Cruise booking questions - DVC points / placeholders

[PoohBears#1fan]

I’m thinking of booking a 7 day med cruise with DVC points - I know it’s not good value but we’re in the U.K. & potentially losing the 2020 points due to the 17 month ongoing travel ban, so it’s better than that.

can we use points & top up with cash? We have enough for an inside cabin but would like a verandah.

if I buy a placeholder on our staycation cruise next month, how does that apply to booking with points? How do they work out the points value (assuming they do) & will it discount the number of points required?

Thank you for any advice you can give me.

 

[erionm]

can we use points & top up with cash? We have enough for an inside cabin but would like a verandah.

Each passenger must be paid for using only one method of payment. Either points or cash, but not a mix of both. When booking a cruise with points, at least one passenger must be paid for using points. The others can be either cash or points. Full payment is required at the time of booking.

if I buy a placeholder on our staycation cruise next month, how does that apply to booking with points? How do they work out the points value (assuming they do) & will it discount the number of points required?

Unless it's changed, to book a future cruise using points with the on-board booking discount, you need to call Member Services within 7 days of the cruise ending. IIRC, the future cruise discount was 10% off the posted point chart for the cruise being booked.

 

[SandyinMonterey]

We're also DVC and used points for DCL in 2016. I know other DVC folks say using points towards a Disney cruise is a bad way to use your points. I get it but then I don't. For us it cut down our out of pocket a lot (3 people). There was a "method" DVC MS used in order to use points and pay cash...which is what we did. It was something like using points for these passengers and cash for the other.

 

[PoohBears#1fan]

Thank you both of you, very helpful

 

[SandyinMonterey]

Thank you both of you, very helpful

Please post your experience(s) if you decide to use points towards a cruise. We are hoping to go on another cruise next year.

 

[PoohBears#1fan]

Unless it's changed, to book a future cruise using points with the on-board booking discount, you need to call Member Services within 7 days of the cruise ending. IIRC, the future cruise discount was 10% off the posted point chart for the cruise being booked.

Quick question, the place holders I believe are $250, how does that equate if booking with points?

 

[erionm]

Quick question, the place holders I believe are $250, how does that equate if booking with points?

I don't believe you can book a place holder on points. AFAIK, you have to book a specific date.

 

[PoohBears#1fan]

I don't believe you can book a place holder on points. AFAIK, you have to book a specific date.

Thank you, that makes sense.

 

[Groucho]

I can't say anything about placeholders, but I can give you some actual numbers since I booked our cruise with some points and some cash.

Like others, I'd always heard that booking DVC with points was a lousy use of them, but with a bunch of extra points potentially going away due to COVID killing our travel plans, I figured I'd check. I called DVC on April 1st and after being on hold for maybe 45-60 minutes, got my info.

So our cruise is the Fantasy 7-night Very Merrytime Eastern Caribbean, November 14-21. Disney's price for 4 cruisers was and is $6,444. I also talked to one of the Disney travel agents that we'd used for our first cruise back in 2016; the price was the same but we'd get $250 in credit.

As was mentioned earlier, each passenger either uses all points or all cash. Here's the points and cost options that I gathered:
11B adult: 214 points or $1,749 cash.
11B child 1 (16 years old): 139 points or $1,131 cash.
11B child 2 (12 years old): 134 points or $1,189 cash.
8C adult: 248 points or $2,015 cash.

Since I figure we'll be spending little time in our cabin, I don't care about getting a fancy one. 11B is the cheapest category and that's what we went with. So I booked myself using 214 points and paid for my wife and kids using cash. Now, those cash numbers are as I wrote them down but possibly I misheard or the agent misspoke, because the total was actually slightly less when you do the math - $4,064 including the $95 transfer fee. You do need to pay the entire amount right away, but I put mine on my Disney Visa and verified with Chase that it qualified for the six-month no interest offer. If I canceled, I'd get the cash back (probably minus $95 transfer fee) but the points could only be used for another cruise, RCI, or similar, and only in the same use year, otherwise they're gone.

Doing the math, using those 214 points saved me $2,380, for a value of about $11.12/point. Possibly I could have gotten a little more by renting the points - I haven't been paying attention to what they go for nowadays, I know years ago they were usually $10-12 if you rented them but there's probably a glut of them because of COVID - but I think that's pretty decent value, especially if you're facing losing a bunch of points and don't want to deal with the bother of renting.

Meanwhile, we were supposed to visit your country last summer, it got bumped to this summer, and I booked this cruise after it got bumped again until next summer! I'm so anxious to get over to the UK!!! With a side trip to DLP of course!