BLT has lowest dues now, but...

[spiceycat]

never under estimate DVC. OKW for years was the lowest. now it is pretty high.

for no room service (which does add cost) and other things that BWV, AKV, BCV, VWL have.

one factor that did change - Disney got rid of alot of their long time employees and got more for less paid. but when the job needs one or two people and they send out a staff - that to me is wasted money. at OKW it was my money. So got rid of OKW.

will be looking for this type of thing at BLT - but so far BLT has kept the costs low. that included for a while not cleaning the windows constantly - but that seems to have changed. would be interested to see if they kept the windows so clean when it is sold out.

think someone at Disney is thinking of getting a new monrail train - if they do - our contracts says DVC members will not pay for it. We do help pay for maintence. and the monrail system has need alot this past year. Don't know if we will share the pay for the Epcot extension being done now or not?

would think those costs will mostly go back to Epcot - but not sure.

to the op - buy where you want to stay. If you will be happy at SSR - go for it.

 

[Dean]

I guess what I am trying to say is it really depends on your needs. We are a family that just won't stay at SSR, OKW, and AKV. So, while those resorts could allow us to stretch our points farther, it is immaterial as I would never stay there.

If my only choice that year was one of those resorts, we would bank our points and not go.

So, for my travel in Magic Season, it will cost me the pretty much the same # of points to stay at BWV, BCV, and VWL as it will in a SV at BLT. Since I bought BLT so I could book at 11 months and pretty much get SV most of the time, it is very comparable for my situation.

Now, we may be a very unique family in that where we stay is our number one priority and we only bought DVC because BLT was built. If that was not there, we would not be DVC member. We love the location and ability to walk to MK which is why we almost always stayed at the CR prior to DVC.

All I am saying is that people need to evaluate their own travel needs and look at things from their own perspective. To say that owning at BLT and staying at BLT is going to always cost you more points is simply not true.

I will agree with you that there are certainly resorts that you can go to that are cheaper points, but you have to be happy at those resorts. If not, does it really matter if it is less?

Obviously everyone has to evaluate their choices in context. However, to say the points for BLT are around the same as BWV or AKV would not be correct.

Despite what the guides may say about lower costs at BLT due to... whatever, the difference is almost entirely due to the higher points per night. The maintenance cost per room at BLT is almost exactly the same as at SSR. It is just being divided over more points. Since "more points per night" is never changing, I see no reason for the fee differential to go shrink or go away.

That's certainly part of it. Some people like to point to DVC's consistently modest fee increases over the years but they often forget that DVC is essentially the highest fees in the industry by a significant amount comparing like to like (area, quality, etc).

 

[tjkraz]

never under estimate DVC. OKW for years was the lowest. now it is pretty high.

OKW was the lowest until 2004 when SSR opened. Even today OKW is still cheaper than HHI, Vero, BWV, BCV and VWL. In other words, it's position in relation to the other pre-2004 resorts has not changed.

OKW is also cheaper than AKV.

The primary reason resorts like BLT, VGC and Aulani are cheaper per-point than OKW is because the point charts are so much higher than prior resorts.