You will get varying advice on this. If you plan your trips fairly far in advance, you will want to buy at the resort where you want to stay. (You can make reservations 11 months in advance at your home resort, but 7 months ahead at other DVC resorts.) Some specific room categories at certain times of the year are all booked at the 7 month mark, if you can believe it.
If, however, you are willing to be flexible with which resort you stay in when you make plans, you can get away with buying at a resort where you can get the best deal and then booking either there at 11 months or at a non-home resort at 7 months or less before.
You should also think about what month you want your use year to begin. Bad things happen if you are scheduled to use points within the last three months of your use year and then you have to cancel or re-book the trip. Points go into a holding account and you only have a short period of time in which to use those points or they are lost. So, you should think about what month to look for a DVC contract use year for; ideally it should be a month where you will not frequently be booking trips for stays during the three months prior to that use year renewal month. This part can get kinda complicated, unfortunately, but it's important to think about so that you can get the most use out of your points and ensure that it will be unlikely that you will ever forfeit any of them.
You can see
point charts for the different resorts so that you can see what certain trips in different room types at the various resorts would cost you in points here:
http://www.wdwinfo.com/disney-vacation-club/DVCpoints.shtml
AFAIK this is up to date.
As far as my favorite resort, it's really hard to beat Bay Lake Tower. It is pretty new, though, so I have no idea if there are any contracts for it available on the resale market. But really, BLT is walking distance from the MK and is a monorail away from Epcot (and one monorail stop away on the way home from the MK). We had a lovely stay there in August.
I've also heard that Animal Kingdom Village is beautiful, especially if you or members of your family like AK as a park.
If you go every year or at least every 18 months/24 months to WDW and you like staying in deluxe resorts, it is difficult to beat the cost per night's stay with any cash stay, even a discounted stay, if you buy DVC. You also can get a discounted rate on annual passes for your family when you have a DVC membership, and you can also buy the dining plan for your DVC stays without having to buy an entire package. (There are obviously a couple of downsides, too, like having mousekeeping every four days instead of every day, but there are tradeoffs with everything.)
Good luck with your DVC purchase! I hope it all turns out well for you.
I'm jealous of your DVC shopping!
I love Hannah's birthday dress! I don't think it's too loud at all. It just looks really pretty! The smocking looks great!!
