How Does Buying Disney Vacation Points Save on Disneyland Trips?

[tinkcollector]

I have read that buying Disney Vacation Points can be used and save you money on Disneyland and WDW vacations, as well as the Aulani. How does this work? I would like to know positive and negative feedback on this. Do you purchase these points from owners or directly from Disney? How would you rate the savings? Is it complicated to use purchased vacation points? Any and all comments are greatly appreciated.

 

[Baklava]

You can purchase direct from Disney or through resale. There is a lot of good information on the DVC boards, I recommend reading there, but the short version is:

It's a timeshare. You buy the number of points you want and they're yours for 50 years. You pay for the points and there's an annual maintenance cost.

If you are already staying at the Deluxe resorts, these save you money. If you are staying at moderate resorts or off-site in CA, you probably won't save money, but you'll get way more bang for your buck. I'm staying at the Grand Californian this December which I could never have afforded otherwise.

 

[GatorChris]

I have a friend who owns 300 DVC points and wasn't able to go to Disney for a few years. So I bought the points for about $12 or $13 a point for what I needed to stay at the Animal Kingdom Lodge at WDW. What should've cost me over $300 night (normal rack rates) ended up costing me under $200 with the points.

You can find some websites to buy these points from their owners by just searching for DVC point rentals. For instance, a 5 night stay during the week at Grand Cali would cost $400-500/night. But if you buy points, you can get a studio for less than $300/night. Of course, if you have a family of 5 like me, this doesn't work there because the Villas only hold 4. You'd have to buy more points for a bigger room, so the cost savings aren't realized.

Hope this helps.

 

[Denise0362]

Are you talking purchasing DVC points or just renting points from a current owner to book a vacation? When you purchase the amount of points purchased are yours and you own at that DVC resort. The number of years you own these points depends on which resort you are purchasing at.

However, if you are looking at just renting for an occasional vacation you need to find an owner willing to rent you points. They will need to book your reservation for you. Yes, the cost can be less than booking a vacation direct with Disney.

 

[tinkcollector]

Yes Denise0362 that is exactly what I would like to look into, renting points. How do I find an owner that is looking to rent their points, and how would I know they are legit?

 

[socababy]

Yes Denise0362 that is exactly what I would like to look into, renting points. How do I find an owner that is looking to rent their points, and how would I know they are legit?

You can find pts to rent from various sites (not sure if they can be mentioned on here) or if you look at the DVC section, there is a section of DIS members renting out their pts. As far as legitimacy, when I've rented out to a friend, I always send her a copy of the confirmation number/email. If you go through an outside source outside of DIS, I'm guessing they have their own way of figuring out whether it is legit?!

 

[Disney Dad ADL]

Yes Denise0362 that is exactly what I would like to look into, renting points. How do I find an owner that is looking to rent their points, and how would I know they are legit?

Basically what happens is that a DVC owner books a reservation under your name, and you pay them based whatever agreement you have made. You will get a reservation number that you can enter into your MDE account, so you can do ADRs, FPs, link tickets, etc.

You can do this through a broker (such as David's), who isn't really renting the points to you, but is acting as an intermediary between the owner and the renter. If you're not familiar with the process, going through a broker maybe better, but maybe harder to get a room during high DVC demand seasons (October/November/December, some of September and January, race weekends, etc).

You can also rent directly through an owner. Go the DVC Rent board here, and you will see lots of owners advertising their points or reservations for rent. It is usually slightly cheaper than going through a broker, and it's usually a bit easier to get exactly what you want (since you don't really know what inventory a broker happens to have until you make a deposit).

Advantages of renting DVC:
1. Generally cheaper than a similar room at the same resort, is often significantly cheaper.
2. Have kitchens (kitchenettes for studios) and washers/dryers (in 1 BR or higher, studios generally share a laundry room)

Disadvantages of renting DVC points:
1. DVC is a timeshare so they only do towel service every 4 days and cleaning every 8 days
2. The reservation is not under your control. For DVC, in theory the owner could cancel your reservation at any time, or if they have financial troubles and don't pay their dues, then your reservation could get cancelled. Pretty rare, but not unheard of.
3. Generally not refundable
4. Generally have to plan far in advance (7 months), but not always.

That's what I can think of off the top of my head.

Determing whether someone is legit is a bit tougher. You generally want someone with referrals, who has been active on the board for awhile, etc. However, there is nothing you can do to prevent fraud 100% unfortunately, but my understanding is that it's not all that common. If you go through a broker and owner disappears, the broker I believe will refund your money, which is one advantage of that route. If you read/post in the DVC forums, you will probably get more opinions, I've never actually rented before (though I am an owner).

 

[Denise0362]

This is all good information.

I am an owner at the Grand Californian and haven't ever had any extra points to rent either. I have just recently had another VGC owner transfer points into my account. It went very smoothly.

Check out the Rent/Transfer section of the Disney Vacation Club section. You do have to be logged into Disboards in order to see that section. There are several owners looking to rent points and even rent out dedicated reservations already made. There is a post from a broker that updates the dedicated reservations available through him weekly. If I was to want to rent a Villa I would probably look into using a broker. Very legit and worry free.

 

[DianaSparrow]

Can you rent points to use at the Disneyland Hotel - or only the Grand Californian?

 

[ImDMous]

The Grand Californian is the only DVC property at Disneyland. They are separate rooms from the regular hotel rooms.

 

[Disney Dad ADL]

How would you rate the savings?

To answer your other questions, savings for renting DVC is a bit easier than calculating savings when you actually buy DVC.

All DVC rentals are based on points, and typically owners rent out points by charging a certain number of dollars per point. $13 per point is pretty typical, so you just need to figure out how many DVC points it would take to book your vacation, then multiply by $13 or whatever the owner is charging.

David's rental site has a point calculator I think, or you can just google DVC point charts for the resort that you are looking for.

For example, Aulani for the week of 4/8-4/15 is 168 points for 7 nights for the standard view deluxe studio. The same villa on the Aulani website is $4,499 for the week.

If you were to rent 168 points @ $13 per point, then it would be $2184 for the week.

You can see that renting points at $2184 vs paying cash at $4,499 is a significant savings. One caveat though is that often you can find discounts for rooms paying cash. 20% or more is usually achievable, so you may want to factor that in (don't forget the tax though, the Aulani site includes it though).

One other issue is that the DVC room you want may not be available. Like the example I just mentioned (Aulani 4/8) in standard view/studio is full now. You would have to get an ocean view studio or 1 bedroom gardens view.

Also, one other thing I forgot to mention in terms of benefits of DVC is that the parking is free.

 

[Denise0362]

I don't know for sure how much per point the brokers charge, but to rent points from owners of Grand Californian, Grand Floridian and Poly I have saw those pants listed an average of $15-$17.50.

 

[Disney Dad ADL]

I don't know for sure how much per point the brokers charge, but to rent points from owners of Grand Californian, Grand Floridian and Poly I have saw those pants listed an average of $15-$17.50.

David's charges $14 per point. If you want to book in the Home Resort priority window 7-11 months out at a "high demand" resort, he charges $16 per point (per his website, Bay Lake Tower At Disney's Contemporary Resort, Disney's Beach Club Villas, Disney's Boardwalk Villas, The Villas At Disney's Wilderness Lodge, The Villas at Disney's Grand Floridian Hotel, The Villas at Disney's Grand Californian Hotel, Disney’s Polynesian Villas & Bugalows and Disney's Aulani Resort and Spa.).

 

[starry_solo]

Can you rent points to use at the Disneyland Hotel - or only the Grand Californian?

Yes you can. Although VGC is the only DVC at Disneyland, the DVC points can be converted to hotel points. However, the points cost is very high for a hotel room. Plus, once the DVC points are converted to hotel points, they cannot be converted back to DVC points. At DLR, there isn't a charge to do so, but at WDW, it's a $95 (or possibly more) charge to do so.

One thing to remember when renting DVC points (either through a broker or a private owner) is that all transactions are typically FINAL. That means, no changes to the dates on the reservation can be made (changes can usually be made for the name). So, you have to be absolutely certain 7-11 months before the date booked that you want to go on those specific dates. Also, payment is typically required in full far in advance of Disney (where final payment for packages isn't typically due until 45 days and for a hotel room only, after the trip).

 

[chrisaman]

Keep in mind that depending on when you want to stay and where you want to stay, you will need to do this 7 to 11 months out. Especially at the Grand Californian, reservations can be hard to get through DVC since it is very small. It is not like paying cash for rooms through Disney where there are generally always rooms available.

I recommend using someone like David's because they guarantee the reservation so if something goes wrong, you can get money back. If you go directly through a person, they could cancel your reservation as soon as they get your money and disappear. It is rare that this happens but I don't trust it.

 

[socababy]

Can you rent points to use at the Disneyland Hotel - or only the Grand Californian?

You can actually use DVC pts for the DL Hotel and Paradise Pier but they weren't a good use of points. It's also a hotel room versus a villa with a kitchen but the amount of points were more for the hotels than the GCV when I was looking to book over the summer..