Ever stay anywhere else?

[Redwolf8812]

Has anyone ever used their points to stay anywhere else but Disney? We're thinking of using them for an occasional ski trip to Vermont....

 

[oct2014]

We used our points at Grove Park Inn, Shutters (no longer in program), Hotel Del Coronado, and Grand Californian (before the villas were built). To us the key was to do these trips sooner rather than later because those points charts are subject to increase (not just reallocation).
Caroline

 

[DeeDeeDis]

Since we are such WDW Freaks we haven't done this very often but when we've looked at using them outside of Disney for skiing trips to vermont or during our college road trip to California, Arizona & Vegas we found that due to the amount of points per night it made more sense for us to rent out a few of our points and just pay cash for a resort. We alway give our points a $10.00 value/point and most of the places we wished to stay at took 25 to 40points per night so that would be 250.00 to 400.00 per night - we could get the room cheaper by just booking and paying cash and by renting our points we were able to pay for our rooms and then some. And not use all our points so we could still spend at least a weekend at our favorite place.

My advise is do your homework, give your points a $$$ value then multiply that by the number of points needed per night at a non-disney hotel.

 

[Happy Birthday Cat]

We used points at the Sagamore on Lake George and the Regency in New York City. In both cases we compared the amount it would have cost compared to the amount of points it took to stay there. In both cases the points worked out to be valued for more than we could have rented them for and paid cash.

That was a few years ago and we haven't found a deal in a while for where we wanted to go.

HBC

 

[delaneyc52]

We also used points at the Sagamore at Lake George a few years ago! Didn't stay long -- there for a wedding -- but it was fun nonetheless.

 

[UConnJack]

When we bought in 2000, we used the first 2-years of point for trades into Hawaii consierge hotels for our 2-week honeymoon. I wouldn't do that now, there isn't any inherint value to it, but it made sense at the time since we had a few thousand set aside for those hotel stays anyways, and instead applied them to our our DVC purchase.

Since then we have only used points outside of DVC for a few days in an Intrawest resort in Palm Desert, and a 3-day cruise. I may do it again in the future if the value iss there, but that's hard to find, especially with the $95 fee.

 

[DisDaydreamer]

We have used points to stay at the Grove Park Inn and the Tanque Verde Ranch in Tucson. The GPI was beautiful and worth the points. TVR was outstanding and well worth the point because it was all-inclusive. Not sure if either is available anymore. We also have taken the Disney Cruise.

Usually trading out is not the best use, but when you don't have extra money to spend it is a great alternative.