Cruising with points

[Lisa D]

Our family would like to try the 3 or 4 day cruise on our next trip "home", preceded by 3 or 4 days at BWV. I heard from some other members on our last trip that it can be cheaper to pay cash for some or all of your cruise, rather than use points. How can you tell which is the better deal? We will be 2 adults and 2 children. Can you pay for say, 1 adult and 1 child on points and use cash for the other two? Thanks for any advice!

Lisa

 

[jcodespoti]

From what I heard it could go something like this.
If your cruise costs $3000.00 for cash (numbers are for illustrative use) or 365 points to book the same cruise with the same cabin(s) then in theory it would be cheaper to use cash, here is one reason why.
If you took those 365 points and rented them for lets say $10.00 per point then you would have $3650.00. so you could then pay the $3000.00 for the cruise and have $650.00 dollars for spending money on the cruise.
This is all just theory though and there are some asumptions. Getting $10.00 per point is not always possible.
Usually using your points for other that the DVC resorts is not the greatest bang for your buck.

Joe in CT

 

[ncligs]

Cruisng with DVC points is not very wise.You would be better off renting and paying cash.We booked through DU(Dreams Unlimited) using cash,so we also got the $50 rebate and $50 on-board credit.I doubt if Doc will let this thread continue very long.

 

[Happy Birthday Cat]

While it may not be the best use of points, it is really cool to know that your points covered the cost of your trip. I have cruised once on points and am going next April on a points/cash trip. This is what is great about DVC.

HBC

 

[Dean]

I composed a message earlier but don't know what happened. Remember that when you use points for one, you must pay the cash price that DVC has negotiated, which is usually higher than you can get directly. So you may pay part with points but pay more for the other people. Points usually returns about $6.50-8 pp when used for a cruise. Compare for the cruise and cabin you're looking at and decide. The other factor is you can book cash much earlier and it's refundable up until a certain point.

 

[Werner Weiss]

Originally posted by Dean
Points usually returns about $6.50-8 pp when used for a cruise. Compare for the cruise and cabin you're looking at and decide. The other factor is you can book cash much earlier and it's refundable up until a certain point.

For our 7-night Disney Magic cruise earlier this year, the value worked out to $11 per point, based on Category 6 for a family of four, when compared to the cash rate from DCL eleven months before sailing (including early booking discount). I was very happy. I think the $11 figure was unually favorable. On the DCV chart it was considered Regular Season, but the cash price was very high because it was a very popular spring week when many schools in the Midwest and East Coast have spring break -- and it was the week before Easter. (The cruise that left on the day before Easter would have been Peak Season on the DVC chart.)

Dean makes a good point about cancellation. Although the cancellation rules for cash and DVC Points are similar when it comes to cut-off dates, if you cancel a cash cruise reservation in time, you get your money back -- but if you cancel a DVC cruise reservation, you get your points back in the form of Reservation Points, not DVC Points. Reservation Points can't be used for DVC accomodations or II exchanges, only for Disney Collection (including DCL), Concierge Collection, and Adventurer Collection.

A big is consideration is whether you'd rather dig into your bank account for thousands of dollars of cash, or whether you'd like to get the cruise through the DVC program which you're paying for anyway.

 

[eva]

We are cruising on points in May. The 3 day cruise in a catagory 6 is costing us 224 points for 2 persons. When I called DCL they quoted me $789 a person plus tax. I didn't ask what % tax was but I later figured it would be about 10%. So the price would be about $1735 for two. That would make it $7.75 a point. Since we have calculated that points really cost us just a bit over $6 each, we feel that it is a good deal for us. I know that we could probably rent the points and make some extra cash for the trip ($500 if we could get $10 a point) but we haven't rented points before and it seems like it could be a hassle. What if the person canceled right before the trip? Would it be so easy to rent out exactly 224 points? Plus, we would have wanted all the money upfront to pay for the cruise. There just seemed to be too many possiblities so we decided just to use the points. It's right for us, but may not be right for everyone.

 

[Dean]

As Werner points out, it is smart to look at your exact situation. Here's an extensive comparison of cash vs points done by Tim Larison DVC Cruise Comparison . It is also helpful to point out that you will likely have a somewhat better selection of cabins if you do by cash and that DCL doesn't usually discount the higher cabins (4 or higher) which will make the difference less and may be in favor or points. The other point Werner alludes to is that with all of the DVL exchange options, there will be special times when the exchange rate is very favorable. This is true for CC, Adventurer collection, DCL and even to a small extent, DC and II exchanges. Say it's a prime Ski week at Keystone and the resort expects to sell out. They may offer no discounts at all but the negotiated DVC rate is the same for that time as for some other times. Of course some of the resorts black out certain dates but the principle still applies. Just look at your options then decide what's best for you.

Werner, did you count the extra port taxes and fees into your price comparison?

 

[Werner Weiss]

Originally posted by Dean
Werner, did you count the extra port taxes and fees into your price comparison?

I checked the cash price by using the DCL web site to generate the complete price (without air or transfers), which includes all port charges. I realize I could have done somewhat better by using an agency such as Dreams Unlimited, which often provides rebates and/or shipboard credits to bring down the effective price of the cruise by 5% or even more. Since I was checking the cash price only as a point of reference, I didn't bother to waste an agency's time. But if I had done so, it's likely that I would have discovered that my DVC points were worth around $10.50, not $11.

For DVC, I used roughly two years worth of our DVC points. The only cash charge was the $75 booking fee that member Services collects.

Any other expenses -- air, ground transportation, wine, shore excursions, spa, gift shop, and tips -- are the same whether you book with cash or points.