DVC paying for itself?

[mikesmom]

Well said, Doc!

My husband is a 7 day a week, 10 hour a day workaholic. He teaches, he writes textbooks, he consults and he has high stress (because they are in trouble) tax clients. He consistently will have people calling in on 2 separate phone lines. It's not unusual for us to get calls at home as late as 10 PM or as early as 7 AM. When someone asked him why we go to Disney every year he said "That is the only place I go where the real world goes away and I completely stop thinking about work". I have even seen him turn off that cell phone as he enters the parks.

For us, that makes DVC pay for itself.

 

[tubtruck]

I estimate that DVC will have paid for itself for me in 5 years, my annual accomodation cost is around $7000, the only differnece in my habit is that I am staying totally at Disney without the usual stay at the Universal hotels, these days I always stay in expensive accommodation both on or offsite. DVC is aimed at people who like to stay in high cost rooms, if you go for cheaper accommodation then the savings are not there for you and it is not aimed at people who choose for economic reasons or any other reason do not stay in delux accomodations.

 

[Lesley]

Our personal experience is that we hit the break even point after about 5 years (the cash value of the accomodations we used vs. our cost for DVC including dues). We do stick to Sun-Fri vacations, but have stayed in all sizes of villa excluding the 3br's. We generally travel in Adventure season, though we've also done May, October and November.

No, we wouldn't have stayed nearly this often, or in deluxe accomodations if we didn't have DVC. But DVC has made Disney vacations possible for us when they would not have been. Having our accomodations prepaid plus knowing we'd have accomodations that are big enough for our family are the big plusses for us. With 3 kids (the youngest will be 3 next week) I think I'd prefer not to travel than to stay in a regular hotel room- even a suite. I don't need vacation to be more difficult than day to day life!

At this point, for the cost of our dues we could not stay in equivalent on-property accomodations. Granted, we could sell now and get back more than we paid initially....and save the amount of our dues every month to use for accomodations.... but then we're back to occasional trips in a regular hotel room. For now I think the DVC is worth keeping.

 

[CustardTart]

I estimate that DVC will have paid for itself for me in 5 years, my annual accomodation cost is around $7000, the only differnece in my habit is that I am staying totally at Disney without the usual stay at the Universal hotels, these days I always stay in expensive accommodation both on or offsite. DVC is aimed at people who like to stay in high cost rooms, if you go for cheaper accommodation then the savings are not there for you and it is not aimed at people who choose for economic reasons or any other reason do not stay in delux accomodations.

ITA. I looked at our previous spend on WDW accomodation (deluxe) and worked out the costs per person per week. I then priced up the future vacations we had planned and it worked out that (excluding dues) 3 years of vacationing would more than pay for the DVC points. Now that convinced me - tho' the current £/$ exchange rate helped of course...

 

[Dean]

Our personal experience is that we hit the break even point after about 5 years (the cash value of the accomodations we used vs. our cost for DVC including dues).

Given you're Sun-Fri choices, DVC obviously works well for you as it does for me. However I wanted to point out that this is a common mistake that many make in this calculation. Using the rack rates for DVC to determine the break even point is only reasonable if one would have done so on cash at those rates otherwise or like one member on this board, stay consistently in Deluxe suites.

 

[tubtruck]

ITA. I looked at our previous spend on WDW accomodation (deluxe) and worked out the costs per person per week. I then priced up the future vacations we had planned and it worked out that (excluding dues) 3 years of vacationing would more than pay for the DVC points. Now that convinced me - tho' the current £/$ exchange rate helped of course...

Yes the present high rate of the £ against the $ is the reason I bought in August. Its actually around 17% higher than this time last year and its probably no more expensive now for people to buy in from the UK than it was 5 or 6 years ago from that point the we now get around around 50 cents more to the £. I doubt the bargain we can get at the moment will last forever so my advice to anyone from the UK would be to buy ASAP, the rate is unlikely to go much higher and if choosing in the future to sell there could be a massive profit in a very short time purly from currency fluctuation.

 

[CustardTart]

Yes the present high rate of the £ against the $ is the reason I bought in August. Its actually around 17% higher than this time last year and its probably no more expensive now for people to buy in from the UK than it was 5 or 6 years ago from that point the we now get around around 50 cents more to the £. I doubt the bargain we can get at the moment will last forever so my advice to anyone from the UK would be to buy ASAP, the rate is unlikely to go much higher and if choosing in the future to sell there could be a massive profit in a very short time purly from currency fluctuation.

That's why I'm persuading DH that we really should purchase an add-on at AKV - it's currently a no-brainer...

 

[Didney Daddy]

I think the most compelling fact is the cost of room rates even if you get discounts. As Tobidisney said, 30 years ago Contemporary was $30 a night. My parents took me and the other kids to Polynesian in 1977 and I remember my Dad screaming about the $500 bill for a family of five for five days. That bill included everything, tickets/food/room etc... Today that bill is easily over $3,000.00. Ten years from now it will be over $4,000. People do not fully appreciate the impact of room rates increasing at 7% and our dues increasing at 4%. That 3% on the margin is a huge amount of money. Our present value purchase amount included, over 20-30 years DVC is a heck of a deal. The bonus is that even if you do not stay 20 years, there is little reason to think you are going to lose much money on your contract if you sell it over the next 10-15 years.

 

[mikeandkarla]

all your calculatons make a great deal of sense. I just bought in this year. another factor to possiblly look at is resaleability. if you buy in you are no way locked in if you need out for some reason, ie..kids college tuition, job loss, etc.. i have seen the resale market do nothing but add value to your DVC over the years. it truly seems like a great investment for the happiness of your family. to me that is the bottom line.

 

[ScottOKW2K]

I honestly do believe that DVC pays for itself. Though I have calculated over the years the financial nuts and bolts that shows me that our accommodations have long ago exceeded the cost of our purchase I have since found that that isn't the true value of owning DVC. It's your daughter saying "I'm HOME" as you drive on property. It's the smile that appears on your face at the same time, and stays on for days after you leave. It's your wife - the least "disney" person in the family - admitting the she misses not being there during the last holiday.

Though Pickles said Disney is about wasting money ( tongue in cheek, I believe ) I don't think the money is wasted. The time we spend in the World and our experiences there have value to us. Many people tell stories of how stressful their and/or their spouses work is, and what a wonderful antidote their trips to Disney become. I find this to be true for us as well.

As with any thread on this subject it all comes down to "is it worth it to you ?" If you only use the room to sleep in - get an AP rate room at the All Stars. If you want the cheapest rooms possible - stay off site. If you want to stay and own DVC, and can afford it, then do it and don't look back. The ones that "get it" will understand and the ones that don't aren't worth the effort to try to explain. BTW, we enjoy it enough that we added on at AKV !

 

[mwmuntz]

I'm in the process of buying in right now. Given my CURRENT Disney vacation style, it probably does not make sense financially to buy. But my "pretzel logic" is saying that it will "pay off" so to speak in the future as my vacation habits change. But I am not looking at it to save money, per se.

Here's why...
Before we had kids, my wife & I were both park commandos. For example, we were literally the last ones out of the MK one night, after getting there for the opening. Value/Moderate resorts were fine for us - just a bed to sleep in, right? Well, that was until we had kids. We went on a (too) short, 3 day trip last month and stayed at All Star Sports (not gonna write out the initials ) with DD6, DD3 & DS7months. We figured that since it was such a short trip, let's try to jam as much stuff in a possible. So each day, we were out of the room by 7:30 AM & stayed each night until the parks closed. While the kids handled it pretty well, I could see that it took a pretty heavy toll on the entire family. That's when I decided that we will definitely need to start taking longer vacations to WDW and work in some non-park days. This would mean more time at our room & resort, so I would probably want to start booking into some of the nicer properties with better pools, activities, etc.. Also, with 3 kids already & who knows, maybe a 4th one someday, how much longer can I, or want to, stay in a single room. So, basically, in a few years my accommodation needs will be MUCH more expensive than they are now. And quite honestly, as much as I love WDW, it would probably be cost prohibitive to the point that I probably would be going 3-4X less than I am now, or maybe not at all.

So anyway, I am looking at DVC almost as "Disney Vacation Insurance", or as others have said "Prepaid Disney Vacations". Owning will allow me to take a nice trip to WDW at least every other year, where we can stay in a nice resort in a properly-sized room for my family, and we can enjoy the parks as well as the other recreational activities that Disney has to offer. With DVC, I see my family going to WDW at least 5-8 times in the next 10 years, Without it, the cash price of the rooms will give me "sticker shock", and we'd probably only go once or twice.

More Disney Magic. More Disney family memories... And that to me is priceless!

 

[pilferk]

Here's why...
Before we had kids, my wife & I were both park commandos. For example, we were literally the last ones out of the MK one night, after getting there for the opening. Value/Moderate resorts were fine for us - just a bed to sleep in, right? Well, that was until we had kids. We went on a (too) short, 3 day trip last month and stayed at All Star Sports (not gonna write out the initials ) with DD6, DD3 & DS7months. We figured that since it was such a short trip, let's try to jam as much stuff in a possible. So each day, we were out of the room by 7:30 AM & stayed each night until the parks closed. While the kids handled it pretty well, I could see that it took a pretty heavy toll on the entire family. That's when I decided that we will definitely need to start taking longer vacations to WDW and work in some non-park days. This would mean more time at our room & resort, so I would probably want to start booking into some of the nicer properties with better pools, activities, etc.. Also, with 3 kids already & who knows, maybe a 4th one someday, how much longer can I, or want to, stay in a single room.

Slightly off topic:

Here's what we found works best when travelling with OUR young kids. We don't try to force the commando style on them...rather, we make sure to try to stick as close to their "regular" schedules (including naps, meal times, etc) as possible. We were at the parks at opening (our kids are early risers). Typically, at noon-ish we found lunch, and headed back to our room for a nap/pool break and some rest..then we would head back to the parks for the late afternoon and early evening. Then dinner. We did exactly ONE late night (MK fireworks), and made sure the kids were in bed CLOSE to their regular bed times (give an hour or so). They seemed to handle it VERY well. The only tantrums I remember always seem to occur on arrival day...after being up VERY early (3:30 AM) to catch flights.

DVC makes it even easier to do that, IMHO...largely because we know we'll be going every year, so we wont (not that we did before...but even less so now that we've become DVC members) try to cram everything in to one trip. Fantasmic will be there when the kids get older. So will Illuminations. And we'll likely enjoy our trips more by catering to the wee ones, rather than trying to get them to cater to OUR "preferred" schedule.

 

[BriarRose59]

I have read all the way through these posts and have one comment. You don't have to use your points to stay at WDW. My DH would not have agreed to the purchase otherwise. He is not a big Disney fan, but I am. I go with friends once a year but am going to enjoy a family vacation starting this weekend. DH just won't go very often. Anyway, to my point: we have used our points to stay at hotels--the Biltmore Coral Gables the night before a cruise last March and then this July we will be at the Royal Garden Hotel in London in 3 rooms for 3 nights (317 pts)--all on our DVC points. With the point/$ cost that someone came up with before I bought in 2003, the overall rough cost is $5-6 per point over the life of the contract. I multiplied $6 by the number of points required to book these rooms and came up with roughly the same amount as it would have cost me to book these rooms and pay cash. But . . . I didn't have to pay cash so I didn't have to spend that money out of pocket this year. To me its a savings and I don't have to worry about vacations whether it be at WDW or not.

Enjoy your points!

ETA:

I just checked on Expedia and the rates at the Royal Garden have gone up to $364 for the first night and $221 for the second 2 nights. I paid roughly $207 per night per room using points. Yeah!

 

[TheRustyScupper]

. . . However you calculate it, its your decision on how you want to spend your vacations & money. And what you will get or 'value' from your DVC purchase . . .

1) Yep.
2) That is the best justification.
3) Regardless of calc methods, there is NO pay back for DVC.
4) Just plan it as a pre-paid vacation, and take it from there.

Example: If you bought 175 points at SSR today with 2% average annual dues inflation and Disney financing, your cost would be over $2,000 per year (if the purchase price and total costs through 2052 were averaged).

 

[RobDoc]

...

3) Regardless of calc methods, there is NO pay back for DVC.
...

A number of members HAVE done calculations that can PROVE that we have saved money over what we would have paid without DVC membership. Personally, it took just under 4 years to reach that point.

What evidence can you submit that "there is NO pay back for DVC" ?

 

[vandy]

1) Yep.
2) That is the best justification.
3) Regardless of calc methods, there is NO pay back for DVC.
4) Just plan it as a pre-paid vacation, and take it from there.

Example: If you bought 175 points at SSR today with 2% average annual dues inflation and Disney financing, your cost would be over $2,000 per year (if the purchase price and total costs through 2052 were averaged).

I think one needs to look at the value of DVC compared to other Disney options for the time they travel. I think with only 4 years of dues history for SSR, it is hard for us to use any projected average for the term of our contract. Instead, I look at what is now. Now: Buy 175 pts at SSR at $95/pt (another thread states 94 for new members per their guide) for 46 years of points is $361.41 per year. Dues this year at $4.12 equals $721. This year costs $1082.41. Yes dues will increase, but so will the cost of other lodging options. If you are going to project an average DVC cost per year, then what is the projected average cost of other Disney lodging during this 46 year span? What will a deluxe room, or moderate, or even a value room average? I do not dispute your average of $2,000 per year because it may very well be accurate. But that number is meaningless unless it is compared to the average cost of other lodging over the same time span. It may end up showing that DVC can still be a great value and money saver to members. Maybe it will show it is not. We can use numbers to show any side of the argument but in the end it is all up to each person to compare whether or not that $1082.41 they have spent on 175 pts. this year provides a savings or at least a value to them compared to the other Disney lodging options.