I don't think you are the only one that feels that way. But my point was that there are just two population groups in resale: those buying for home resort priority and those buying with the idea of trading out. If you belong to the former the resale restrictions don't matter too much and if you belong to the latter my point was that DRR would likely be too high of a price (if resale restrictions didn't exist) for that population to consider when AKV/SSR/OKW are selling for much less. It's really a question if a resort of that size can support the former population, I suspect yes but because of the larger resort size it will be a buyers market to a degree depressing prices some but likely not to SSR level
This of course requires the Skyliner to work as intended and run pre and post park hours. I have no reason to suspect the Skyliner won't work well.
But the point is pricing is all about supply and demand. To me there's really 3 categories:
1) Those that only care about their home resort.
2) Those that primarily want to stay at their home resort, but occasionally want to move around.
and
3) Those that like their home resort - but the priority is the ability to move around.
You point out category 1 and 3, but did not include the middle of the road folks. As you say - Category 1 will gladly buy at Riviera, Category 3 won't touch it. The folks in the middle category, they could really go either way, but it will mostly depend on price. A resort like SSR - you mostly get Category 3 and then a few people that actually like the resort.
Either way you slice it, the DEMAND for Riviera is cutting out the third category, and at least some of the second. Is that 50% of the normal demand for resale contracts? Probably not, but it will be some significant portion of the demand. Now the location will boost the number of people in Category 1 versus say AKV, but it won't be as high as say the Poly or Beach Club.
Now when you look at SUPPLY you can pretty much ignore all the factors that go into demand. SUPPLY is almost totally based on the size of the resort. I do believe that roughly the same fraction of owners sell their timeshares every year, regardless of location. Sure a brand new resort has a low fraction of sellers, but once you get to 4-5 years on the market, I think SUPPLY is a steady fraction. However, a resort like VGF, which only has 2.5 million points, has a lower supply than say BLT which has 5.7 million points. Since Riviera has 7 million points, supply should be on par with the larger resorts like AKV and OKW which are in that ball park.
So you are looking at a resort that will have higher than average supply and lower than average demand. I just can't imagine that this will support a price in the high range of the resale market. I agree that it probably will stay above SSR and maybe AKV just because it will be a popular location, but I don't think it will be much higher and could even be slightly lower depending on the demand of buyers. It certainly will NOT be on par with VGF.