There was an extremely complicated situation with the Summer Bay Resort property in Las Vegas that Celebrity acquired from bankruptcy of Leisure Resorts. The Las Vegas resort survived because Harrah's Casino purchased the property and built replacement timeshare units nearby.
I have attended a few of the annual meetings at the Celebrity Resorts property at Brigantine Beach in New Jersey. (Members of our New York timeshare owners group own several weeks there). Celebrity acquired this resort after Leisure Resorts went bankrupt. It had previously been part of the Ramada Vacation Suites group. As soon as Celebrity acquired the Brigantine property, they "kicked out" the long-standing HOA Board that was composed of dedicated owners (including at least one TUG member).
There were no annual meetings for several years. A Special Assessment of approximately $1100. was ordered, and owners were given a very short period of time to pay it. It was a heavy burden to many seniors on a tight budget who had been owners for over 20 years. Owners started to demand that an annual meeting be held, as required by the original legal documents.Celebrity then scheduled a meeting on Friday at 9:00 a.m. at a hard to find location about a mile or two away from the resort. The notices were mailed at the last minute and some arrived after the meeting date.
The meeting was conducted by a slick group of executives from Orlando who, IMHO, were masters of double talk and misinformation. They claimed that all of the legal documents were lost or possibly destroyed when Leisure Resorts acquired the Brigantine Resort. One owner at the meeting stated that he had owned since its inception as a timeshare in the 1980's and had been an HOA member and President for many years. He said that he had saved tons of papers and would gladly provide copies of whatever documents Celebrity wanted. He reported next year that they had never taken him up on his offer.
About 20 owners made their way through a major storm (almost a hurricane) to the last meeting in October 2010. It turned out to be a sales presentation to convert to Points, not even RCI Points, but some sort of program Celebrity had contrived for what amounted to internal changes to other Celebrity properties.
On the positive side, Celebrity has greatly improved the Celebrity property which had fallen into disrepair under the management of Ramada Vacation Resorts and Leisure Resorts. There are a large number of owners who use their weeks every year. The location is excellent--right on a beautiful beach, on a charming upscale island, only 10 minutes from the Atlantic City casinos.
There is a nice, popular restaurant on-site which, I believe, is rented out by Celebrity to a private company. The food and views are excellent but it poses a problem to owners in the summer, because owners have to compete with diners compete for the limited parking spaces.
Hopefully the owners can regain control of the resort. Celebrity, however, owns several weeks, mainly deep off season weeks with virtually no resale value. Many prime summer weeks have been sold via Ebay over the past two years. Many were already converted to RCI Points.
There are owners willing to spend whatever time it takes at the Courthouse to search deeds and compile a mailing list of owners. Any suggestions on what type of legal action can be taken, what type of attorney would handle a situation like this?