rusafee1183
DVC Owner Since 2012!
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2008
Do you have availability issues at other resorts? Do you plan to stay only at SSR?
Bill
We like to stay all over, and try new places. We have our favorites (AKV, VWL and BCV) So, no - I wouldn't want to stay at SSR all the time. I *would* stay there, and we did enjoy it - it just isn't one of our top choices.
IMO there is a cost side to this discussion and a usage side. I'm mostly talking cost but with the expectation one can use the points to get most things over time. There are items that will be out of bounds without the 11 month priority and truthfully, even with the home resort priority they may be elusive. These might include the BWV 3 BR & standard, AKV concierge and value and the VB beach homes. Now there will always be examples of successes but usually few and far between for off season and/or short notice.
Anything you may have overpaid really is gone so all that's applicable, assuming you're paid in full, is the relative costs and comparisons. IMO this will not make sense for most situations. The exceptions might be if you have less points and plan to add on anyway (esp smaller contract), if you had a very high demand option or if you wanted to downsize significantly. By the time you pay a commission and closing on the new purchase, you will have eaten up any savings and in the end, still have something worth less than you started out with. For sake of discussion and assuming replacing a 200 pt contract at AKV with one at SSR all points issues being the same, you'll pay commissions of around $1400 on the sale, buy SSR at maybe a $2000 savings then pay roughly $500 closing on SSR. That's roughly break even but with lower dues but IMO, the difference yearly isn't enough to make it worth this doing this plus you will give up some options that might be beneficial for rental, even if not for usage, like concierge and the value rooms.
OK, that's what I was thinking as well. We don't want to change the number of points too drastically, and by the time we jumped through all the hoops we would basically be where we started.
I do feel naive for spending so much ahead of time, but what's done is done. Overall, AKV is one of our favorite resorts anyway so I will stick with it.
And like I said to Bill, SSR isn't one of our favorite resorts anyway. It would purely be for a financial reason that I would have wanted to own there. If you're getting a product you don't really love even for a discounted price it's still not a "great deal". There is value for paying more for something you actually love.
It's just a shame that I didn't know ahead of time that I could get the product I love for the price of the product I like. But, C'est la vie.
Good discussion here all, appreciate the feedback! One of the key reasons we did buy this contract was to having booking advantage for the Christmas season since it is one where we know we can always travel. I guess what I found interesting in booking my first trip is that pretty much any resort I was interested in was open the week of October 5th. We managed to snag 5 nights at BWV without much of a problem from Tue-Sat. Noticed that AKV is pretty wide open as well, especially at Kidani. Even VGF had a couple of nights open had we decided to do a split stay.
I'm sure the first time we decide to make our way down during the Christmas season is likely when it will all make sense...
I think you're right and you will see the value in your contract once you are able to utelize it during those hard to get times of year
And like it's been mentioned, it's an in demand contract that I'm sure you could get rid of quickly if you decide you don't want it anymore. We own the 120 contract at AKV that I don't think we would be able to sell easily. But we have a 100 point and a 25 point contract at VWL that I know is pretty coveted should we ever decide to sell