Buying soon! Does the location of purchase matter?

[Shugahbaby]

We are considering purchasing a resale at OKW. We are new to this and our understanding is that the more points bought at the lowest price is the thing to do. Why is it so important to buy at certain places if the points can be used in any of them? We have never even seen OKW but have stayed at all the others. Would we have difficulty booking our favorite, Beach Club?

 

[iankh]

Many people feel feel that it is important to have their preferred resort be their home resort because of the 11 month window for booking as opposed to the 7 month window.

That may be a consideration for some of the smaller resorts such as VWL which has only 136 rooms.

 

[Shugahbaby]

I understand the 7-11 month concept in booking, but in reality, is it hard to get the resort of your choice? For example, is the Beach Club real hard to get or others? It just seems like logic dictates the most points for the cheapest $. I'm just trying to get a handle on all of this. Thanks for any replies!

 

[donaldbuzz&minnie]

As I understand it, although I am still relatively new at this, once SSR is completely sold out it will have about 40% of all the DVC units. At that point you are going to have a lot of competition if your goal is to stay at the BCV, since you will be competing at 7 months from your vacation dates with all the other members who don't own at the Beach Club.

You just have to decide which is more important to you - hassle of buying resale, fewer years on the contract if you don't buy into SSR, higher purchase price v. the chance that you may, worst case, almost always stay at OKW and SSR, if you buy at OKW. This is a completely individual decision, and one isn't better than the other. I would be careful, though, about assuming that you will be able to easily stay at all the other resorts once SSR is sold out.

Good luck with your decision - but hey, it's Disney. You'll have fun no matter what.

 

[Renate_do]

Do they make differences between the other Resorts when trying to get rooms at the 7month window?
Means is it easier for OKW owners to get rooms at BWV then for example owners of VB??
Or does it only depends on the availabilit of rooms?

Greets Renate

 

[bobbiwoz]

Renate_do, at the 7 month mark, all of the points are the same, it is no harder to book into WDW with VB or HH points at 7 months than it is to try to switch a ressie from BCV to VWL, for instance.

Bobbi

 

[CRSNDSNY]

I believe that the location you buy at is important if you usually travel at a busy DVC time period (like holiday season) and it is important to get into your home resort. The whole "11 month" vs. "7 month" booking time table.

For instance, if we loved VWL and wanted to stay there sometime during the first two weeks of December or through Christmas (very popular time for VWL), I'd be sure to buy points at VWL so that I have the 11-month booking priority.

That being said, we bought at SSR because of the deal going on at the time and the longer contract. We've stayed there twice but never had a problem getting our preference resort (BCV in May, BWV in December, etc.) at the 7-month mark.

Waitlist has also come through for us in the past. Of course, if it didn't and we were 'stuck' at SSR, we wouldn't be disappointed in that either. SSR is beautiful and we are happy with our purchase.

 

[Granny]

I would say that purchasing a resort with the lowest cost per point, and lowest maintenance costs makes sense if the following is true for you.

1. You don't really care where you stay at WDW, and are just happy to be there. Yes, you will probably be able to get into BCV many times by booking at the 7 month window, but would it bother you to not be able to get there or any other "first choice" for a particular trip?

2. You can't/won't book more than 7 months out. If you cannot make concrete vacation plans more than 7 months in advance, then there is no advantage to owning at one resort vs another.

If you answer yes to either of these, then you should consider purchasing wherever the best deal for you would be. For us, it was important to be able to stay at our home resorts when we wanted to, so buying where we wanted to stay the most made the most sense.

Good luck!

 

[DVCajun]

I just made ressies for BWV (my home resort) for November. It's 8-9 months out at this point and I still wasn't able to get my first or second choices of rooms (I wanted a standard view studio first, boardwalk view second). I got a regular preferred view studio and waitlisted for the other choices. I'm willing to bet that by the time the 7 month window rolls around, there won't be a single studio available at either BWV or BCV for the entire 6 weeks of the Food and Wine Festival (my favorite time to go).

 

[JimMIA]

Granny mentioned this, but I'll reiterate it because it is something that is often overlooked when evaluating cost per point. Pay attention to dues/maintenance costs if you are trying to get the least expensive points.

Generally, dues are about $4 per point per year, but some resorts are almost $5 per point per year. So you may save a buck or two per point on your one-time purchase price, but give it back in higher dues every year. Over time, that can be a big difference in the overall cost, depending on how many points you own.

 

[Renate_do]

Where can I find overlook about the dues?

Greets Renate

 

[Mary Ellen]

Where can I find overlook about the dues?

I suspect this thread I just bumped up has the information you are seeking. It has charts showing the dues at each resort and the history.

 

[Villain Dude]

it did to me ... bwv!

 

[DebbieB]

Location was a big factor when I bought. I bought in September 1999 and the 2 choices onsite were OKW and BWV. OKW was cheaper (as a resale & also dues), but I bought BWV because I wanted to stay there the first week of December and knew it was difficult to get at 7 months. Plus I figured BWV would hold a higher resale value if I have to sell.

 

[SoCalKDG]

Just remember that DVC will continue to grow while BCV/VWL/BWV stay the same size. Currently you might have 5K people trying to get into another resort for a specific month at 7 months. As DVC grow, that number will rise to 7-8K people trying for those same places.

 

[NMW]

We own at BWV and we booked a 1 bdr boardwalk view for 9 days in beginning of Dec at exactly 11 mos. MS told me to do my reservation day by day because it was filling up (instead of waiting until 11 mos from my checkout day). I know that early DEC is busy but, I was a little surprised. If I owned elsewhere and tried to book BWV boardwalk view or ANY view at 7 mos and didn't get it, I would have been bummed. Also, I would have had DH telling me "I told you we should have bought an Epcot resort" (his favorite resort area).
We also like to travel in Oct and early NOV. This is food and wine festival in Epcot and the Epcot resorts are popular because of this. We have stayed in the hotel part of the BC during this time and it was VERY crowded. In fact, we were surprised by how "uncrowded" the parks were. Based on the number of people at the BC and YC, we thought the parks would be mobbed. We found out from a CM that our resort was just very full due to food and wine festival. I can only assume the villas were crowded too. At this time we had not even heard of it! You may not get what you want at 7 mos every time during the festival.
DH's fav time to visit is first 2 weeks of DEC and I learned from this board that it's a very busy DVC time. You might not get that time every time either. BCV is pretty small. Of course if you don't travel at these times, none of this would apply! If it's very important for you to stay there, you might want to consider buying there.

 

[crisi]

There is a stress factor as well. We book eleven months out and are happy to stay at our home resort (BWV). If I really wanted VWL (which is a favorite), I'd spend five months every year stressing over whether they would have availability or if I'd be "stuck" with my home resort. I probably won't ever move to a wait list for this reason - either they have availability or they don't, I'm not stressing over "maybe."

We booked a SV one bedroom over food and wine for October. Right at the eleven month check out date first thing in the morning. Was told that there were only a "few" units left.

Flexibility, however, does count for something. We have to travel that week to minimize pulling the kids out of school. Sometimes if you can be more flexible, you are fine.

 

[DrTomorrow]

One thing I'm quite curious about - and will never see answered here - is what percentage of Non-DIS DVC owners aggresively use the 11 & 7 month windows. I know that this group of, ahem, obsessives (myself included) knows the exact days to call (probably using Caskbill's delightful planner), gets on the phone at 9 AM EST, makes ressies day-by-day in busy times, and makes a ressie at home resort at 11 months then switches at 7. But the average guy/gal who walked up to a DVC kiosk - do you think that a lot of them track this the same way we do? I suspect - no data to back it up - that a lot of them realize in February or March that, "Gosh, we need to make our summer DVC plans".

 

[Mike]

One thing I'm quite curious about - and will never see answered here - is what percentage of Non-DIS DVC owners aggresively use the 11 & 7 month windows. I know that this group of, ahem, obsessives (myself included) knows the exact days to call (probably using Caskbill's delightful planner), gets on the phone at 9 AM EST, makes ressies day-by-day in busy times, and makes a ressie at home resort at 11 months then switches at 7. But the average guy/gal who walked up to a DVC kiosk - do you think that a lot of them track this the same way we do? I suspect - no data to back it up - that a lot of them realize in February or March that, "Gosh, we need to make our summer DVC plans".

Good point. I'll take it a step further - how many people use all of their points or take advantage of banking them? I know people (my BIL's relatives)that own DVC and they never bank or never know how many points they have remaining. When they decide they want to go away, they call and make a reservation (usually trading out of DVC). Some years they don't go anywhere. I tried to explain how they can bank points but I was getting that blank stare back from them. I'd be willing to bet there are a lot of points being wasted there and I'd also be willing to bet that they are not alone. A family that used to live across the street from my brother used their points to stay at the GF every year. I know that sounds crazy to people here, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were a fair amount of people who bought on a whim while on vacation and are either too lazy or clueless to figure out how it works.

Now this percentage of owners and unused points may not be significant enough to make rooms available for anyone looking to make ressies at the 7 month window, but it can't hurt either.

 

[childsplay]

I agree with Granny's assessment of the situation....however, I would add this...When I started cruising these boards more than 5 years ago, the mantra was "Buy where you want to stay", I still feel that's a valid piece of advice....the difference in point prices (when you add in closing costs and the like) just isn't that great when you spread it over the life of the contract.

PS. I also agree with Crisi that there is a "convienece or stress factor' that some need to weigh into their decision....as an example, we added on points at HH because we wanted to go during the high demand time of summer and didn't want to hope we could get in at 7 months.

So much depends on when you want to go and where you want to stay.