Help!!!!!!!

[lovemickeyminnie]

We have considered joining Disney Vacation Club for a while. Just a few things are holding us back. Not sure it is worth it or not. We have gone to Disney World 10 times and Disneyland 1 time. I plan to continue to go to Disney for many years. Our girls are older (23, 15,) but when we start having grandchildren I want to take them to Disney. We have always stayed at Port Orleans Riverside which is a moderate. We do the Dining Plan and do Park hopper tickets. Do you think we should buy into it? I just am so unsure. I ordered the books and they got sent to me. It says you have to put at least $ 2,000 down. Is that correct? Is there any incentives to buying in right now?

Please help confused.
lovemickeyminnie

 

[MoreTravels]

I see that you are a new poster, welcome. My suggestion is to use a more descriptive title next time, instead of screaming for "help!!!". Imagine all the threads here have a non-descriptive title like that, then that would be difficult to read, right?

Let me try to help.. if you have to finance the purchase, often at 11% rate, DVC is not ideal for you. It is considered a luxurious item so I personally would not take out a loan for it. Also, the annual fee itself is already close to $1000-2000 per year for an average size contract.

My suggestion is to rent points from the DVC owners here. You can get about 200 points of stay for $2000. There is really no need to buy, especially with the recent price increase. Actually, it is a bad time to buy because Disney has increased the price since early 2013 so there was a jump of about 20-30% in point costs in many resorts. If you really want to buy, you should at least wait a bit of time.

 

[Dean]

We have considered joining Disney Vacation Club for a while. Just a few things are holding us back. Not sure it is worth it or not. We have gone to Disney World 10 times and Disneyland 1 time. I plan to continue to go to Disney for many years. Our girls are older (23, 15,) but when we start having grandchildren I want to take them to Disney. We have always stayed at Port Orleans Riverside which is a moderate. We do the Dining Plan and do Park hopper tickets. Do you think we should buy into it? I just am so unsure. I ordered the books and they got sent to me. It says you have to put at least $ 2,000 down. Is that correct? Is there any incentives to buying in right now?

Please help confused.
lovemickeyminnie

If you can pay cash and it doesn't strain your budget on the yearly fees AND you can plan well ahead like 7-11 months, you'll likely do OK with DVC. I would not recommend anyone finance a timeshare. Compared to the moderate's you likely won't save money but will get more options and a better value. You may want to consider resale at roughly 50-60% of the price.

 

[Kidanifan08]

We have considered joining Disney Vacation Club for a while. Just a few things are holding us back. Not sure it is worth it or not. We have gone to Disney World 10 times and Disneyland 1 time. I plan to continue to go to Disney for many years. Our girls are older (23, 15,) but when we start having grandchildren I want to take them to Disney. We have always stayed at Port Orleans Riverside which is a moderate. We do the Dining Plan and do Park hopper tickets. Do you think we should buy into it? I just am so unsure. I ordered the books and they got sent to me. It says you have to put at least $ 2,000 down. Is that correct? Is there any incentives to buying in right now?

Please help confused.
lovemickeyminnie

Based on the fact that you go to WDW annually, and you are used to spending $$ on DDP and PH tickets, you are probably a good candidate for DVC.

There are several things about DVC that are different than having a reservation through CRO. First of all, this is a timeshare, and therefore requires advanced planning. There are a few times of the year that require using your home resort booking advantage right at the 11 month booking window; most notably the first two week of Dec. But even at other times of the year, it is difficult to find a resort for a long stay if you don't reserve at least 5-6 months before arrival. So, DVC is not necessarily an effective plan for last minute travelers or those who cannot plan 6-11 months in advance. With that said, if you see yourself planning your trip at less than 7 months most of the time, then you would be best served by purchasing the least expensive home resort, since you will never take advantage of the 7-11 month home booking advantage.

On another thread, you asked about 1BR's with two baths. At WDW, that would be BLT and AKV-Kidani.

Purchasing resale is going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. But, if you think you need 150-200 points, you need to be ready to spend $12-15,000 cash. There are ways to finance a resale purchase. Some use a HELOC. We financed our first purchase direct from DVC, but that was back when AKV was $96/pt. and there was not a resale market for that resort yet. We also paid it off in about 2.5 years, which helped reduce our interest costs considerably. Right now, DVC is pushing AKV at $145 per point. Resale is in the mid-60's to low 70's. Check out DVCnews.com for the latest incentives.

Once you own, you will have annual maintenance fees in the $5-6/pt range, and those go up annually. It still ends up being less than what you might pay to stay at POFQ, but you are locked in for 40-50 years.

You should spend some time looking at the points charts for the various resorts and think about the time of year and length of stay you like to have. That will help you decide how many points are needed. Then you can figure out what your buy-in costs will be. The newer resorts (BLT and VGF) have considerably higher point costs per night than the older resorts and AKV. But, you have to decide if you would be happy staying at SSR/OKW/AKV vs. BLT/VGF for Christmas. If you see yourself staying at a monorail resort for Christmas, then you will need to own there.

Keep reading and asking questions. There is alot to learn here. And, don't rush into a decision -- DVC will always be there, waiting to take your money!

 

[a742246]

I agree with MORETRAVEL rent first, explore all the dvc's WDW resorts then decide on buying.

 

[Deb & Bill]

You could also check out resales since you can get more for your money that way. Unless you want the GFV. Those are only available direct from Disney. But the point requirement there is outrageous! Even more so than BLT and AKV-Savanna.

There are a bunch of sticky threads at the top of these boards that might help you with information.

Just don't get hooked on the idea that you can trade out DVC points for other vacations because it just isn't the best use of your points. DVC is an expensive timeshare to trade out or to use for the non-DVC Disney vacations that you can't get with resales, but you can get by purchasing directly.

DVC members never get deals on their stays. No free dining. No buy four get three free. No kids stay free. No tickets thrown in with the deal except maybe a few fast passes if you purchase direct (which are gone in three days). Occupancy is strict. You can't squeeze an extra person in the room because they don't mind sleeping on the floor. Points expire if you don't use them or forget to bank them.

Good luck making your decision.

 

[Minniesgal]

For our family a big part of the benefots of DVc is to be able to book a 2 bedroom and have a full kitchen. Some people like the DDP but we don't we prefer to eat breakfast in and snack and drink in only having a few Ts that feel like a special night out because we are not doing it all the time.

If you like DDP and want to eat out all the time to my thinking it erodes a bit of the benefit of the 1 and 2 bedrooms. you obviously have more space but for us the real value was in saving dining costs as they are a large outlay.

 

[kshark1958]

One of the things people tend to forget when purchasing DVC is the time of year you will be using it.When we purchased DVC we purchased SSR knowing we would probably not be staying there too often.We have only stayed there once for one night before a cruise. Its nice but too far from the parks for us. But at the time they were selling AKV so they were giving a bunch of incentives for SSR which brought our cost PP down to 90 dollars. But booking places like BLT seven months out isn't a problem because we only go to WDW during the low crowd and low points usage months like Sept. or Oct. and sometimes early May. Never when kids are out of school or any holiday period.
Also at the time I didn't know about resale but with the prices now to buy direct and if I was purchasing now I would think about resale. Their are restrictions about resale like not being able to use the points on cruises but like a lot of threads on here will tell you using your points outside of the resorts is definitely not a good use for your points. We used ours for a cruise once I will definitely not do that again. With the amount of times you want to keep going to WDW DVC sounds like a good fit for you but make sure you do your homework.We are happy as heck for buying DVC and we would never think about selling it.

 

[joelp]

We have considered joining Disney Vacation Club for a while. Just a few things are holding us back. Not sure it is worth it or not. We have gone to Disney World 10 times and Disneyland 1 time. I plan to continue to go to Disney for many years. Our girls are older (23, 15,) but when we start having grandchildren I want to take them to Disney. We have always stayed at Port Orleans Riverside which is a moderate. We do the Dining Plan and do Park hopper tickets. Do you think we should buy into it? I just am so unsure. I ordered the books and they got sent to me. It says you have to put at least $ 2,000 down. Is that correct? Is there any incentives to buying in right now?

Please help confused.
lovemickeyminnie

A few things to consider:

(1) Since you've only stayed at POR and are "unsure" about buying into DVC, I recommend you hold off and - on your next visit to WDW - visit a bunch of the DVC resorts, That will give you a much better idea of what makes DVC "tick" - and what you may want as your home resort.

(2) If you are only planning on using DVC for trips to WDW - look into buying resale: you'll save $$$$$$$$$. But also recognize that using DVC points for non-DVC trips is not "cost-efficient".

(3) If you need to finance a DVC purchase, think again - and then some more ... But also realize that the long-term cost (annual maintenance fees for the next 40+ years) is way more than the purchase cost.

(4) Make sure you understand how DVC works, how many points you'll need for your typical stay at WDW, the 7/12 month booking windows, banking/borrowing, etc.

Good luck!

 

[Deb & Bill]

A few things to consider:
...
(4) Make sure you understand how DVC works, how many points you'll need for your typical stay at WDW, the 7/12 month booking windows, banking/borrowing, etc.

Good luck!

7/11 month booking windows. Just a slight correction.