Hi, there!
We just got back from the Westbound Panama Canal cruise and in all the excitement (and with encouragement from the MANY DVC owners on this cruise) we took the plunge and bought 200 points at SSR. We really had no way to research anything because of no Internet access, so I'm now going back and questioning our decision.
Here's our situation. We have never vacationed at WDW at all. We did 2 days at Epcot before this cruise. We would like to go back again, but I don't ever see us going every year. Our kids are older, 14 and 16, and although they love Disney, we live 30 minutes from DLR in CA so we get our Disney fix that way. We have absolutely no preference for any particular property, and the sales rep (of course) made it sound as though there was really no difference except for the ability to book early at our "home" resort, which mattered little to us because we don't know the difference anyway!
We LOVE the DCL and I do see us cruising every few years. We were led to believe that using our points on DCL and at resorts around the world would be a good deal, and our plan is to go to Euro Disney next year for sure, perhaps WDW the year after that (hopefully in early December), DCL again the following year. After that our ds will probably be off on his own and it will just be the 3 of us. We'd like to do Hawaii one year, and possibly Mexico one year, then maybe another cruise. After that it would just likely be DH and myself. We would likely go to WDW a couple of times. I imagine once we have grandkids, we could do WDW a few times as a group with the kids/grandkids, but again, very unlikely every year.
From this, does it sound like maybe we are NOT good DVC candidates? We were persuaded by the incentives ($94 per point and one extra years' points, along with a $500 onboard credit for the cruise) and the flexibility to use our points outside the DVC, but if it's not a good financial decision for us, we could certainly still cancel and it would only "cost" us the $500 OBC.
Why does everyone say it doesn't make financial sense to use points to cruise and/or to travel outside DVC property? I think that would be our primary goal, so I'm very interested to hear the reasoning behind why it's not a good idea.
Please help me educate myself!!
Thanks!
~Tracy
We just got back from the Westbound Panama Canal cruise and in all the excitement (and with encouragement from the MANY DVC owners on this cruise) we took the plunge and bought 200 points at SSR. We really had no way to research anything because of no Internet access, so I'm now going back and questioning our decision.
Here's our situation. We have never vacationed at WDW at all. We did 2 days at Epcot before this cruise. We would like to go back again, but I don't ever see us going every year. Our kids are older, 14 and 16, and although they love Disney, we live 30 minutes from DLR in CA so we get our Disney fix that way. We have absolutely no preference for any particular property, and the sales rep (of course) made it sound as though there was really no difference except for the ability to book early at our "home" resort, which mattered little to us because we don't know the difference anyway!
We LOVE the DCL and I do see us cruising every few years. We were led to believe that using our points on DCL and at resorts around the world would be a good deal, and our plan is to go to Euro Disney next year for sure, perhaps WDW the year after that (hopefully in early December), DCL again the following year. After that our ds will probably be off on his own and it will just be the 3 of us. We'd like to do Hawaii one year, and possibly Mexico one year, then maybe another cruise. After that it would just likely be DH and myself. We would likely go to WDW a couple of times. I imagine once we have grandkids, we could do WDW a few times as a group with the kids/grandkids, but again, very unlikely every year.
From this, does it sound like maybe we are NOT good DVC candidates? We were persuaded by the incentives ($94 per point and one extra years' points, along with a $500 onboard credit for the cruise) and the flexibility to use our points outside the DVC, but if it's not a good financial decision for us, we could certainly still cancel and it would only "cost" us the $500 OBC.
Why does everyone say it doesn't make financial sense to use points to cruise and/or to travel outside DVC property? I think that would be our primary goal, so I'm very interested to hear the reasoning behind why it's not a good idea.
Please help me educate myself!!
Thanks!
~Tracy