Anyone had a hurricane mess up your points

[Cmbar]

Ok question. What happens if you book using your points and a hurricane stikes and you have cancel your plans (based on airports shutting down or such.) Is there any lienency on this with MS?? Do you just lose the points you booked with if you never check in. I don't guess we can buy insurance on our DVC reservations. We are possibly going to be booking Aug reservations for SSR to use up developer points. I know those have to be used before 10-3 so I suspect those will be gone, but we will be supplementing those with a few of our 09 points. Anyone had this problem. (once again I am over thinking here)!

 

[DisneyWhirled]

I don't know exactly how the points would work, but I can tell you that you can purchase travel insurance. DVC has an agreement with AIG (I KNOW!!!). When you book and get your confirmation, a brochure comes with it. The insurance doesn't give you your points back if you have a qualifying event, but instead gives you the dollar value of the points.

The plan is pretty reasonable. They break the price out by plans. Plan 1 is vacation point coverage. Here is how it is figured:

Multiply the # of vacation points by $5. (100 points for example x $5 = $500)
The plan cost is determined by multiplying the reimbursment amount by 5.15% ($500x5.15%= $25.75)
Minimum plan cost is $29.00

Plan 2 covers airline tix and Plan 3 is for medical.

BTW-We have (and are again) travelled in August, so I understand your concern. Friends of ours were at WDW last Aug for two weeks and one of them was during a hurricane. They made their fun, but it did damper things a little.

I hope this helps!!

 

[Crystal_27]

I don't know exactly how the points would work, but I can tell you that you can purchase travel insurance. DVC has an agreement with AIG (I KNOW!!!). When you book and get your confirmation, a brochure comes with it. The insurance doesn't give you your points back if you have a qualifying event, but instead gives you the dollar value of the points.

I'd be curious to see what they consider the "dollar value" of the point?? When we bought in, my guide did some fancy calculations that showed over the life of our membership, that a point (including buy-in and maintenance fees) was only like $5.00/point. That sounds great as a sales pitch (if you buy that kind of tactic), but I wonder if Disney applies the same calculation to the dollar value of a point for trave insurance. In my opinion, if a trip is cancelled, you should be entitled to a reimbursement of what would be the rack rate of the room, but I'm quite sure the reimbursement wouldn't be that high.

 

[DebbieB]

I'd be curious to see what they consider the "dollar value" of the point?? When we bought in, my guide did some fancy calculations that showed over the life of our membership, that a point (including buy-in and maintenance fees) was only like $5.00/point. That sounds great as a sales pitch (if you buy that kind of tactic), but I wonder if Disney applies the same calculation to the dollar value of a point for trave insurance. In my opinion, if a trip is cancelled, you should be entitled to a reimbursement of what would be the rack rate of the room, but I'm quite sure the reimbursement wouldn't be that high.

According to the terms of the travel insurance that DVC sends the brochure for, they reimburse $5.00 per point. I don't think it would be worth buying unless you were at the end of your use year and may not be able to reschedule. I think the premium is high too.

 

[HayGan]

BTW-We have (and are again) travelled in August, so I understand your concern. Friends of ours were at WDW last Aug for two weeks and one of them was during a hurricane. They made their fun, but it did damper things a little.

That would have actually been Tropical Storm Fay. We were there during that time. Fay just hovered over Florida for days bringing in TONS of rain (some pretty strong winds as well.) We still went to the parks and had a great time but it was quite miserable at times. Disney was great about keeping us informed (via tv and phone mesages in the room) about plans and changes. I won't even talk about our drive home as it was the scariest experience of my life (tornados up and down I-95 especially around Jacsonville!)

OP - if you do not like the insurance that Disney provides you may be able to find coverage on www.insuremytrip.com I'm not sure how companies handle timeshares but you may want to check it out.

 

[Happy Birthday Cat]

Back in 2004 (I think), there was a series of hurricanes in Orlando and for at least one in September DVC actually allowed members who had reservations with banked points to do the unheard of and cancel reservations and put the points back into their original use year. Extraordinary circumstances and DVC was flexible. We had a reservation, did not have insurance and were made whole.

HBC