Advice and Opinions for Potential DVC Buyer Wanted!

[juliebrown74]

Hi All -

My husband and I are considering purchasing in the DVC and would love some input from those who are existing owners.
We have a 6 month old daughter with future kids as a possibility. We forsee the next 10-15 years of doing a weeklong Disney trip every other year (and possibly a long weekend during the alternate years). Once our daughter is older, we like the option of using our DVC points towards other vacations as well, including Adventures By Disney and using points towards non-Disney resorts, etc.
I've read that it is not as financially worthwhile to be a part of the DVC if you intend to use points toward non-Disneyworld vacations. Does anyone have experience with this? Do you find the DVC provides enough flexibility that you can tailor your vacations to the age of your children (or vacations without the kids?). I'm concerned that 15 years from now we'll be stuck with a plan that isn't as useful for us anymore and it would be cheaper to travel on our own at that point.
Any feedback or experiences you can share would be greatly appreciated!

 

[ChelleinNC]

Welcome to the Dis!

It's hard for anyone to know what's going to happen in 15 years with out a crystal ball. If you buy DVC all that you are guaranteed is the points to be able to reserve a DVC room for the next 45ish years. Right now, you can trade points out for other resorts, II travel and so on, but that's not a guaranteed part of ownership and those options change frequently from what I've seen.

If you think that for the forseeable future you will be going to WDW at least every other year and would stay in a Deluxe accomodation or need more than a regular hotel room, then DVC may be a good purchase for you now. In 5-10 years you will have more than likely broken even on what you would have spent in cash for Disney trips and can then decide what to do with your membership then. If trades are available, you can do that or maybe you'll find that your kid(s) still want to go to Disney all the time (mine do)

 

[Ratpack]

I agree that is is hard to determine what the future holds, but for us it was the right thing to do. We are a family of 5 and go at least if not twice a year. And since we are five, we are reduced to only the deluxe resorts unless we feel like sardines and stay at a moderate or two rooms at a value. Either way we would be spending about $2000 per trip in room costs and still not have the room we have with DVC in a 2BR. So we went ahead and paid for 10 trips ahead of time and bought in. I wish I had done it years ago before spending all that money on previous trips and it would have been cheaper. I think DVC is going to continue to grow. They are building a resort in Hawaii which is a place we would like to go and rumors are out there of even more exotic places. So now we have the ability to stay at Disneyworld, Disneyland, take a Disney cruise, do the adventures by Disney in all the places they go, they have two resorts on the beach (Hilton Head and Vero Beach), Hawaii coming soon and who know where else and not have to pay for accomidations. If we desire to go somewhere else, we can trade out with IIR and go to over 500 other destinations for a small, small fee. It is just really nice to know that vacatios are in our future. There may come a time when we can't afford the park tickets and so forth, but at least we can get away and stay on a Disney property.

And hopefully the prices will continue to climb as they have in the past and in 10 years if we decide we don't want to go, we can sell it and get our money back out of it. Don't really see that happening since I plan to go to Disney until I die, who cares when the kids stop wanting to go.

 

[ChelleinNC]

I agree that is is hard to determine what the future holds, but for us it was the right thing to do.

I hope my post didn't come off as being against DVC We love our DVC membership and only regret is that we didn't buy in sooner. First really considered it in Aug 06, and decided to wait when we bought in June 07 the price per point had gone up twice and was $10 more per point I don't even want to think about how much we spent onall the other trips over the years

What I really meant in my first post, is don't make your decision on what you're going to want to do 15 years from now. Too many things can change not just DVC perks, but financial situations, marital status, health, job relocations..... Make your decision on what you want to do for the next 5 years and if it makes sense to pre-pay your vacations for the next 5 years. Then you go forward from there

 

[Ratpack]

I probably should have worded that different. I was actually agreeing with your post about you can't base things on what might happen that far in the future. But we knew enough about our travel habits that it made sense to buy in and worry about the future when it got here. It seemed the OP was trying to think what the kids would want in the future and we were the opposite, DW and I will continue to go to Disney regardless if the kids want to go, so we know we will use DVC to the fullest. If we decide not to go one year, we can bank our points and have a longer vacation the next year.

So to answer the OP, for us, DVC is very flexible to what we want to do in the future as we can see it now.

 

[rutgers1]

I am new to DVC, so I am probably not the best person to answer. However, for me, my only "concern" or "worry" at this point is in regards to the trading of points via Interval International, as it doesn't appear as though many people here have tried it. I was hoping that I would find more people here who would say, "It is easy! Glad I did it!" I am going to use II to trade out my developers points for the upcoming year, as I don't have enough money for another Disney trip this year, and I fear that I might end up losing the points. If I am able to trade them in for a week at the beach in New England, I will be as happy as a clam. For the rest of my life, I can see myself going to Disney one year and then spending a week closer to home the next. If I had to pay for airfare and park tickets every year, I don't know if I could do it. I would probably end up banking on odd years and going on much longer trips to Disney.

Here's to hoping that II is the real deal!

 

[juliebrown74]

Hi Rutgers1 -

You took the words out of my mouth. I guess my concern is that very few people appear to use the DVC points for anything other than Disney properties. We would like to go every other year, but don't want to be tied financially to only taking Disney vacations for the rest of our lives (although we'd love that too!). If we can use our investment toward other vacation options every other year, that would be perfect. Anyone with some feedback on using points for non-Disney vacations?

Thanks!

 

[salmoneous]

Adventures By Disney

Note that Adventures by Disney requires a ton of points - several times what it would take to stay at WDW for a week.

 

[kidcoos3]

We've used points for Disney Cruises and other Disney Resorts (non-DVC), including Disneyland. We are also considering using them on an Adventures by Disney trip in the next couple of years. We haven't used II yet, but expect to in the future. I know that a lot of people say that it's not the best use of points, but for us it's been great to have the additional choices to give us more variety in our vacations.

Our feeling was that we would stay at the DVC resorts often enough to make the DVC purchase a good deal, even though we may start to do more and more non DVC trips in the future. We thought that if we did enough DVC trips (particularly early on), the DVC membership pays for itself so we don't need to worry too much about whether we were making the best use of our points.