it was due to a labor shortage or due to a lack of materials.  This is the first time that DVC has done a hard goods refurbishment at Disneyland.  Because the hotel side and DVC side were done together, it does worry me that they may have mixed all of the funds together and spent most of the money on the hotel side.  This would be a misuse of the Capital Reserve funds, which are paid for by DVC owners at VGC and should never be used on the hotel side except in cases where there is shared infrastructure, such as the roof, and even then, DVC should only bear 30% of the costs.

Grand Californian Owners Should Want Answers

I do believe that DVC management owes us an explanation.  If you own at the Villas at Grand Californian and agree that this refurbishment is not up to par with other DVC hard goods refurbishments, I would encourage you to contact DVC in writing and let them know your thoughts.  Make sure to include the facts I’ve mentioned above about the Capital Reserve funds.  If more people bring this issue to light, I believe DVC leadership will take a closer look at it, and perhaps it will get them to respond with an explanation.

The other option, if you are an owner at VGC, is to make sure you attend the annual meeting this year in December.  Each year, DVC has an Annual Meeting and has an agenda broken down by resort.  Owners are able to attend the meeting for their resort as well as a more general session.  Questions are usually allowed at each meeting, too.  For Florida-based resorts, DVC has actually moved to a quarterly meeting, but this is not true for resorts outside of Florida.  The date for the annual meeting has not yet been released, but when it does, you’ll definitely hear about it on DVCFan.com!

Let us know in the comments your thoughts on the Grand Californian refurbishment! Are you disappointed? Do you think we deserve answers as to why this didn’t get the love it deserves?