It wouldn't be the first time I've heard different answers to questions, or been told the book policy while the actual practice differs so I wanted to ask here where people may have actual guest side experience.
I bought into the BLT in 2014 and used it for the first time at VGC in September of this year. When booking I obviously knew the difficulties in getting in and was aware of the option to use points at the non DVC hotels. Through all my research it seemed that everyone felt that once you converted over to the regular hotels from DVC your reservation was no different than any other person's hotel reservation. Even the WDW DVC bookings behave like any other hotel booking.
Next year I'm planning to stay visit Disneyland Paris and expected a similar kind of process of booking through DVC and then having a regular hotel booking afterwards, but through conversations with DVC it sounds like in Paris they are far from equal. I've done all the math and figured out that for the 5 nights I'm staying it is 155 points plus the $95 fee. That seems to break out roughly even (varies slightly in either direction based on deals), so the price is obviously not as good as a DVC which could get twice the length for those points, but the cost is close enough for me. It sounds like the abilities are sharply limited though. They said that DVC bookings don't have the ability to use meal plans, which is not a big deal for us, but odd. From what I've been told though it also sounds like you can't have any real interactions with your reservation or make any associated plans until you arrive and talk to the front desk. This is a problem for us since we plan to do one of the resort's excursions to Paris for a day, but typically Disney determine the language based on the first booking and they can often fill up so waiting until the day of seems like it could be a problem. Even the luggage services I've been told are not available to DVC members until they talk to the front desk upon arrival, an option obviously not available to get to the resort. From the sounds of it a DVC booking seems to be treated like someone showing up for a day trip rather than someone staying on property. Do they really treat them so differently, or is this another case of member services not fully knowing how things work? Has anyone stayed at Disneyland Paris using DVC points that can shed some light on just what the differences are between booking with DVC points vs paying cash directly to the resort?
I bought into the BLT in 2014 and used it for the first time at VGC in September of this year. When booking I obviously knew the difficulties in getting in and was aware of the option to use points at the non DVC hotels. Through all my research it seemed that everyone felt that once you converted over to the regular hotels from DVC your reservation was no different than any other person's hotel reservation. Even the WDW DVC bookings behave like any other hotel booking.
Next year I'm planning to stay visit Disneyland Paris and expected a similar kind of process of booking through DVC and then having a regular hotel booking afterwards, but through conversations with DVC it sounds like in Paris they are far from equal. I've done all the math and figured out that for the 5 nights I'm staying it is 155 points plus the $95 fee. That seems to break out roughly even (varies slightly in either direction based on deals), so the price is obviously not as good as a DVC which could get twice the length for those points, but the cost is close enough for me. It sounds like the abilities are sharply limited though. They said that DVC bookings don't have the ability to use meal plans, which is not a big deal for us, but odd. From what I've been told though it also sounds like you can't have any real interactions with your reservation or make any associated plans until you arrive and talk to the front desk. This is a problem for us since we plan to do one of the resort's excursions to Paris for a day, but typically Disney determine the language based on the first booking and they can often fill up so waiting until the day of seems like it could be a problem. Even the luggage services I've been told are not available to DVC members until they talk to the front desk upon arrival, an option obviously not available to get to the resort. From the sounds of it a DVC booking seems to be treated like someone showing up for a day trip rather than someone staying on property. Do they really treat them so differently, or is this another case of member services not fully knowing how things work? Has anyone stayed at Disneyland Paris using DVC points that can shed some light on just what the differences are between booking with DVC points vs paying cash directly to the resort?
