Additional Points

[BcIcemen]

I own a resale,what would my benefit be to buy a small (25 points) contract direct from Disney? Can I buy a small contract at another home resort and if so how will that 25 points really help me at the 11 month booking window? Can I then use my points from my "other home"?

 

[CarolMN]

At this time, the benefit of buying a small contract is that you would qualify for the Membership Extras. (If you bought a resale contract prior to April 2016, you are already qualified for the Membership Extras). Most believe that the special DVC annual passes are the only ME benefit that might justify paying direct price. If you don't go often enough to justify buying annual passes, there is very little to no economic benefit to buying direct.

If your add-on is for the same home resort and use year as your resale contract, you can combine the add-on points with your resale points at 11 months. If it's for a different home resort, you can combine it with your resale points at 7 months.

If you do not buy the same use year, you will have a different membership and have to buy the direct minimum. Believe that is 50 points right now. It can be cumbersome to combine points from different memberships.

At 11 months, only points purchased for the resort you are booking may be used to make a reservation at that resort.. You cannot combine points from different home resorts at 11 months.

 

[kniquy]

Yes you can get another small contract - the benefits would be mostly the AP, dining, and shopping discounts. So if you visit yearly and can benefit from an AP it can be worth it. I only own one contracts, but would imagine that adding on at your resort and UY would be the best situation. People do own contracts at multiple resorts. I guess what you have to look at is what you can get for those 25 points at the resort you are thinking about - could you use those 25 to book a couple nights in a studio or borrow and have 50 points to use every other year just to extend a trip a couple of days? It can work, you would just have to book your two different resorts both at the 11 month mark and have a split stay -- at 7 months you could look to change to try and switch get your whole reservation at one resort. It just complicates keeping track of your points when your addon is at a different resort.

 

[viper17d]

We bought resale at Boulder Ridge a couple of years ago and then added on direct at Copper Creek in March (granted, we added on 50pts so we'd actually have flexibility with those points). With some crazy point movements, we're actually staying 2 nights at a cabin in January, which is pretty exciting for us!

Getting the Membership Extras is a nice benefit, particularly if you feel you'd go enough to benefit from annual passes. There are other nice discounts and benefits to having that blue card, but it only starts to make sense financially if you get annual passes. Since how often you go is likely dependent upon your total number of points and level of accommodations (Studio, 1BR, etc...), I think that should factor into your decision. If you only ever seeing yourself going once per year for 4 days, you'll never get annual passes and likely won't make the money back of going direct.

For us, where we added on further fueled the direct purchase. We wanted to own at Copper Creek and it would be a number of years until resale was available enough such that prices fell enough below direct to justify going that route.

Good luck in your decision making process!

 

[disneynutz]

Important to note that all of the perks and extras are being offered by current DVD/DVC management. Prior two managers offered different perks. They can stop and/or change the perks at anytime. They are a marketing gift and are not guaranteed.

Bill

 

[ELMC]

Important to note that all of the perks and extras are being offered by current DVD/DVC management. Prior two managers offered different perks. They can stop and/or change the perks at anytime. They are a marketing gift and are not guaranteed.

Bill

I agree with this, but I do think this position deserves some qualifications.

If you ordinarily buy annual passes and you plan on buying one this year with or without DVC, you can safely factor in the $220 per person savings when you look at the difference between resale and direct for this year only. After that who knows. But to be fair, there has been some variation of an AP discount for DVC owners for at least the past 5 years, so there is some consistency there.

If you are planning on spending money on food or merchandise in the parks, I think it is safe to calculate the 10-20% discount that you will receive as a DVC member for this year only. After that who knows.

If you do this, then the difference between resale and direct will be reduced to a point where I think it is worth the risk of them potentially (probably) taking the perks away. I think your risk at that point is quite low.

That being said....if buying a DVC direct contract will cause you to engage in behaviors that you would not ordinarily engage in (purchase AP, second trip, souvenirs, etc.) then it's not really fair analysis to use all that money saved because in actuality you would have saved more if you simply didn't do anything. But then you wouldn't have had the experiences.

Bottom line is that you're better off not suffering from paralysis by analysis and in most cases if you're going to purchase DVC it's your best bet to buy your resale contract, add on 25 points direct, and go have fun.

 

[disneynutz]

Consider this, Disney/DVC, if you bought direct gives you a $220 per person savings on your AP which causes you to buy more points because now you vacation twice per year. The additional vacation also causes you to spend more on travel, food, dues, and other vacation expenditures.

Bill

 

[ELMC]

Consider this, Disney/DVC, if you bought direct gives you a $220 per person savings on your AP which causes you to buy more points because now you vacation twice per year. The additional vacation also causes you to spend more on travel, food, dues, and other vacation expenditures.

Bill

Agreed, but I think this change in behavior patterns is a function of owning DVC and not necessarily tied to a resale or a direct purchase. That's why I specified whether the OP was already intending to purchase an AP regardless of whether or not they added on 25 points direct, because I think that affects the value comparison between direct and resale.

To your point, we have all "lost" money with DVC because instead of spending $1 per trip once a year, we are now spending 50 cents per trip three times a year.

 

[BcIcemen]

I was just at WDW last month and did buy AP. I plan on going back at least once or twice before the AP runs out. So just wondering about the future

 

[Dean]

I own a resale,what would my benefit be to buy a small (25 points) contract direct from Disney? Can I buy a small contract at another home resort and if so how will that 25 points really help me at the 11 month booking window? Can I then use my points from my "other home"?

My view is that most non qualified owners should get qualified by purchasing 25 points retail even if they don't think they'll get much current benefit from the perks. But that assumes they can use the points and/or will get real benefits from the perks. The best situation is to plan this into the purchase decision so it's not an extra cost and 25 points on top of what one truly should own. If done that way the cost to do so is only roughly $1000-1500 depending on home resort and size of resale contract. For most getting the same home resort is best but sometimes it isn't. Some resorts are cheaper than others retail so in part it depends on whether one needs the extra points in the home resort window, how large the resale contract is and what the actual home resort is.