Can I rent points from anyone for BCV in May 2005?

[mmtdevlin]

Hello, is there any UK based Dis member who would be willing to let me rent enough points (308) for a stay in Beach Club Villas - a One Bedroom Villa - for 9 nights from Tuesday 10th May 2005 until Thursday 19th May 2005. (hope I'm phrasing this right.)

Thank you.

Martina martinadevlin@aol.com

 

[vernon]

Hi Martina, you're a little early with your request as even with "home resort" owners can only book 11 months ahead of arrival date.
You have a number of options,

1) You can hope a BCV owner has the points available and will book the room for you in June/July. IMHO you're limiting your chances with this option.

2) You can wait until October time (7 months window) and hope that owners of any of the DVC resorts have the points available. I don't think May is that busy a time although BCV is probably the most popular of the DVC resorts due to it's smaller # of rooms and the cache of the SAB pool. Obviously you do have a risk that there is "no room at the Inn" , but I think you'd have plenty of time to make alternate arrangements.

3) If you find an owner of another DVC resort that has the points available, you could let them book their home resort in June ( so you are certain you have some accommodation booked) and ask them to try to transfer the booking in October to the resort you are after. Again you run the risk that there is no room at BCV available, but at least you'd know you did have some top quality accommodation booked even if it wasn't your first choice.

IMHO 300 odd points is quite a lot for any one member to have lurking about, you may have more luck if you're prepared to split the deal and take say 180 from one owner and 120 from another. I think those sizes of points are more likely to come up than 310 in one bash. Again another option for you, depending on how adventurous you are, would be to take two different resorts, say OKW (cheapest for points) from Tuesday to Sunday (5 nights) would be, I think, 156 points and 4 nights at BCV (Sunday to check out Thursday ) would be 112 points. That would save you $400 or so on your accommodation AND give you the chance to check out two DVC resorts. There is no real advantage, IMHO, of the location of BCV when using the waterparks,MK,AK or DTD so you could use OKW for park visits to those areas and BCV for MGM, Epcot and maximum use of the wonderful pool of SAB. This would also give you the option of getting a LOS pass for the OKW leg of the stay and visiting ALL the themeparks in those days and using the stay at BCV purely as pool days.

 

[mmtdevlin]

hi Vernon, thanks for your reply. Unfortunately this is all just getting too confusing for me. Booking a BCV 1bdr villa through disneyworld.co.uk is going to cost me £312 per night and £268 for a studio villa. I will probably end up going down this route as I am a little bit wary of renting DVC points (having never done it before combined with entering into a contract with someone I've never met!)

Thanks for your advice though. I really appreciate it.

Thanks again.

Martina

 

[vernon]

While I understand your reluctance to go down this route, as you can see it does make a sizable difference. At $10 per point mid week nights at BCV by renting points it works out to $280 (£155) a night for a 1 bedroom ( just about half the price)

To be honest, to a large degree it's not dissimilar to renting a private villa direct from an owner. There are a number of ways you can check to make sure the booking has been made. Asking the owner to mail/fax you a copy of the reservation being one (it should have your name on it), so you can be sure 1) they are actually an owner of DVC before you send any money 2) they have the points available and 3) they've actually made a booking for you.
When I've rented points out I've asked people to make sure the cheque clears before they arrive at the hotel, ideally about a week before. I think that is fair on both parties, the person buying the points can be sure that for the owner to cancel their booking at that late date is going to leave that owner with the points seriously restricted, and the owner knows they have received their payment before the points get used.

I know in the US many people use an "escrow" account where the money is held by a neutral (legal) third party until the transaction has been completed, we are looking into the viability of this being done in the UK and to see if there would be enough demand for the service to make it worthwhile for a solicitor to do.

 

[paulh]

Why not just buy into DVC as that would be the best option buy 160 points and borow from the next year so you will have enougth you can buy DVC before you get there from over here contact disney and they will phone you and set it all up as some friends did they were going to go over to buy but stay of site when i pointed out that you could discount the cost of that room and add it into your dvc budget it works out cheaper
Paulh

 

[mmtdevlin]

two questions: (sorry I am completely new at this) :

1) if you bought 160 points this year would you again have to buy another 160 next year?; and

2) Usually at what price $ is the point bought at?

thanks
martina

 

[Miffy2003]

Hi Martina

I'm quite new to DVC but will try and answer your questions.

If you buy say 160 points from Disney or a resale agents, this would then give you an allocation of 160 points per year for the next 38 or 50 years (depending on which resort you buy). Costs vary but at the moment I think 160 points through Disney would cost approx $15000, resales will be cheaper but you're probably still talking $13-14000 (and you often have to pay closing costs). You then have an annual maintenence fee which is per point (so the more points you have the more it is. I think 160 points at BCV would be approx $600 per year, which you have to pay for the life of the contract ie the next 38 or 50 years. In effect this is a timeshare, albeit a rather more flexible one than the norm.

So you can see it's a long term thing with quite a chunk of money upfront, but undoubtedly is a real money saver in the long term if you a)have the money to spend on it now and b)know you love WDW and are happy to holiday there in the future (although your DVC points can also be used to swap out and go to resorts all over the world, you don't get quite the same value (IMO))

I agree with what Paulh is saying and certainly for me and my family it was far cheaper in the long run to buy into DVC - however we are big fans of WDW and have 2 young children so we are quite happy to be holidaying at WDW for the foreseeable future, but this may not be the case for you and it is definitely a long term investment, it won't be right for you if you only go to WDW every (say) 5 years or so or less.

I'm reading through the above and I hope that hasn't confused you even more! The idea of renting is a really good value way to experience DVC without the longer term commitments of buying in and points rent for about $10 each at the moment I think.

HTH - if you have any more questions give me a shout and I'll try and help!

Karen

 

[mmtdevlin]

Karen, thanks for your help (no, you weren't confusing at all). Ok, so at least now I know that DVC buying won't be for us, because Disney is the sort of thing we would do only every five years or so. Hubby and I like to travel and to see as many new places as we can - we enjoy going somewhere different each year.

Thanks for your reply. You were really helpful.

Martina

 

[paulh]

we have 200 points and go every year these points cost us £7000 in 1999 we worked out that after 4 trips it would pay for itself you would only pay the dues which work out for us at £500 per year the cost of accomadation say at the beach club may/june when we go for 2 weeks cash for room works out about £3000 to £4000 so as we have visited 4 times we get this type of hotel for our dues £500 per year. i now that a lot of people dont think that they disney every year 160 points means you will do disney every 2 years but disney have the hilton head resort in south carolina and vero beach on the coast if you stay at DVC ( and forgive me all on the boards for saying it) you doint have to do disney ( there i said it and was not struck down by a thunderbolt) we as a family dont like the sun sea beer and beach hols that you get in spain for example so for us dvc suits us but if we only had 150 or 160 pionts we could live with going every 2 years. but before dvc we would sty at mod resorts now we stay at what they class as delux ( we enjoy all star and the pop )for the price of oure dues.If this trip your are planing is your first and you think it would be your last yes rent those points but once you have got disney in your blood it like a drug you will always come back for more dut if you do buy into dvcyou have to go at least every 2 years or lose some points
Paulh