Cruising with DVC points...

[danjulia]

I know many of you have done this and I'd appreciate any experiences (good or bad) about this option. My husband & I are seriously considering buying into DVC now (we've toyed with the idea for a few years), and using our 2001/2002 points for a Feb 2002 cruise. We've already reserved this cruise and it's going to run us nearly $5000 so we were thinking that now would be the time to go for it and offset some of the expense of buying into DVC with money we are "spending" anyway.

Do you have to wait until the 7-month window to book the cruise and is it hard to get you choice of category? Thanks for any replies...

 

[danjulia]

for additional people on the reservation? My husband and I would probably cruise on points but we would pay cash for our 2 children (ages 3 & 7).

 

[dthomas]

I just purchased DVC and our first trip in Aug is a cruise and 5 night stay. We purchased and rec'd yr 2000 pts (which we banked), we received more pts this year, and we are borrowing 2002 pts. We were able to cover everyone (8 people 3 cabins cat. 11) except one adult (cost 849.00 and 1 child 509.00) 4 day cruise and 5 night stay in 2 bedroom VWL. The cost alone would have been roughly 8,000.00. So I agree that if you have ever thought about buying DVC and are planning to do a Disney Cruise, it is certainly worth exploring. But be sure that you are buying into DVC because you vacation at WDW at least every 2 or 3 yrs.

 

[ripleysmom]

We will be cruising for 7 nights on points this coming April. We paid cash for our DD $629.00. There is only one $75.00 charge to make the reservation no matter how many are in the party, but each time you make a change to your reservation you are charged another $75.00.

You can make your reservations at the 11 month window and at that far out I don't see why you wouldn't be able to book the category of room that you wanted but then I don't know how popular the cruise has become. We had no problems getting a Cat. 9 at the 11 month window for the 4/7/01 cruise, if that's any indication.

You might receive feedback from others on this board that taking the cruise is not a good way to use your points but the way I look at it is that I would not have spent the money to take the cruise if it weren't for our points. Certainly taking that money and using it to buy something you can continue to use again and again long after the cruise is over makes sense.

Kimberly-Lucas and Ripley's Mom

 

[spruce]

We cruised on points twice. We bought DVC to take affordable Disney vacations. Owning points and paying for the cruise didn't make sense to us even though paying cash would have been a few hundred dollars less. Our vacation dollars are invested in points, so, there was no money for the cruise any other way.
The cruise is lots of fun and to us, well worth spending points on. One caution though, WDW is fast paced and action packed, the cruise goes at a much more relaxing pace which can be a system shock for those that like to run....spruce

Offsite 87,92,97,00
CBR 95
DI 98
Vero 98
BWV 98,99,00
OKW 99x2,00,01
DCL 98,01

 

[ckr]

Be sure to check out the other DIS board dedicated to the Disney Cruise Line. You can get lots of feedback there as well....

 

[CWD]

We had no problems getting the category we wanted at the 11 month window. I was somewhat concerned since we wanted category 7 and there are only 26 of them. But had no problem getting on deck 7 close to the cat. 7 cabin my parents had reserved with cash before I called to make our reservation. This is for a cruise in off season so it might be difficult in peak season or to get a secret porthole cabin at 11 months but most other categories should be no problem.

CWD