How did DVC ownership change your trips?

[melissa70]

Since I’m usually on here asking a million contract questions , I wanted to switch gears.
Instead of points/ROFR/prices, I’d love to hear from long-time DVC owners:
How did your Disney vacations actually change once you owned points?
Did you go more often? Stay in bigger rooms? Become more relaxed planners?
Or did ownership not change much at all?
We have always been park people morning til night but I want to stop all that
No echo chamber… I’m just looking for real, honest experiences. Thank you!

 

[MyDogTink]

We’ve moved up to 2 BRs and enjoy the resort itself more. We’re 3 people so I know a 2 BR sounds ridiculous but I think if we were in studios we would be miserable. We don’t do all-inclusive beachy vacations so we mimic that with DVC. More time at the pool, hanging out on the balcony, visiting the community hall and game room and maybe going to parks only in the evening.

 

[RuntheMouse]

How did your Disney vacations actually change once you owned points?
Did you go more often? Stay in bigger rooms? Become more relaxed planners?
Or did ownership not change much at all?

Yes, yes and yes!

We bought enough points for the trips we routinely took. Sometime though, there are points leftover that we may use to sneak in an extra trip because we have APs.

We have started staying in 1 beds more often and see continuing that going forward. It ties in with being more relaxed planners. We like spending more time at the resort and not being so park crazy. We know we’re coming back so we don’t have to hit everything every time. It’s been really nice to actually relax on vacation!

 

[OKW Lover]

We've been DVC members for 30 years now. When I lived in MA and was still working we used our points to make frequent but shorter trips. We would think nothing of a spur of the moment 3-night trip if we could find a cheap air fare. Having annual passes made the trip very inexpensive. We would also at that time do a longer trip of 6+ nights each year.

Now that we live practically next to the parks, we still use points there occasionally for a staycation. But now we mostly save our points for a long stay at Aulani.

 

[tidefan]

The long answer is that it will change a lot, and multiple times over your membership.

We've been owners for 18 years, and our stay patterns have varied greatly over each say 1/3 of our ownership. During the first 5-6 years, while DD was in elementary school, we could take her out, and being that we were 8ish hours by car away, we got APs and went all of the time. We would go for long weekends, summer weeks, spring break, and always labor day for MNSSHP, etc, the zenith of this being in 2012 when they offered members the $399 Premium Annual Pass (think Incredipass+Water Parks+Mini-golf+Oak Trail Golf).

The middle 1/3, mainly when DD was in middle/high school, visits were perhaps fewer, but longer, and beholden to the school calendar. We also probably took more friends during this period than others. Also, as others have mentioned, you start to gravitate towards larger villa sizes. Also at that time, newer properties started opening, most prominently, Aulani. We went the first year it opened and have been back 5 times since. We have now decided that Aulani is a once every at least 3 year visit.

Then the pandemic hit, parks closed and points started to back up. Also, Disney stopped selling APs at the time, which really changed at least our visit pattern. Prior to that, we always had APs, which made you want to maximize your visits. Well, with no AP, we branched out. We visited Aulani 3 straight years 2021-2023 and loved every visit (sans the COVID testing we had to do at the airport once we arrived back in 2021, but that was a different time... ). We also hit Vero for two weeks during the shutdown and Hilton Head the next year and really enjoyed them as well.

Fast forward to the last couple of years and DD is now out of college, so there are many more couples trips for DW and I. We have really come to love the Cabins at Fort Wilderness, and our last 3 stays have been there. We can just go down and enjoy the Fort ecosystem with the golf carts, scavenger hunts, great community, etc., and we feel that we don't even need to visit the parks. Plus, you can bring your dog, which we've really enjoyed. That said, we do usually make one day for Epcot for Guardians We've also increased things like trips to Europe, etc, branching outside the Disney bubble, so that makes less time for park trips.

I am sure that our visits will change over the next 18 years as well. Our first part of our ownership was add-on-itis as we wanted more points to do more and more. However, now that our visiting patterns have changed, for the first time, we have actually thought about downsizing a contract or two, especially since we don't really use the 11 month window that much.

The short answer however is that everyone is different and your experience could well be very different than ours. We are only a sample of size 1, so I wouldn't take our experience as gospel (what did @Brian Noble say about turning anecdotes into data??? )