Here are the ones I seriously considered purchasing. At one time or another, I made offers on weeks in all of these:
Cypress Pointe (both Phase I and II)
Grand Beach (the 3BR units)
Wyndham/Fairfield Points (for access to Bonnet Creek)
Vistana (except for the oldest 2-3 sections).
I chose these three for a combination of location (nothing more than 15 minutes from MK's parking lot), resort quality rating, (nothing less than Silver Crown in RCI), size of unit (either 2 or 3 BRs), and cost.
To figure the annual cost of a week, I take the annual fees plus 8% of the purchase price. The total cost of the ownership had to be under $900/year using this formula. I chose $900 because that's what I can rent a condo at Windsor Hills for, and 8% because that's a reasonable rate of after-tax return on the broad stock market. There are a lot of other beautiful timeshares out there, but very very few of them cost less than $900 per week (even resale) using this formula. Because Windsor Hills was acceptable to me, there was no reason to buy anything that cost more in the long term.
I ended up buying Wyndham/Fairfield. It was the most expensive option of the three, but Bonnet Creek has an unbelievable location, it is a beautiful resort, and I wanted the flexibility of using my ownership at other east-coast/mid-south resorts without having to exchange through RCI or II. But, I would have been happy with any of the others, as well.
I also looked briefly at Silver Lake/Silver Points and Orange Lake, but didn't see many resales for them that fit my dates, so I never made a serious offer.
If money were no object, I'd probably go with Bonnet Creek, one of the HGVCs, one of the Marriotts, and maybe either Vistana Villages or the newer Orange Lake units.
