1st Time DVC Prospective Buyer Questions

[havoc315]

Hi everyone, I'm a prospective 1st time buyer and have been interested in DVC for a long time. Just had some questions if anyone is kind enough to help answer. I am a family of 4 with 2 young kids, we plan on making 1 trip to Disney World each year, either in the fall or Christmas time.

1) If you select a home resort contract, are you able to use those points to book at other resorts? Is the home resort selection only really beneficial because you get a further out booking window of 11 months? If that is the case and you don't really care about which resort you stay at, should you really just look for the best value contract?

It's best to balance value with a home resort you love. The "only value" being the 11-month window -- In the fall and Christmas, you are often required to book during the 11-month window. By 7-months, there may be very very slim pickings. And it may be far more expensive to even get a room -- In other words, instead of a standard studio for 15 points per night, you might find the only rooms left are preferred 1 bedrooms at 41 points per night. At Christmas, there is a good chance you'd have no options at 7 months.

So if you're totally flexible about dates of travel, room type, resort, then go ahead for the best value. But if you're traveling around school vacation for the next 15 years, you probably aren't quite that flexible. So... pick the resort that you are happy staying at. And especially if you want to book the best value rooms, expect that most of the time, that's where you will be staying.

2) Is it cheaper to book a DVC vacation thru your own points or cheaper to go thru a rental site like DVC Rentals or Davids?

If you buy a good value contract, use it efficiently, re-sale it at good value OR keep it for 25+ years, then it is significantly cheaper to own your points.

But some contracts at some resorts, especially if you don't use your points efficiently, it can be cheaper to rent points.
For example -- In many cases, with Beach Club, it can be cheaper to rent points than to buy the points. Many people still prefer to buy to lock in the control over the points, where renting is not 100% guaranteed. But renting can be cheaper than some of those 2042 contracts.

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[havoc315]

Thank you to everyone for your responses! Appreciate y’all for taking the time to comment. I do plan on making 1 visit to WDW each year and would also love to visit Aulani, so i don't mind making that my home resort (I was married in Maui and Hawaii's one of my favorite places to visit). For my preferences, I would want a 1 bedroom for any stay i'm considering (The 2 young kids need the space to run around hahah).

Be aware that 1 bedrooms are very expensive in points. They can be fantastic, but they aren't great point values.

But more importantly -- Are you prepared for Aluani being your default every year? In other words, every year -- You book Aulani at 11 months. Then at 7 months, if there is nothing you can switch to, just keeping Aulani?
If you only plan on going to Aulani once every 10 years, it would be a mistake owning there.
If you are happy going to Aulani most years, with an occasional switch to WDW, then owning there is great.

If you want to make sure most of your trips are to WDW, then you will want to own one of the WDW resorts. For re-sale, the best "values" are SSR (cheap points) and Poly (long contract with cheaper maintenance). For direct, the best values are GFV and RIV (both have long contracts with incentive pricing).

I recently just came back from a tri-split stay (That was crazy but also a lot of fun). 1BR SV at Kidani, 1BR BW View at Boardwalk, and a Moana standard club room at Poly. They're all fantastic in their own right which is why I said I didn't really have a preference for the resort. But I was surprised to hear that a studio would be harder to book than a 1BR, I guess it makes sense since it's less points but i would have thought it would be the other way around.

During popular travel times, studios can be almost impossible. While 1 BRs are usually available.
Simple reason -- Studios and 1 BRs all sleep 4-5 people (depending on resort), but 1 BRs are usually more than double the price. Renting the points for a studio may be $300 per night. Renting the points for a 1 BR may easily be $800 per night. And it's a similar ratio when buying the points. Is it worth paying 2.5x more to add a kitchen and more space? Depends who you ask. (For me, depends on the trip). It's actually always cheaper to rent 2 studios than to rent a 1 BR.

 

[_auroraborealis_]

I noted you cited a Club Level stay in your last visit.

DVC is going to be a vey different experience from a Club Level stay. Only 5 units in all of DVC offer Club Level and they are basically impossible to book.

 

[chainkid]

If you have school age children then right away you will not have flexibility in your travel dates. Very hard to book school vacation times even at 11 month window .One bedrooms will be available longer than most anything else. Also the age of your children matters as what the young ones love is not always what the older child likes. We chose board walk in 1999 and took all those things into consideration. It worked well for us since our now grown kids prefer hollywood studios and we prefer Epcot for Food and wine. We rarely spend more than a day in magic kingdom area anymore. We find it easier to book just about anywhere over the Epcot resorts BC and BWV during the time of year (fall) that we travel so having BW suits us. It was not cheapest option to buy direct or resale and dues are on higher side but it was a good choice for us.

If your children are not same sex then as they grow a one bedroom will not work well so plan on needing more points later on. I have added on many times mostly resale since I bought direct in the beginning. I'm still looking for more points but choose to stick with same resort and use year to maximize my planning options. I am now able to be very flexible with vacation dates , so i choose my vacation to coincide with openings at desired resort. Also if you buy direct choose a use year that is right before the time you normally would travel so if you have to cancel for any reason you can bank points. I travel Oct -Dec so a Sept use year worked well for me.

Owning DVC has been a joy but there is a major learning curve to the membership that will make it easier to not making costly mistakes. I have never lost one point but know of many people who have for lack of understanding all the in's and outs. It is not for people who want to travel with short notice all the time. If you were retired and could pick your dates then maybe but if you don't know when you will get time off then finding something open is a major headache. That said I'm a planner and i could not be happier I bought when it was really cheap compared to now and have sold a contract within two days for more than i paid for it.