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Re: Global Access thru Orange Lake Resorts (by Le Y.):

I'd like to share my experience also about the Global Access.

I have been an owner as Orange Lake Florida since 2000. I own a 1 bedroom in splash lagoon village. (Forgot it its west or north village.)

Anyhow I had not visited in 4 years. I'm actually here as I type. Basically at checkin I was identified as an owner. They offered me $50 gift certificates for use in OL and amusement park tickets at wholesale to listen to a 1 hour presentation. I agreed.

At the presentation they told me the story about OL not joining the points system when RCI had offered it to them years ago. OL was waiting to see how the points system would turn out. And now they are going to create their own OL points system to link into RCI instead. Hence the Global blahblahblah. Then they said 65% of the resorts in RCI are in points already and my week at OL would have limited trade in value because of this.

In the end you would only have to speak to an OL representative and they would handle all the exchange details whether within an OL affiliated resort or with RCI.

Then they took me on a tour of the new built buildings. Near River Island. (The 7+ story buildings.)

THEN they told me that my one bedroom had only ~77,000 points and they recommended that I should use the equity I had in my current 1 bedroom and purchase a 2 bedroom instead to get more points to use for the system. I think they quoted me about $16,000 or so for the upgrade which included the use of the equity of my 1 bedroom.

Basically sounds like OL is trying to make money off existing weeks owners by scaring them into thinking that they have to convert to points and that whatever unit they have they must upgrade to a larger unit. Funny thing is I never got the chance to ask them how much it would cost just to join the Global without upgrading my unit. Basically after I said no to the $16,000 upgrade, the OL rep said thank you and walked away and sent another guy in to give me the gift information.