Originally posted by rbuzzotta
Are the trades pretty much comparable?? I know that Disney properties are rated high and will I get a 2 BR for a 2 BR???
I would recommend reading in your
DVC Member Guidebook how the World Passport Collection works and how the Concierge Collection works. They're very different.
Do you prefer to stay in a deluxe hotel room with twice-daily maid service, a choice of high-end restaurants, and a high level of personal service?
Or do you prefer to stay in a condo with that's like a 1- or 2-bedroom deluxe apartment — where you have a kitchen, you make your own beds, and you have lots of room and privacy?
Essentially, the Concierge Collection gives you the former, and World Passport Collection exchanges through Interval International (II) give you the latter.
Concierge Collection rooms can be booked by the night. At a year out, there should normally be plenty of availability, which will become less and less as the hotel gets booked up. Think of it as using points instead of cash to pay for a hotel room.
At the Concierge Collection hotel on Maui (the
Kapalua Bay Hotel) the rooms are undoubtedly large and well appointed, but they aren't like 1BR or 2BR condos at DVC resorts. The
point chart for the Kapalua Bay Hotel gives you a choice of garden view, partial ocean view, or ocean view. Needless to say, the point cost goes up as the view improves. The Kapalua Bay Hotel enjoys an excellent reputation.
World Passport Collection resorts (with a few exceptions) involve 7-night stays, usually beginning on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday night. At a year out, there is typically no availability at all — but as owners book weeks and deposit them with II, those weeks become available to those who have requested to trade in. It's not unusual for II members to request trades to Hawaii two years out — and then to wait at least a year (and sometimes much longer) before a successful trade occurs — if it occurs at all.
We've never traded to Hawaii with DVC, but we've stayed at Marriott's Maui Ocean Club, Marriott's Kauai Beach Club, Kona Coast Resort I, and the Embassy Vacation Resort at Poipu (and at various hotels on Oahu, Maui, Kauai, and the Big Island). We would gladly stay at the two Marriott properties again. They combine many of the best qualities of a hotel and a timeshare resort — in a similar way as BWV, BCV, or VWL. The Kona Coast Resort was somewhat of a disappointment, but we really liked the Big Island of Hawaii, and we would stay there again if we didn't have a better choice. We felt that the Embassy on Poipu really missed the mark; we would not stay there again.
