Advantages of booking cruise through DVC points/paying cash

[ciao_gina]

Hello,

I am a DVC member but my husband is thinking about saving our points this year and paying cash for the cruise in October. What are disadvantages/advantages re: booking either way? Ground transportation cost, reserving seeting times, Palo reservation, etc. Any info would be appreciated.

 

[ibela]

There are no special benefits for booking with points, it's just a matter of whether it's convenient for you to use your points or not. The only items your points cover are the cost of the cruise, taxes and fees. Ground transportation, Palo fees, excursions, etc. are all extra and not discounted. The date you can make reservations doesn't get pushed up either.

We choose to cruise on points because we have enough extra points. I value the points at what it costs me ~$7.50 per point (maintenance+ initial cost/# of years no financing) because I have no intention of renting my points out. My upcoming cruise is 510 points, so ~$3825. If I were to pay cash for that cruise, it'd cost me $4143. By using my points I'm 'saving' about $300. If I was in a pinch for points, I'd save them but we since we still have some left over to bank some into next year, for us cruising on points was a no brainer.

 

[rkwier]

You will get a variety of views on this subject. Some people love to use their points to cruise because DVC is a pre-paid vacation and they do not have to worry about additional cash out of pocket. Using points allows them to take a vacation that they could never have afforded otherwise. Some people feel strongly that using points for a cruise is really not a good use of those points because it actually ends up costing you more. To me, either view has a valid point, you just have to decide which fits best for your family.

This is our experience. We recently booked a 7-day Western Caribbean cruise for March of next year. We actually fully intended to use points for this cruise. It would have cost us 622 points for cat 6 for the time that we want to go. We only have 225 points, so this would be nearly 3 years of points for us. Also, assuming that points value ~$10 each, that would equate to a cost of $6,220. The actual cash price for the cruise was $4,093.58, which would be $2,126.42 less. You are also allowed to make payments in the interim, so you do not have to shell out all of the cost at one time if you plan far in advance.

As far as dining reservations, ground transportation, etc. I do not believe that paying with points vs. cash impacts them in any way. Someone else may be able to elaborate that a little better than I can.