Help me plan my points

[perchy]

I am thinking about my Welcome Home stay.

I have a new small OKW resale contract with '21 points I can bank into 2022. With banking and borrowing at 50%, I still won't have enough for a full week. (Assume a 1-BR res.)

Does it make sense to book the first Friday through Monday at, say, an All-Star, then spend the rest of the week at OKW? Or would use use your points differently?

(Realistically, I probably can't just "buy more points." But if I can, I will!)

 

[JETSDAD]

Without knowing the size of the group, I would probably choose to stay in a studio for the full week instead of splitting between an All Star and a 1BR.

 

[Stargazer65]

When we originally bought in, we just had a small contract with 100 points at BLT. We stretched them out by reserving bookend stays at local resorts or hotels with cash and staying DVC during the weekdays Sun-Thursday. One time we even booked two separate stays with DVC and a hotel stay sandwiched in the middle. We had fun, but it was a lot of moving also.

 

[fgaini]

How many people? If you need a 1 Br I Would consider a mix of DVC and non DVC. This way you may experience Universal, SeaWorld & C while staying in a lower cost option

 

[perchy]

It would be 4 or 5 of us. My thinking on 1 BR is that it might encourage certain curmudgeons in my party to be all impressed about what a wonderful stay it was and that, yeah, going to WDW more often with the family could be a nice treat...

 

[CarolynFH]

I am thinking about my Welcome Home stay.

I have a new small OKW resale contract with '21 points I can bank into 2022. With banking and borrowing at 50%, I still won't have enough for a full week. (Assume a 1-BR res.)

Does it make sense to book the first Friday through Monday at, say, an All-Star, then spend the rest of the week at OKW? Or would use use your points differently?

(Realistically, I probably can't just "buy more points." But if I can, I will!)

Okay, so 4-5 adults? In that case, a 1 BR would be my choice! And if you can’t afford for the full stay to be there, then starting in 2 rooms at the All Stars (on cash, I assume, since the DVC points cost would probably be more than the 1 BR) and moving to a 1 BR at OKW would most definitely impress me and make me want to stay DVC in the future.

 

[Dizzydizney]

I didn’t realize you could do the Welcome Home stay with resale points.
Definitely a one bedroom. And I’m sure you know that Friday and Saturday nights will eat up your points quicker. I think your idea of doing an all star or offsite for Friday and Saturday is a good idea. Remember if you have a car you will have to pay for parking. Another idea is to also do your last night offsite (again depending on if you have a car). You can spend that entire day at OKW and a park or to, then journey on to regular hotel after dinner. We like the ones in the Marriott Village....free breakfast but $15 to park (last time we went). When we first became members we would bookend with Pop Century (back when it was $79/night and free parking) because we didn’t have excess points. Or we would pay cash for an extra night at DVC.....again when it was a bit more reasonable.

 

[crisi]

I didn’t realize you could do the Welcome Home stay with resale points.
Definitely a one bedroom. And I’m sure you know that Friday and Saturday nights will eat up your points quicker. I think your idea of doing an all star or offsite for Friday and Saturday is a good idea. Remember if you have a car you will have to pay for parking. Another idea is to also do your last night offsite (again depending on if you have a car). You can spend that entire day at OKW and a park or to, then journey on to regular hotel after dinner. We like the ones in the Marriott Village....free breakfast but $15 to park (last time we went). When we first became members we would bookend with Pop Century (back when it was $79/night and free parking) because we didn’t have excess points. Or we would pay cash for an extra night at DVC.....again when it was a bit more reasonable.

You can't - if what you mean by Welcome Home stay is Disney will try to get you a reservation somewhere for your next trip, even when things are booked (although it will not be a BCV studio over Food and Wine if you bought direct in July). But a lot of people use Welcome Home to mean their first trip after buying points.

We've done the extend the trip with a CRO reservation a few times - I've done it to stretch points to take guests and we've done two days at a resort before our guests arrive. And we've done it to let the kids stay at AKL way back before there was a DVC there. We've also done a hotel near the airport if we've flown in late or are flying out early rather than spend the points for an extra night.

Another option would be to rent points for the OKW one bedroom to fill out the week, then talk to Member Services (and probably the member you are renting from) to link the reservations. For OKW, you might be able to rent from another member for less money for a one bedroom than a value studio will cost.

 

[Dizzydizney]

Okay, was confused by the welcome home thing.

Back in the day when we didn’t have lots of points (1998, 1999, 2000) there was no such thing as renting someone’s points. As far as I know anyway. Staying at Pop a night or two really helped to stretch our week. I also remember being able to call MS to get an additional discount on a cash room at Boardwalk. I don’t remember what the amount was, but it must have been reasonable for us to afford it. We would do that for the pointy night...back then it wasn’t Friday and Saturday....it might have been Saturday and Sunday or Thursday and Friday? I remember when they changed it they really screwed up my planning.

We’ve also done a near airport hotel if we had an evening flight coming in.

So much easier now with more points and retirement!