using pts for a cruise

[JLitfin]

Who has used their DVC pts to go on one of the Disney Cruises? Do you think it's worth using the pts or would it be better to rent my pts and pay for the cruise? Plus which level would you purchase 9, 8 or 7? There will only be 2 of us going.

Thanks,

[speakupjc]

We have used our points for a cruise during the value season. We felt that it was a great use of points as we got around $8 a point with none of the hassle of renting. I suggest going on the disney website putting in the dates and type of cruise that you want to take (eastern, western, bahamas) look at the price and then divide that number by the number of points needed to cruise. The result will be the $ you will receive per point. If it is to confusing just get me the raw data (price of the cruise and the number of points required) and I will tell you how muich they are offering per point. Whether or not you will be better off cruising on points depends on the season you want to travel in. I have found that value and regular season are where you get the most bang for your buck. If possible I would suggest a cat 10 but a secret porthole cabin for you. Here is the description from cruise critic:

The ship has six staterooms known by insiders as "The Secret Porthole Rooms." They aren't secret at all, but they are a great bargain. In essence if you can get one they are the cost of a cat 10 in what used to be classifed as a cat 9. For more information go to

http://www.*******************/pics.htm


I hope this helps.

[El Nebuloso]

I personally haven't used points for a cruise, but a co-worker has. I think it really comes down to whether or not it is worth it to you.

[MommaluvsDis]

DH and I use our points for cruising all the time and we LOVE it! We just love calling MS and paying our $75 and being done. We don't care to go thru the hassle of renting out our points, we bought them to cruise on.

We love, love, LOVE it!

[JLitfin]

Thanks guys, We're planning the cruise for 2010, and was also looking at the value season. I know it's several years away, but we purchased our pts for going to Disney every other year and already have our trip planned for 2008, our first visit to BCV on pts. It will just be my DH and I as the kids will all be in college, last one graduates HS in 2009 :woohoo: we looked at the price and pts for all 5 of us to go and it's just to many pts.

speakupjc - thanks for your suggestion for figuring out how much per pt it would cost. I really don't want to go through the renting process either. I was thinking about cat 7 or 8 so we're not so far down in the ship, would rather be on one of the upper decks. Isn't cat 9 way down in the ship?

One more question: does the pts for cruising go up each year or do they stay about the same? I did notice the pts are the same for 2007 and 2008. Thanks again.

[speakupjc]

Your welcome! Even though I don't rent I figure out the formula anyway as it will tell me where I will get the most bang for my points so bearing that in mind I then cruise at that time:) Here is an awesome website about the different cats it even gives reviews of cabins as well: http://www.wdwinfo.com/wdwinfo/cruise-new/cr-stateroom-tour.htm.

Yes a cat 9 is on a lower deck but the secret porthole cabins are on deck 5. I told you about them in an earlier post. If you want something other than a secret porthole cabin I would recommend no lower than a cat 8 if you want a window. We are staying in a cat 11 on the 7th deck in October which is a cat 11 (inside cabin). Cat 8's are on the 5,6, and 7 deck and have a window.

[soarin'family]

We used all points for a 7 day cruise one year....and the only out of pocket we had were our two excursions and tips (oh, and the souvenirs!). It felt so great!! :banana:

That was before we had done a point rental, and were scared to rent out our points. However, having just had a successful rental of one of our BCV ressies, I would have to reconsider next time. It really depends on you and it is purely a personal decision.

I am not a numbers person, but I really appreciated the poster who could calculate it out so precisely! Impressive! I'm sure you helped a lot of people!

[Muushka]

I just booked a 7 night special western for 9/08. I saw this thread and wondered how many points it would cost us.
For our CAT (5) it was 420 points :scared1: . We are paying $2632 with a $300 refund when we complete the cruise.

And if we need to cancel for whatever reason (it is 13 months away after all) we will not have the hassle of renting distressed points or trying to use them at non-DVC resorts. And we saved the $75 booking fee.

I agree that using points for a cruise is easy, but the thing that really is unappealing to me is the inability to cancel the cruise. Oh, that and the value.:thumbsup2

[tidefan]

I just booked a 7 night special western for 9/08. I saw this thread and wondered how many points it would cost us.
For our CAT (5) it was 420 points :scared1: . We are paying $2632 with a $300 refund when we complete the cruise.

And if we need to cancel for whatever reason (it is 13 months away after all) we will not have the hassle of renting distressed points or trying to use them at non-DVC resorts. And we saved the $75 booking fee.

I agree that using points for a cruise is easy, but the thing that really is unappealing to me is the inability to cancel the cruise. Oh, that and the value.:thumbsup2

We are going in January (Me, DW, and DD4) on a 7-night Eastern during the value season and it was only 327 points for all 3 of us (Cat 11). Came out to about $8.5 per point...

... But remember, that includes all food and non-alcoholic beverages...

[pogopossum]

we have cruised four times using points and have never felt like it wasn't a good deal. we really like the ease of calling up and booking the thing and then we are done. we aren't the type that will cancel unless something catastrophic comes up. and if that is the case then what to do with points will be the last thing we are thinking about. we'll just figure out how to use them somehow.

our last cruise had many there using points to cruise, including a single guy next door to us, in a category 6 stateroom. we like the extra space of the verandah.

remember that each year of dvc ownership, cost per point will go down, so our cruises have cost us less than $10 per point at this time and i was told by a guide that you figure your cost at $5 per point for a vacation. so our first 7 day cruise in 2000 will have cost us $2250 for three in a category 6 stateroom. sounds pretty comparable to the cash deals out there. and we talked to a family looking to buy points on the cruise and she told me that they spent $5000 for the same category for four.

[Fortywinks]

Who has used their DVC pts to go on one of the Disney Cruises? Do you think it's worth using the pts or would it be better to rent my pts and pay for the cruise? Plus which level would you purchase 9, 8 or 7? There will only be 2 of us going.

Thanks,
Great idea to ask. I suggest that you crunch your numbers. A cruise with points is not as economical as using your points for a DVC resort. We just booked a 2008 Disney cruise with a combination of points and cash (to save points). We focus on the DVC resorts to maximize the best use of points, thus the use of cash for the cruise. We have calculated the worth of each point over the life of the DVC contract and booked accordingly.

[Muushka]

We are going in January (Me, DW, and DD4) on a 7-night Eastern during the value season and it was only 327 points for all 3 of us (Cat 11). Came out to about $8.5 per point...

... But remember, that includes all food and non-alcoholic beverages...

Using the formula from above, ours comes out to $5.55 a point. No thanks!

[dwelty]

Here is a great tip also: You can use points for the first 2 adults, and then pay cash for the kids. Since the cash price for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th people are lower, (especially kids) you can do this and only shell out a few hundred dollars. It also makes your points go a whole lot further.

[AnnaS]

We have done the Eastern, Western, West Coast and just came back from the 11 N. Med. cruise. We always have two cabins and have used a combination of points and cash each time.

[Debbie H]

We always use points to cruise. We had 4 staterooms in July. Cash wise, it would have cost us over $8k. There were 10 of us. With food and non-alcoholic drinks, plus the stateroom, it was a much better value to use points.

[Plutofan]

We just got back from a 4 night cruise and I would not consider using points if you book early. We booked 1 1/2 years early so we got the early booking discount. Based upon the price we paid the points were valued at $6.5 per point plus the $75 booking fee. My big concern with using points is that the insurance is not a good value and the cancelation policy is horrible compared to cash. I believe that the insurance covers $5 per point.

[JLitfin]

Well, lots to think about, as I mention earlier we're planning to go on our first cruise Jan, 2010 so I still have lots of time. Was talking with my DH this evening and told him all the comments on this thread and I believe he's going to try to rent our pts and pay cash for the cruise. Who knows by than we might end up just using pts, we still have a couple more years to decide. Thanks everyone for your comments.

[tidefan]

Using the formula from above, ours comes out to $5.55 a point. No thanks!

DCL bookings are tricky. Some cruises/categories can be an OK use of points (especially in the Value Season) and some not so much to downright terrible. You need to make an educated decision when you look at this. Either answer could be right...

[sharond150]

With rentals or transfer or points easily going at $11-12 per point, why not rent the points and pay cash for the cruise? Seems to me you are giving Disney at least 30% of your point value each time you allow them to give you a value of $8 per point. :confused3

[crisi]

We have enough points for every other year as well, and have chosen to pay cash for two cruises. For us, the deciding factor isn't point value, but that in order to cruise, we'd be skipping Disney - and that would be if we only used our every other year allotment. The reality is we'd be using three years of points to cruise - so if we went to Disney this year - '07 (using this year's and next year's points), we'd use '09 10 and '11 point to cruise in '10 and wouldn't be back to Disney until '12 (using '12 and '13 points).

Even renting our points out, we'd still be giving up a WDW vacation in order to cruise. We bought DVC points to use at WDW. And we are fortunate that we still have vacation budget left over other trips - sometimes we've made the choice to cruise.

[BWV Dreamin]

I definitly plan on using my points for a Disney cruise. I consider the Cruise an additional resort/destination, part of the whole Disney timeshare package. The reasons I prefer to use my points is that I can book at later timeframes and get the same accomodations and I don't have to pay additional money...just use the points I've already bought. I think you can cancel just like at any other resort with the same guidelines (correct me if I am wrong on this). So why pay more money? To me, that defeats the reasons for buying the points in the first place.:goodvibes

[crisi]

I think you can cancel just like at any other resort with the same guidelines (correct me if I am wrong on this). So why pay more money? To me, that defeats the reasons for buying the points in the first place.:goodvibes

Points used to cruise become "reservation points" when canceled - which have additional restrictions - they can only be used for other trade options - you can't use them to book SSR for instance.

The other big difference is that points to cruise change from year to year - for someone like me with enough points to take my "regular" trip and not a lot of points to spare - that makes it difficult to plan two years out to know for sure how many points I'll need. I much prefer the certainly of planning fixed point options because I'm not in the position to be able to pony up extra points (unless I'd rent some). But if I had points to spare, I think I'd use them however I wanted - or if I had all my vacation eggs in this basket, we'd either use points to cruise or rent them out (which I think its still using your points to cruise - its just changing the value of them).

[BWV Dreamin]

Points used to cruise become "reservation points" when canceled - which have additional restrictions - they can only be used for other trade options - you can't use them to book SSR for instance.

The other big difference is that points to cruise change from year to year - for someone like me with enough points to take my "regular" trip and not a lot of points to spare - that makes it difficult to plan two years out to know for sure how many points I'll need. I much prefer the certainly of planning fixed point options because I'm not in the position to be able to pony up extra points (unless I'd rent some). But if I had points to spare, I think I'd use them however I wanted - or if I had all my vacation eggs in this basket, we'd either use points to cruise or rent them out (which I think its still using your points to cruise - its just changing the value of them).

Thanks for the update on that cancellation policy. Well, hopefully they won't increase the points too much, especially with the coming of the new cruise ships. Can you elaborate on that "reservation status"? Thanks, :wizard:

[crisi]

According to my member guidebook, when you book a non-DVC option your "vacation points" are converted to "reservation points" Reservation points "may not be converted back to vacation points. They may only be used for booking a future Member Getaways vacation within the same Use Year." Which means you can't bank or borrow those points, you need to use them outside the DVC resorts, and you need to use them before they expire.

Also, I'm not up on current information on booking cruises with points, but in the past there has been a small additional fee ($75 or something) and you had to pay out of pocket for port taxes (also not much). Its possible that either one or both of those fees is not currently in effect.

[Muushka]

Yes, between not so hot return for point value, and lousy point refund if you cancel, for us using points for a cruise is not a good idea.

[tidefan]

With rentals or transfer or points easily going at $11-12 per point, why not rent the points and pay cash for the cruise? Seems to me you are giving Disney at least 30% of your point value each time you allow them to give you a value of $8 per point. :confused3

The hassles of renting are not worth the $2-$3 dollars per point to me. To me, the included food and transport are worth the $2-$3 premium on points. As another poster pointed out, it doesn't always work that way, much of the time the deal is not worth it, however, we got a free year's worth of points when we bought in April that we weren't using, so we figured why not use that surplus on the cruise before DD4 starts Kindergarden and we could still go in the value season.

[rugrats2001]

remember that each year of dvc ownership, cost per point will go down, so our cruises have cost us less than $10 per point at this time and i was told by a guide that you figure your cost at $5 per point for a vacation. so our first 7 day cruise in 2000 will have cost us $2250 for three in a category 6 stateroom. sounds pretty comparable to the cash deals out there. and we talked to a family looking to buy points on the cruise and she told me that they spent $5000 for the same category for four.

I'm sorry, but I just don't think that is right. The guides are salespeople, not unbiased financial advisors. When you purchase a DVC membership, you should include the annuity value of your original purchase price at a reasonable rate of interest (I use 5%), plus your MF, to compute the true cost of your points each year.

Regardless of the Time-Share marketing laws in Florida, your purchase price is an INVESTMENT in real estate; a depreciating investment, but an investment none the less:goodvibes. Therefore, it SHOULD be expected to pay a reasonable amount of interest.

If you were to purchase AKV this year at $96 per point, a 50 year annuity at 5% would give a payout -per year- of about $5.35 per point. Combined with the MF of $4.62 -per point-, you would have a cost of about $9.97 per point this year. Ten years from now, the cost -per point- to you would be $5.35 per point plus the then-current MF per point. Unless the MF goes down, your cost per point can't decrease.

This is the figure that I use in computing whether DVC is working for me. I don't think it makes financial sense to pile up all of the 'expenses' in the first few years so that the next 40-some years look rosier than they really are.

For us, DVC makes pretty good sense; For some others, not so much!:hippie:

[pogopossum]

i guess i just look at it differently. i just want to know how much has it cost me so far to do what i have done so far, or points used versus dollars spent right now. i don't want to extrapolate out not knowing what costs will actually be, or whether i sell my membership. if that happens then my cost per point goes down even further.

that being said, using the formula year to year the sum continues to go down, even with cost increases to points. in our eighth year of membership last year our cost per point was around $9.90. the dynamic changes this year as we have added on AKV. with this calculation you can figure out your break even year fairly easy.

[BWV Dreamin]

So as to minimize the cancellation issues, I would probably try to book last minute for a cruise. I wonder what the availablility is for DVC members, say Cat. 5-6 last minute? Anyone tried this?

[Muushka]

On our cruise in 2004 our table mates were DVC members who booked (with points) at about 1 month out.

I think yours is a very good idea. If we ever had points to burn (Ha!), that would be a good way to use them. We always book our cruises so far in advance that it makes no sense using points because you never know what will happen. Having said that, we have booked our vacations and cruises pretty much 11 months to 1.5 years in advance and have not had to cancel one. Yay!

[pogopossum]

we've always booked ours with points at least a year in advance as well and have never had to cancel yet. after our last cruise we looked at booking our next one as soon as we got home to get the rebook discount, but it just wasn't time to add on yet for the extra points we would need for the 10 or 11 day southern cruise. but now we have done the add on and there will be a lot less borrowing or banking going on for next years december cruise.

speaking of which, i've been meaning to call MS, anybody know how soon can we book that?

[crisi]

So as to minimize the cancellation issues, I would probably try to book last minute for a cruise. I wonder what the availablility is for DVC members, say Cat. 5-6 last minute? Anyone tried this?

There are a limited number of rooms available on points for the most part - when they are gone they are gone. Plus, cash prices get more and more expensive as you get closer to the cruise, so if there is a cash room available but not a points room, the cash room would be really expensive (one of the advantages of booking on points is that the point price is fixed for the year).

I don't know, but maybe you can get the travel insurance for a cruise on points that you can get when you book DVC - or maybe one of the other travel insurance companies would insure it.

(I'd book a cruise early in my use year - ours is April - so a May or June cruise - if we had to cancel, we'd have reservation points - but would have time to do something with them).

[dunbarfamily]

:blush: Ok. You guys are going to think I'm an idiot. But I have to ask...

When you're talking about how many dollars it is a point to use your points vs paying cash, is it a better deal to have a higher per point dollar figure or a lower one? How do you figure out how much it is a point? Do you take the cash price and divide it by the points needed?

Now I'm going to bury my non-mathematic head in the sand....

[pogopossum]

When you're talking about how many dollars it is a point to use your points vs paying cash, is it a better deal to have a higher per point dollar figure or a lower one? How do you figure out how much it is a point?

not an idiot, you would sorta be talking two different things. what your figure would be is value of that trip per point, this you want high. say it was a seven day cruise and it cost $5700 for your family in cash, but it cost 625 in points, the value of this cruise using points is $9.12 per point. i see that you are new members, and based on what you have paid in so far it won't look like that good a deal, but a cruise vacation willl accelerate your break even point, because that $5700 goes against what it cost to buy in.

my calculations for our membership included total of down payment + total cost of loan + annual dues paid in so far + transfer fees for using our points outside of dvc 7 times divided by the number of points used for all of these vacations. which as of last year was down to around $9.90 per point. we are in our eighth year and each year this calculation has gone down. so it would be fair to say that at the end in 2042 i anticipate everything that we will have done will have cost $5.00-$6.00 per point. then that cruise you took in 2007 or 2008 will have only cost $3125.00 - $3750.00.

given all that, and wanting convenience, i would just rather cruise using points.