I’m a Gen-Xer/“Oregon Trailer” who opted to have my kids in my late 20s (okay technically I turned 30 with my youngest), so both of my boys are teens and my oldest becomes a senior this fall (how did that happen?!?!). I (and DH) had only been to Disney once as kids, but it was the first big vacation we took together (and also where he proposed). We fell in love with how magical it all felt, and because we had booked it in under 6 months, we needed to resort hop,which also had us fall in love with the resort theming. Disney created magic and told wonderful stories and we were hooked. We even got married at Disney (it was surprisingly affordable in 2001. Now… well, we looked at a vow renewal for our 20th and wow, not remotely in our budget)! We’re actually relatively new to DVC, bought in 2018, though we’ve been considering it since 2001. It just wasn’t in the financial cards till now and part of why we bought in was because we had realized Disney was pricing us out but we weren’t willing to let go yet. DVC gave us a chance to afford Disney, as we bought direct for Gold APs. As the kids move into college, we envision many short trips, and as we move towards retirement eventually our hope is to spend several weeks each winter. Maybe someday there will be grandkids. We hope to leave our contracts to our kids, should they want them, or let them sell them if they don’t.
Disney is not our only travel destination. My husband and I want to visit every National Park and so many of our family vacations were there. My second job as a
travel agent afforded many opportunities to travel I wouldn’t have otherwise have afforded. About 10 years ago I got really into “the points game,” as my husband calls it, trying to maximize the travel reward points across credit cards and airline/hotel loyalty rewards programs, which let us take trips to New Zealand, Japan, Hawaii, and other places. Travel is my passion and where we spend our discretionary spending, as I wanted my kids to see the world, whether it’s Yellowstone (where we’re going this summer) or Barbados or Australia or Scotland (all places we’ve been). When my kids were little and we had little money, we were crazy budget travelers - squeezing into tiny cheap rooms and diving long car rides over flying - and we look back at the hoops we jumped through to travel and give experiences with the kids and realize that’s not what we want to do anymore. That’s one reason for DVC - villas. A kitchen. Washer and dryer. Separate bedroom for us.
But Disney is like coming home for us, a place to relax and enjoy family time, and so DVC allows us those moments in addition to our other travels. In years we don’t go, we’ll either bank the points for a bigger trip or rent them out to cover other travels (and dues.)
We WANT to keep going back to Disney. And we’re still those people that even with a kitchen will enjoy a couple of character meals each trip, buy souvenirs, pay extra for the holiday parties, etc. But we also come to enjoy the ambiance, the “happiest place,” the shows and the characters and the fireworks, the activities outside of the parks, like arts and crafts and sing-a-longs at the campfire, etc. Our worry is that Disney is not as interested in those of us who want a lifetime of memories and want to pass along that desire to our children, and that they are rising prices and limiting experiences such that the only people who will get to experience the Magic we once knew as part of the whole experience are those with lots of money. The biggest perk we used to use - evening hours - is now a pay for event. They raised the price of holiday parties and stopped limiting attendance such that it’s an hour to get hot chocolate a
MVMCP, or three hours to get a photo with a character at
MNSSHP. Dues go up and up with less perks to show for it, and don’t even get me started on what Disney tried to pull with the 2020
point chart and now again with the 2022 points chart.
Maybe as another noted above that I’m becoming old and jaded and have seen too much behind the curtain. I still want to believe in the Magic, though, and for that we are still holding onto our DVC and still planning future years of travel, but I do worry it is heading in a direction that will make it so that it stops feeling like coming home, stops giving us “we’ve escaped the grind of every day” feeling, and that some day we no longer feel that giddy feeling once we arrive.
We’ve got a huge trip planned in February to celebrate our anniversary - we’re bringing all my immediate family and several of our friends - so I’m hopeful we’ll have some magic then.
