How do you determine if owning is "right" for you?

[lorasmom]

I'm terrible at math, I admittedly don't really get all of the nuances of the ownership program. I need some help deciding if I want to pursue this with hubby, who is not as easily pursuaded as I was

 

[chalee94]

stolen from DVCMike:

DVC membership might make sense if you meet most or all of these criteria:

The cost of membership and dues does not appear to present a financial hardship.

You vacation at Walt Disney World frequently: ideally at least once every two years.

You plan to continue vacationing at Disney World far enough into the future to make the membership at least break even.

You prefer to stay in Deluxe or DVC accommodations and/or you stay a long time (10 days or more per year). If you always stay at a Value resort, or always stay off-site, or you really spend the entire day at the parks away from your hotel, and you don't spend time at the resort itself (other than crashing at the end of the day), then DVC may not be for you.

You are able to plan your vacations well in advance -- ideally 7 to 11 months out. If you aren't a planner, don't even look at becoming a DVC member. If you can't plan and book your vacations 11 months in advance, and staying at a particular DVC resort is important, then don't join DVC. If you really don't care which DVC resort you end up with, then it's not an issue.

You stay more on weekdays and can limit Friday and Saturday night stays.

You can do without daily mousekeeping and room service (of course, you can pay extra and get mousekeeping as a DVC member).

You desire more space than a typical resort room (such as a 2 bedroom villa, with full kitchen, living room, 2 bathrooms and jacuzzi suite, and even a washer/dryer).

You’re not looking at DVC as an investment or a way to make money (it’s not). It is a decision to prepay, at today's rates, the next several decades of Disney trips.

 

[Deb & Bill]

They play up the trading out - "you can trade into over 500 different resort/locations with your DVC points" - but it's not the most economical use of your points. If you are buying into DVC to use it for trading out, there are a lot cheaper places or places that trade better than DVC.

Use your points for DVC.
Buy where you won't mind staying if you can't change your reservation at 7 months out.
Book as soon as possible and don't wait until the last few months out. You might be disappointed.
Dues go up every year.
As more and more members join, it gets harder and harder to book at somewhere other than your home resort at 7 months out.
You plan on going to Disney often - at least once a year, every other year at a minimum.

 

[ASDFG]

For us it made sense as we were going down to WDW pretty much every year. The way I looked at it was:

1) Although the initial cost was high as far as time shares go, there is a fairly healty resale market where we could recover a substantial portion of our investment. As the price for points increases, the price in the resale market increases as well. 5 years in, we're in a position where we could recover roughly 90% of our original investment. However don't get me wrong, it's not about the return on investment.

2) It was our intention to continue vacationing at WDW every year

3) We don't intend to own it forever. I would expect we'll sell it in 10 or 15 years.

4) It provided the ability to get luxury accomodations in other areas of the world we like to vacation. However this was not the prime reason for buying it. If I wanted an interest in Intervale and vacation all over the world, I likely would have bought Intervale instead of DVC.

If it wasn't for 1, 2 and 3 - I would never have considered purchasing DVC points. For us it was like prepaying for your vacation accomodations and then selling and getting a good portion of our money back.

At least that's how we looked at it.

 

[lorasmom]

Thanks, this I didn't think about the ROI should we change our minds down the road.

 

[moredisneyplease]

Dont get me wrong, because I do love my DVC ( and all of my add-ons ) but I didnt really do my research in advanced. my rep really did play up the exchange program and honestly thats how i convinced my husband. I've since learned that its not the best way to spend your points. Since I'm a huge WDW/DL fan I know that I will, for years and years to come, keep going to WDW/DL so i know my points will take me far (more DVC at DL please!).

HOWEVER, once my AKL contract is paid off (we have SSR too) I think we might look in to a different kind of Timeshare that can take us to more places without waisting our DVC points.

Good luck!

 

[dvcdisney]

I think you've received great advice.

I think for us, the deciding point was whether we though Disney was going to be our destination for most of our vacations and since we are both Disney fanatics...this was a definite YES

We did do a few calculations and found that we would be paying the same as the Holiday Inn price for a four star deluxe resort. There was no arguing that. When we first joined we stayed at nice hotels outside Disney and we found that the DVC resorts are much better (imo) that those and the prices were from $250-$300/ night which ended up being almost double what we "pay" at DVC resorts.

We have found that using the points other than the DVC Resorts is not as economical as it should be. We have decided to use our points strictly for these resorts to make the most of our points.

Just a warning though, when we purchase these points we decided that we would be going once a year and so it was worth the money. In the past few years, we had added on 4 times and now we go twice a year. One thing this membership may do is to "encourage" (that's a nice word for it) to take more Disney trips.

 

[lorasmom]

We did it - we took the plunge, and bought in this weekend

I'm so excited!

 

[Disney Spaz]

Congrats and HOME!!!!!!

 

[Laneychris]

Congrats on buying, I know we thought about it for a long time we started the process a few weeks ago