cruising on points

[huey duey & luey]

I know in the past there have been threads saying that its not good to cruise on points. CAn someone explain why? Thanks
Tara

 

[Nick@ VB+OKW]

It is matter of choice. There are pro's and con's to both. We chose to rent 300 pts to pay for our cruise for next Feb. We saved 150 pts by renting and booking with cash through Dreams Unlimited.

It only took 1 hour on the Rent/Trade board and a few e-mails for me to rent my 300 pts

Some cons for using points................

When you use points you can't book it until 11 months out, and you may not get your cabin of choice.

There is a $75 fee booking with points. If you make any changes they(MS) charge you $75 again.

IMO I would never use points to cruise unless they were about to expire.

 

[Happy Birthday Cat]

I'm with Nick completely on this. It all comes down to the cash value of your points. A cruise may cost $2,000.00 or 250 points. (It differs widely by cruise). That comes out to be $8.00 per point cash value. If you can rent 200 points at $10.00 each, you just saved yourself 50 points for your next vacation. Or you could rent out all 250 and pick up and extra $500.00 for your efforts.

We did the same as Nick and rented out points to pay cash for our cruise next April. That way we are really still using our points for a Disney vacation but in a slightly different way.

When we were on a cruise last February we were told at a member gathering that DVC is the largest single travel agent that DCL deals with. Considering that fact, DVC does a terrible job (for us, not Disney) of negotiating how many points cruises will cost. But as long as people keep doing it, the number of points will keep increasing.

HBC

 

[Nick@ VB+OKW]

Forgot to add points for cruisng have gone up every year the last 5 years, including a 16% increase across the board for 2005.

 

[Doug Wolfe]

I agree with Nick. When you do the math it does not really make a whole lot of financial sense. As Nick points out DCL is increasing the number of DVC points you have to use each year.

In my case I would need a larger suite for my family of criminals, and the points just don't do it. Happy sailing.

 

[Dean]

$8 pp return is a bit of a stretch if you compare to early booking discounts, it's usually more in the $5.50 to $6.75 pp range and can be as low as under $5 pp.

Advantages of using points:

• The price stays the same as you get closer. Of course they do stop taking reservations for DVC members just like some hotels and airlines do with the cheap rooms/tickets.
• The points are already paid for or at least the price is set.

That's about it. The disadvantages of using points and advantages of cash are:

• Can book farther ahead, more like 18 months instead of 11 months.
• If you have to cancel with cash you get your money back up to 60 days prior to travel. With points, you're out the exchange fee plus your points got to reservations status and cannot be used for DVC. They expire at the end of the use year and cannot be banked.
• If you make ANY changes you get charged another $75 exchange fee. Even if you add a person, drop a person, etc.

So even if the financial issues were a wash, cash is far better. And, IMO, it's less risk and easier to rent the points than to use them for DCL, CC, DC, etc. The only exception to this would be a subset of II exchanges.