Disney Vacation Saving Account

[nelsonkg]

Hello,
Has anyone recently used the DIsney Vacation Saving Account? My friend asked me about it and I had not heard of it so I could not answer her question. Any advantage to it? Thank you

 

[davper]

I am using it to deposit all my Disney Gift Cards into. This will make it easier to apply the funds at payment time.

For every $1000 paid towards your vacation, get a $20 bonus GC. This only applies for payments made after the account has been open for 120 days.

Make automatic timed deposits.

 

[Alicenwonderment]

Is there a way just to get an estimate of how much a trip would cost using this? I tried to go in and it would give me hotel choices on property but they wanted me to select a hotel. Many were not available either. If the trip would be a few years away but you want to start saving. Why can't they give a ballpark estimate without deciding on hotel?

 

[IndianaRRT]

Is there a way just to get an estimate of how much a trip would cost using this? I tried to go in and it would give me hotel choices on property but they wanted me to select a hotel. Many were not available either. If the trip would be a few years away but you want to start saving. Why can't they give a ballpark estimate without deciding on hotel?

I don't know if this helps or just makes me sound like I have too much time on my hands. But since we usually plan ahead 1-2 years for a WDW trip, I run into the same budgeting challenges. When we opened our DVA for 2017 trip, we made a "short list" of 5 resorts we'd love, then priced those 5 for the number of nights we wanted to be there at similar "demand" times. (We want to go in June 2017, and it just so happens that we could look at prices for this June when we budgeted--otherwise I probably would have priced for next Spring Break.) The price of most expensive resort on our list for that time became our goal. I then priced tickets and researched the types of meals we wanted using online tools and the AYCTE thread on these boards. I added all that up, added 4% for possible cost increases over the next 2 years, and arrived at my budget.

It's a complicated process, but it hasn't failed me yet. I've used this formula/method for most all our vacations (not just WDW) for 19+ years. We opened the DVA for its many perks--loading gift cards, $20 back per $1000 spent, auto payments for easy budgeting, etc.--and I set the savings goal for the number I arrived at. If we make our goal, we'll be staying at the Poly, but if not, we'll still have plenty saved for a very lovely vacation.

I sound like a bit of a control freak, but I prefer to call it "detail-oriented".

 

[lauradis]

Is there a way just to get an estimate of how much a trip would cost using this? I tried to go in and it would give me hotel choices on property but they wanted me to select a hotel. Many were not available either. If the trip would be a few years away but you want to start saving. Why can't they give a ballpark estimate without deciding on hotel?

What time of year are you thinking of going?

Hop on disney's site, pick all the hotels you are interested in and price out current prices for time of year then add about 5% for every year that it away from actual vacation. this helps me to price out a full price vacation from disney, then we start looking for deals.