Buying at multiple resorts

[MickeyMouseCD524]

Sorry for all the questions, but many people both on the boards and whom I've talked to have contracts at multiple resorts. Why? Is it for the 11 month advantage? Do you actually use that many points? Or do you rent out a bunch of them? I know booking a bunch of reservations can get you into trouble with DVC have you run into that problem? Only asking because we are interested in 3-4 different resorts but don't know we would use all of those points in a given year or two.

 

[skippytx]

Some people make multiple trips a year. For instance one might own a Beach Club contract so they can stay near EPCOT during Food and Wine. A monorail resort for being close to MK. SSR or OKW to relax. Some folks just like different resorts and visit multiple times a year.

I haven't heard of anyone getting in trouble for booking reservations with their points before. There's a limit on how many points you can own, but if I wanted to book 17 single day stays with my points there are no rules against that. There are a surprising number of local DVC owners who book rooms for just a weekend multiple times a year.

I just have the one contract and visit roughly once a year, so maybe someone with multiple contracts can give you there reasoning.

 

[GGGT]

We own at four different resorts.
Three of them are for the 11 month booking window, often for multiple rooms. (VGF: December, VWL: Thanksgiving, and PVB: July 4th.) Our other resort is SSR which we use at a variety of locations including SSR.

 

[MickeyMouseCD524]

We own at four different resorts.
Three of them are for the 11 month booking window, often for multiple rooms. (VGF: December, VWL: Thanksgiving, and PVB: July 4th.) Our other resort is SSR which we use at a variety of locations including SSR.

Do you go down to WDW that much every year or do you find yourself banking or renting points a lot?

ETA: We're considering BWV and AKL and maybe getting on the waitlist for VGF. But I don't know if that's too much. We love Boardwalk to pieces love staying there on our longer stays, but AK is for those more relaxing vacations for us. And we use VGF for long weekends.

 

[GGGT]

We're fortunate to actually travel that often to WDW. (We have a of lot of points...too many every January... )

On average, we have 3 family trips: 3 Studios or 1 BR's for 7 to 10 days each July 4th week at PVB, every Thanksgiving at VWL, and either December or Spring Break at VGF. We also have 2-3 couple trips each year. We've never rented out our points.

 

[ray3127]

Sorry for all the questions, but many people both on the boards and whom I've talked to have contracts at multiple resorts. Why? Is it for the 11 month advantage? Do you actually use that many points? Or do you rent out a bunch of them? I know booking a bunch of reservations can get you into trouble with DVC have you run into that problem? Only asking because we are interested in 3-4 different resorts but don't know we would use all of those points in a given year or two.

11-month advantage at multiple places.

We teach and always travel from before Christmas through New Year's, so we must own where we want to stay (BCV & BLT). We also like doing split stays with those for ultimate convenience to the parks.

We own at VGC because it's impossible to get in there for a solid week when we can travel there in June.

Rented a few extra banked points on a contract we weren't going to use, but after that initial rental I do not see us ever renting out points again.

I came here and asked about BLT or BCV for our purchase about a year ago, and soon realized that smaller contracts at both made sense. Between banking/borrowing and split stays, it works well.

 

[MickeyMouseCD524]

We're fortunate to actually travel that often to WDW. (We have a of lot of points...too many every January... )

On average, we have 3 family trips: 3 Studios or 1 BR's for 7 to 10 days each July 4th week at PVB, every Thanksgiving at VWL, and either December or Spring Break at VGF. We also have 2-3 couple trips each year. We've never rented out our points.

That’s awesome! Unfortunately we don’t have that much flexibility at the moment to travel as much but we hope to one day. Currently it’s just the two of us (hopefully more one day) so studios and 1BRs work great. But sometimes we travel with family or offer to bring friends with us. So we need 2BRs. We’re honestly just not sure which property we want right now.

11-month advantage at multiple places.

We teach and always travel from before Christmas through New Year's, so we must own where we want to stay (BCV & BLT). We also like doing split stays with those for ultimate convenience to the parks.

We own at VGC because it's impossible to get in there for a solid week when we can travel there in June.

Rented a few extra banked points on a contract we weren't going to use, but after that initial rental I do not see us ever renting out points again.

I came here and asked about BLT or BCV for our purchase about a year ago, and soon realized that smaller contracts at both made sense. Between banking/borrowing and split stays, it works well.

DH also teaches so we’re at the mercy of his schedule. How small do you find works well for your family? It’s currently just two of us but we do hope that number will grow in the future.

 

[ray3127]

DH also teaches so we’re at the mercy of his schedule. How small do you find works well for your family? It’s currently just two of us but we do hope that number will grow in the future.

Not sure if you're asking about unit size, contract size, or both.

Unit size: We are a family of 4, kids are 5 & 1.5. We're happy with studios, though many on here DIS would say a 1-BR is a necessity. We don't spend a whole lot of time in the room, and usually all go to sleep around the same time since we are all pretty exhausted (in a good way) at the end of every day. My philosophy is we've made due with much smaller quarters on cruise ships, and I'd rather stay twice as long than have twice the room.

Contract size: Totally depends, and related to desired unit size. One of the challenges is the winter break time is the most expensive time of year (most points per night, by far... that's also keeping us in studios). Take a look at when you want to travel and put some hypothetical trips together. I like using David's Rentals site, there's a nifty cost calculator on there that shows you your desired stay in points across every resort, super easy to use. That can give you a quick idea of how much your "usual" trips might cost.

 

[MickeyMouseCD524]

Not sure if you're asking about unit size, contract size, or both.

Unit size: We are a family of 4, kids are 5 & 1.5. We're happy with studios, though many on here DIS would say a 1-BR is a necessity. We don't spend a whole lot of time in the room, and usually all go to sleep around the same time since we are all pretty exhausted (in a good way) at the end of every day. My philosophy is we've made due with much smaller quarters on cruise ships, and I'd rather stay twice as long than have twice the room.

Contract size: Totally depends, and related to desired unit size. One of the challenges is the winter break time is the most expensive time of year (most points per night, by far... that's also keeping us in studios). Take a look at when you want to travel and put some hypothetical trips together. I like using David's Rentals site, there's a nifty cost calculator on there that shows you your desired stay in points across every resort, super easy to use. That can give you a quick idea of how much your "usual" trips might cost.

Yes sorry I meant contract size because you mentioned that two smaller contracts worked better for you guys. But both info is extremely helpful! I'll check out the calculator too, had no idea that existed. Thanks!

 

[kboo]

Definitely check out the calculator, and also think about how realistically you can plan trips >7 months in advance. If you can't (I see you would want some long weekends at VGF), then you should think about finding the lowest cost points for those trips because anytime less than 7 months before travel, a point is a point is a point.

We use our multiple contracts to book well in advance (usually 11 months to the day) at our home resorts. We have yet to modify one of those reservations at 7 mo to go to a non-home resort. (We did once, and modified back to our home resort in a larger unit, and it was a crazy stalking and waitlisting exercise that I would prefer not to do again.)

Many studios (even the small BLT studios) still work very well for 2 adults and a baby in a crib, so you should plan on buying for your needs now (just the 2 of you) and then maybe add on after you've gotten a feel for the system and how it works and whether you like DVC. If you want larger units for a trip with friends/family, you can also rent points if you don't have enough.

 

[MickeyMouseCD524]

Definitely check out the calculator, and also think about how realistically you can plan trips >7 months in advance. If you can't (I see you would want some long weekends at VGF), then you should think about finding the lowest cost points for those trips because anytime less than 7 months before travel, a point is a point is a point.

We use our multiple contracts to book well in advance (usually 11 months to the day) at our home resorts. We have yet to modify one of those reservations at 7 mo to go to a non-home resort. (We did once, and modified back to our home resort in a larger unit, and it was a crazy stalking and waitlisting exercise that I would prefer not to do again.)

Many studios (even the small BLT studios) still work very well for 2 adults and a baby in a crib, so you should plan on buying for your needs now (just the 2 of you) and then maybe add on after you've gotten a feel for the system and how it works and whether you like DVC. If you want larger units for a trip with friends/family, you can also rent points if you don't have enough.

We tend to book 11 months or more (if we can) out because of how my vacation time is structured. I usually have to have most of my vacation time mapped out by the start of the year.

We love DVC and stay on my parents points all the time. But we can't keep that up for much longer, as they want to start using them for themselves again. My mother has even used my account to pop on here and ask a few questions from time to time about how to best utilize the membership.

We were thinking somewhere in the 200-250 point range. It gives us enough for a big vacation or a couple of small ones a year and if we don't use it we can bank and bring friends/family in a 2br the next year or rent them out.

 

[kboo]

We were thinking somewhere in the 200-250 point range. It gives us enough for a big vacation or a couple of small ones a year and if we don't use it we can bank and bring friends/family in a 2br the next year or rent them out.

If you plan to buy direct for all your points (and there is a lot of info on the boards here about whether that's a good idea), I'd suggest you break the contracts up into 2X100 or even smaller, so that you can sell only a portion of your points if you find you're not using them effectively (also smaller contracts sell more easily and at a premium).

 

[MickeyMouseCD524]

If you plan to buy direct for all your points (and there is a lot of info on the boards here about whether that's a good idea), I'd suggest you break the contracts up into 2X100 or even smaller, so that you can sell only a portion of your points if you find you're not using them effectively (also smaller contracts sell more easily and at a premium).

We do plan to buy direct, we think it’s the best option for us at the moment. Are you suggesting 2 100 point contracts at different resorts or 2 contracts at the same resort. Just want to make sure I’m understanding you correctly.

 

[chalee94]

Also, just to be clear as your questions suggest you are very new to DVC: you cannot combine different home resort points at the 11 month window. If you have 50 SSR pts and 200 BCV pts and want to book BCV at 11 months out, you can only use the pts from the BCV contract. The SSR pts would stay on the sideline and cannot be used at BCV (under any circumstances) until the 7 month window.

Some people do like different resorts at different times of year. Some do like split stays and move between different resorts during the same stay (OTOH, I do not like feeling "homeless" for that changeover day, so I stay at the same resort during my trips.)

 

[cedricandsophie]

We have over 1300 points at six resorts some direct and some resale. We never get less than a one bedroom and we try to never for less than 10 days to two weeks. We can also go off season so we can usually get what we want in 7 months. We initially bought into boardwalk in 1998 for 60 something a point plus we got dollar for dollar reduction on what we had spent at the resorts while there. I had been there almost a week for a work conference so we had over 2000 in expenses which I got reimbursed for from my company and still got to deduct that amount from the buy in amount. Then we bought AK on a cruise but decided we didn’t like kidani that much. We bought bay lake at initial price, and we bought aulani that way, Bay lake was probably a mistake because my husband reLly doesn’t like it, but I like to go for a few days every couple years. And we go to aulani every year for at least 10 days, and we got very beach resale st about 53 a point because my husband likes to go for spring baseball and just bought OKW resale because that has turned into our fav resort. We use them all and are in borrowing mode right now. We have never rented them although we have given points to friends and family occasionally.

 

[MickeyMouseCD524]

Also, just to be clear as your questions suggest you are very new to DVC: you cannot combine different home resort points at the 11 month window. If you have 50 SSR pts and 200 BCV pts and want to book BCV at 11 months out, you can only use the pts from the BCV contract. The SSR pts would stay on the sideline and cannot be used at BCV (under any circumstances) until the 7 month window.

Some people do like different resorts at different times of year. Some do like split stays and move between different resorts during the same stay (OTOH, I do not like feeling "homeless" for that changeover day, so I stay at the same resort during my trips.)

Oh yes yes yes. New to buying not new to staying or using a membership. We stay DVC a lot on my parents points but they only own at one resort. But I’m pretty accustomed to how the points work and how we can use them. There’s just so many many great choices!

If we split it’s only on our longer trips and for us it’s usually been between a DVC and cash reservation at a different resort. But I agree feeling homeless for the day is not the best feeling.

 

[MickeyMouseCD524]

We have over 1300 points at six resorts some direct and some resale. We never get less than a one bedroom and we try to never for less than 10 days to two weeks. We can also go off season so we can usually get what we want in 7 months. We initially bought into boardwalk in 1998 for 60 something a point plus we got dollar for dollar reduction on what we had spent at the resorts while there. I had been there almost a week for a work conference so we had over 2000 in expenses which I got reimbursed for from my company and still got to deduct that amount from the buy in amount. Then we bought AK on a cruise but decided we didn’t like kidani that much. We bought bay lake at initial price, and we bought aulani that way, Bay lake was probably a mistake because my husband reLly doesn’t like it, but I like to go for a few days every couple years. And we go to aulani every year for at least 10 days, and we got very beach resale st about 53 a point because my husband likes to go for spring baseball and just bought OKW resale because that has turned into our fav resort. We use them all and are in borrowing mode right now. We have never rented them although we have given points to friends and family occasionally.

WOW! That is truly impressive! Unfortunately we don’t get to travel that much but we are at Disney once or twice a year and travel to other areas of the country/world when we can. That is awesome that you are able to use all those points and visit all the resorts. I think we’re definitely going to buy into at least two resorts.

 

[ray3127]

We do plan to buy direct, we think it’s the best option for us at the moment. Are you suggesting 2 100 point contracts at different resorts or 2 contracts at the same resort. Just want to make sure I’m understanding you correctly.

I think @kboo was saying if you buy one resort direct, break it up into smaller contracts to give you more flexibility. The added closing costs are worth it.

If you buy two different resorts they will automatically be split.

 

[MickeyMouseCD524]

I think @kboo was saying if you buy one resort direct, break it up into smaller contracts to give you more flexibility. The added closing costs are worth it.

If you buy two different resorts they will automatically be split.

Got it! We'll definitely look into that!

 

[Sandisw]

I own BWV and SSR right now but considering a possible purchase of Poly points. I use BWV for specific trips and then my SSR points for the rest. At 7 months I change the trips with SSR to resorts I want to stay, specifically VGF if I can get it. I just retired so will be doing Disney almost monthly and wanted more points to do it which is why I own so many SSR.

But I am realizing that in December, I’d like to be near MK, especially if I take my grandchildren so owning at Poly would work for me. We don’t need the kitchens so studios work well.

If we decide to add on, the I’ll have exactly the 3 home resorts that will meet our needs perfectly.