Confirm my thoughts

[bighoo93]

You would be surprised. And yes, I am a teacher.

Oh, that doesn't surprise me the least bit. But I think responsible families ought to be able to handle the situation properly. I think teachers ought to be able to send out the assignments and lesson plans, and beyond that, it is up to the family, just like a kid who was out sick. If a teacher is willing to do any more than that, that is really up to them, but I really see no excuse for expecting that if you've pulled your kid out for vacation.

 

[bighoo93]

Many parents do assume that in the UK. Seems to be worse in private schools. Schools now have the power to find and to report absent kids to the police.

We're probably heading that way in the US, too. Like I said, for now, children still belong to their parents, not the school. For now.

 

[Seanjclarke]

Ok, we're starting to fall off the tracks here with this topic, but it supports my once every 3 years thing. I'd only be pulling them out of each school level once.

And like the other poster said I did plan on using the one time points to make things work. Just wish they allowed more than 25. Do/can people have every 3 year buddies that trade small point amounts? Like the "have a penny, leave a penny tray"?

 

[wdrl]

And like the other poster said I did plan on using the one time points to make things work. Just wish they allowed more than 25. Do/can people have every 3 year buddies that trade small point amounts? Like the "have a penny, leave a penny tray"?

There are two things to remember about the One Time Use points: First, Disney may suspend or terminate the program at any time, or modify it so that less than 24 points are available.

Second, the One Time Use points are only available for reservations made at the 7-month window; they are not available to complete a reservation booked during the Home Resort window. When the 7-month window finally opens, you might find that the OTU points are available, but the extra day you are trying to add to your existing reservation is not available at the 7-month window. You might have to book a split stay -- a different accommodation type and/or different resort -- in order to use all your points at the 7-month window.

Buying into DVC and using the points once every three years can work. It just takes much more planning and requires more flexibility on your part.

 

[LisaS]

Do/can people have every 3 year buddies that trade small point amounts? Like the "have a penny, leave a penny tray"?

You can transfer points into or out of your account once per UY. Because of this restriction, many members would be reluctant to use up their one transfer on a small number of points.

 

[Dean]

I'm looking into buying resale, one third of the points I would need. My thought is that me and my family could go the 2nd of every three years.

So hypothetically bank 2014 points, use 2015 points, and borrow 2016 points for a trip in 2015. Then do the same thing again in 2018. This is possible, right? Are there any little quirks I would need to know about to do this? I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything before I take the plunge.

Sean

While theoretically workable, I too think every 3 years is a risky plan. I would certainly buy a cushion of points, at least 1/3 to 1/2 of one year extra and even better around enough to do every 2 years instead of every 3. I think a well chosen UY is also far more important in this situation than for others.

 

[Disneybuckeye]

I agree with Dean that I would have cushion of a few points and yes, it would then be easily doable. It is not uncommon for us to spend a night or two over at Univesal for the FOTL pass, or spend time at my parents house over on the coast. We then have a different vacation on occasion. It does require some additional transportation costs though. Even if you use it for a few years and decide it won't work you can resell and make most of your money back (if you buy resale) or do an add on.

We started small and added on. We paid cash for every transaction and got some decent prices on the resale market. Good luck with whatever you decide.

 

[chalee94]

how have the tables changed over the years? I think i've heard of only one change, has it been more frequent than that?

one really big change to reduce the gap between weeknights and weekends at all resorts - it was painful as many had gotten used to the cheaper sun-thursday stays...

several smaller changes to reallocate THV point costs with SSR, BLT standard views and theme park views (due to too many theme park view villas originally that were crummy views) and an early reallocation at OKW. i think BWV may have had one adjustment as well.

you can see some of the results of the reallocations in the links below:

2014 point chart for OKW

original pt charts for OKW (thanks to webmasterdoc).

if you wanted a 1BR at OKW for 7 nights in may 1994, it would have cost 200 pts. if you wanted a 1BR at OKW for 7 nights in may 2014, it would cost 199 pts.

OTOH, if you wanted a studio for 5 nights sun-thurs in early december, your 35 pt stay cost in 1994 has now increased by 43% to 50 pts. weeknight stays have taken a hit...but if you just stayed 2 nights on a weekend in early december at OKW, your 34 pt stay in 1994 dropped a bit to 26 pts.

so when some numbers go up, others have to go down. or if everything goes up (as at BLT a couple of years back), then they have reclassified some rooms in the underlying room categories (i.e. there are fewer expensive "theme park view" villas at BLT now than a few years ago - and the extra pts from the formerly expensive villas got spread across the point chart.)

if you typically stay for 7 nights, i doubt you'll see any big changes (although early dec is popular enough that it won't surprise me if they move it to a different season.)

timesharing definitely involves a risk of change, so take that into account.

 

[crisi]

I hear this a lot, apparently school has changed since I was a kid. Why can't you just pull your kids out of school during the year? Can't they just make up the work when they get back? Or is it more of a sports/activity thing and the kids not wanting to miss that stuff to go to disney?

Since this was addressed to me, I'll continue the hijack a bit...its changed a TON since I was in school. It wasn't hard to pull them in elementary school for a few days - but by middle school - there was no way they could keep up if we pulled them - they have two or three hours of homework a day when they ARE in class - being out of the classroom for a week would be ten to fifteen hours of homework PLUS the inclass time they missed - staying after school to make up labs in Science, weekly quizzes in every class, the constant research projects in English. Two hours of exercise recorded for every hour of PE missed, but its an automatic no credit for those days in band. Plus if your kids are playing sports, they won't be seeing game time if they've missed practices for vacations. And my kids go to a not great school.

And that is if the teachers LET them make up work - that is at the teacher's discretion for a vacation (illness or bereavement they have to let you make up, but better have an obit and a doctor's note). With 8 week semesters, a week out of school is 12.5% of the grade - better hope they didn't do anything heavily weighted that week.

 

[vicki_c]

We have the same situation as crisi. We always pulled our kids out in elementary school, although tried to keep it to 3 days max /combined with a holiday, etc. I used to think we would continue that into middle school, but it's not really possible for us. Our kids are just not highly motivated students (I wish they were) and that combined with the way the school feels about it (vacation would be counted as unexcused absences) just make it a no go.

We're pretty much stuck with Easter trips for the next 6 years since my husband works in retail and can't take off Thanksgiving or Christmas. Ah well, this too shall pass. I'm sure faster than can be believed.

 

[Seanjclarke]

All great info everyone. Thanks!

 

[OneMoreTry]

My 2cents.

If I were going every 3 years I would just pay to stay in one of the hotels. They are always advertising discounts.

It would be kind of depressing to have DVC points that I could only use every 3 years.

 

[Apps]

My 2cents.

If I were going every 3 years I would just pay to stay in one of the hotels. They are always advertising discounts.

It would be kind of depressing to have DVC points that I could only use every 3 years.

I would just rent points.

 

[Seanjclarke]

I would just rent points.

Well, I didn't really want to make this a number crunching thread, but using a 30% discount or renting points doesn't make much financial sense (me and my wife prefer the deluxe resorts and davids point rental service's price have gone from $12/pt last year to $14/pt this year and will probably continue to go up in the future to stay just a bit below paying resort rates). If we were a value or even port orleans family it might make sense to go this route.

Considering the initial buy in, and the estimate of yearly fee increases our break even point is between 9 and 12 years (3 or 4 trips). If the school thing becomes a major hassle, and me and my wife don't want to vacation on our own at Disney once our kids are in college, in theory we could sell our low point contract in 15 years or so. Smaller contracts seem to have better value and seem to be easier to sell. So then the cost of each trip in retrospect would only have been the maintenance fees plus a small loss.

 

[Dean]

Well, I didn't really want to make this a number crunching thread, but using a 30% discount or renting points doesn't make much financial sense (me and my wife prefer the deluxe resorts and davids point rental service's price have gone from $12/pt last year to $14/pt this year and will probably continue to go up in the future to stay just a bit below paying resort rates). If we were a value or even port orleans family it might make sense to go this route.

Considering the initial buy in, and the estimate of yearly fee increases our break even point is between 9 and 12 years (3 or 4 trips). If the school thing becomes a major hassle, and me and my wife don't want to vacation on our own at Disney once our kids are in college, in theory we could sell our low point contract in 15 years or so. Smaller contracts seem to have better value and seem to be easier to sell. So then the cost of each trip in retrospect would only have been the maintenance fees plus a small loss.

I think you underestimate the likely differences in the buy/sell later situation. Ignoring the likely buy/sell difference, you're looking at a 10% commission and the decrease in value over time for 5 trips. Plus I'm not willing to accept the long term premise that smaller will be better than larger going forward. Marriott now charges a $2K transfer fee for their points system. A transfer fee makes smaller potentially worse than larger. Plus I think it's likely we'll see more resale restrictions going forward. In 15 years the 2042 resorts should bee roughly half what they are now, SSR maybe 2/3. So on 100 points yearly you'd lose somewhere close to 40-50% on SSR and over 50% on a 2042 resort and that assumes no other factors negative to the resort, resales or contract size. One can certainly argue about numbers but even the most realistic would have to say the likely loss on an established resale resort is 25% or more. Even if you didn't losethat much money on the resale, the potential savings for 5 trips is very modest and you've accepted risk and aggravation. There are other ways to rent besides David's.

 

[Apps]

Well, I didn't really want to make this a number crunching thread, but using a 30% discount or renting points doesn't make much financial sense (me and my wife prefer the deluxe resorts and davids point rental service's price have gone from $12/pt last year to $14/pt this year and will probably continue to go up in the future to stay just a bit below paying resort rates). If we were a value or even port orleans family it might make sense to go this route.

Considering the initial buy in, and the estimate of yearly fee increases our break even point is between 9 and 12 years (3 or 4 trips). If the school thing becomes a major hassle, and me and my wife don't want to vacation on our own at Disney once our kids are in college, in theory we could sell our low point contract in 15 years or so. Smaller contracts seem to have better value and seem to be easier to sell. So then the cost of each trip in retrospect would only have been the maintenance fees plus a small loss.

There is an advantage to owning and its the flexibility in planning your own vacation vs. having someone like DAvids be the middle man (when you rent that is). I'll echo everyone's sentiment here that buyings points for 3 years presents some risk...2 years are probably safer and much easier to manage. REnting / cash would give you the most flexiblity and to some, the additional cost of flexibility is well worth it.

 

[Seanjclarke]

Is the only risk that everyone keeps bringing up from having to cancel a trip last minute? Wouldn't just planning the trip at the beginning of my use year remedy all of this and give me a chance to reschedule? Yes, I am aware I then run into 11 month vs 7 month windows, availability, etc.


If rescheduling is an issue, would we be able to change the name on the present reservation and let a friend or relative use our reservation? Is that allowed?

 

[Dean]

Is the only risk that everyone keeps bringing up from having to cancel a trip last minute? Wouldn't just planning the trip at the beginning of my use year remedy all of this and give me a chance to reschedule? Yes, I am aware I then run into 11 month vs 7 month windows, availability, etc.


If rescheduling is an issue, would we be able to change the name on the present reservation and let a friend or relative use our reservation? Is that allowed?

It would give protection and is the main reason I feel UY is important for many, esp those that can plan when they're likely to travel.

 

[SFlaDisneyfans]

As someone who has been going to WDW since it opened, my advice is not purchasing DVC if you only plan to vacation every 3rd year. Financially you are(in my opinion) better off learning the approximate dates of Disney's seasonal room discounts and hitting those the day they hit to maximize you discount and room resort choice. Renting points would be plan "b" if you did not get the discount/resort you wanted. While difficult to predict future costs, Making a trip every 3 years makes DVC the less than optimal choice. Just my two cents.

 

[Skpnw]

We have done the three year rotation in the past - we typically had our trip straddle our use year (Feb) so we could bank/borrow to the full extent. The method works - however, it doesn't work for us anymore because our kids are now in school so we have to travel during school vacation time (more points). So we just bought a small resale to compensate for the higher point cost for our trips. Not sure if we will continue with the 3 year rotation anymore or if we will try to rent out points every few years and only use 2 years worth of points at a time.