How long did you research/think about DVC before buying?

[hmire]

I am still on the fence. I have been reading, and reading, and reading. I have a family of 5. I understand it won't really save money. We usually stay at values. But now that I have a family of 5 the on values would be suites or POR. I love the idea of staying at a deluxe villa. We have reservations in Nov at POR. We have plans on going every year while the kids are young and then as they are old maybe every other year and bank points to bring family with us. I just can't commit. What make you decide to buy?

 

[ffcheff]

We are also a family of 5 and the deluxe villa accomodations were the deciding factor. The location of the resorts and the full size kitchens are great. We purchased at Bay Lake Tower so we could be on the monorail, but just did an add on at animal kingdom because we wanted more points and felt that it was the best value for what we could afford to spend. we spent afew months weighing our options and talking to friends who are vacation club members. Best money we spent on our family over all.

 

[etemplet]

We were not regular Disney goers but I am nearing retirement and we both liked the idea of more room and amenities, better locations, and the great value of owning at DVC. I thought we would enjoy at least one Disney Vacation per year and there are other great options as well (building points for a large gathering). My wife and I did not know DVC existed in Sept. of 2011. We almost bought in while at Disney but I had too many questions and I love to research. So, my research brought me to this board which is instrumental in my purchase and saved us thousands (conservative estimate $8000) of dollars as well. This is a GREAT PLACE

Your question was how long did we research before our purchase. We returned home and after a week of serious due diligence, we had an offer accepted on Sept. 30th. Since then we have decided to add points at Boardwalk and are currently in ROFR for that property.

My phlosophy is this. I consider the cash purchase of the property.. GONE... The only cost I look at is, the maintenance costs which are about the same as my cable bill or health club membership. I am sure I pay about 50% more for our mobile phones per month. It is about a tank of gas for our Chevy Avalanche when it is close to empty.

Something that is really great is that we are locked into the costs long term. We will not have to pay for a place to stay in Disney and we will stay at the best places for years to come. Not to mention all the stuff you learn about at Disney which makes vacations even more enjoyable. We just retured from our first stay at BLT and have 2 more scheduled this year. Pretty cool !!

Hope this helps !

 

[magicaldisney]

On one of our trips to WDW we visited the different DVC resorts. We then rented a reservation from a DVC member twice and then made the decision to purchase for ourselves. We always stayed at a moderate resort before DVC, but once we stayed at the deluxe resorts we wanted to continue with that and DVC was the best way for us to be able to do that.

 

[disneynutz]

We spent 2 years checking things out during which time we stayed in a DVC resort, took the DVC sales tour and visited every DVC resort, several of which we got access to a DVC room. Our first purchase was BCV. 5 resorts and 26 contracts later, here we are today.

It continues to amaze me how many resorts are purchased sight unseen. Some people spend more time choosing a ripe melon then they do a $20,000 deeded real estate purchase that will commit them to Disney for up to 50 years.

Bill

 

[ebirrane]

We aren't DVC members.. yet.. but we are in the process of trying to purchase resale points, and I can share my thoughts on what made me pull the trigger.

I looked at it three ways:

1. Past history

We have gone down 7 out of the last 8 years anywhere from 4 to 9 nights. Between my wife and 2 kids, we would get a single room in a moderate or deluxe resort, so our average lodging cost was around ~$3k.

So, for the past 7 years, I paid about $21k in lodging.

If I bought $15k of points (~160 depending on resort) and paid about $800 in annual fees for 7 years, I would have paid about $20.6k for lodging as a DVC member. So, I figured that around the 7 or 8 year mark I would hit the break even point. After that, the annual fees would be cheaper than paying cash at a resort.

2. Some Internet Spreadsheet

I found an Excel spreadsheet on some board and updated it with 2012 numbers. At this point, I was looking at 300 points at SSR. If I recall correctly, the "cost of owning DVC" came out to around $20k in initial buy-out (no financing), $50k in annual fees for the points for 40 some years, and about $19k in lost income (i.e. investing the $20k at a 6% return and paying for your vacation lodging with interest profits and re-investments). So, all in all, over 40 years, I would be out around $90k. Assumed a 3% annual fee increase a year.

Instead, if I stayed at SSR for 40-some years assuming some (likely conservative) growth ... maybe 5%? I think I would be out something like $160k for lodging.

So, in an apples-to-apples comparison of where you stay, you would save money.


3. The ability to share

We go down with my wife's parents and my sisters and sometimes friends just about every year. If we had people stay with us, either in a 2br, or in 2 suites, we would simply ask them to pay the annual fees for us. It is cheaper for them than buying lodging with cash, and they are happy to do so. If our points come through this year, my wife's parents would cover annual dues and my sister would pay for the kid's park hoppers.

Doing that consistently would let some friends stay with us for as little as $400/wk for lodging. For some, that's the difference between a trip to Disney for their kids, and not. And it is cheaper than them renting points.

Of course, we don't count on it, and it's not as if we wouldn't let family use points if they needed to for free, but this seems to work out for everyone involved.

---

Whew, that was a little long.

Some assumptions that we had are that we will be going every year, and staying, on average, for 7 nights (right now we are looking at 9 nights at the end of the year for 2012).

We also assume that the family suites in the value resorts (like art of animation which looks awesome) cost in the moderate-resort range ($260ish a night?).

We figure we will break even anywhere from 5-9 years depending on how often we go and who "comes with". I'm confident with the age of our kids that we will recoup the investment in the short term. Once that happens, I'm happy with the purchase because even if we reduce our travel frequency, we would give points to family or rent them to offset the annual fees from that point onward.

I haven't fully researched two important options:

1. More savvy financial management of an initial lump-sum investment to cover vacations out of interest. My fear there is that it may take a lot of oversite and knowledge, and near-term market fluctuations may have a big impact on vacation plans.

2. Simply renting points from DVC members. If you can always get lodging for less than the cost of annual fees, it seems to make sense to not be a member.

Both cases trade savings versus determinism, and it's not clear that the "emotional cost" of yearly fluctuations offset the finances significantly to make me want to abandon the "warm fuzzy" I like to have around my vacations.

Hope this helps, and by all means, I don't claim this is bullet proof, but it was the rationalization behind our decision.

-Ed

 

[wheelcap]

For us, it wasn't so much about saving money -- and I'm not sure DVC actually does that anyway. Instead, it was more about "forcing" us to take a "real" vacation. We've been good at taking our vacation time at home, or sleeping on the air mattress at relatives/friends homes. Those are nice, but nowhere near the same as a REAL vacation.

 

[bwvBound]

How long did you research/think about DVC before buying?

I am still on the fence. I have been reading, and reading, and reading. I have a family of 5. I understand it won't really save money. We usually stay at values. But now that I have a family of 5 the on values would be suites or POR. I love the idea of staying at a deluxe villa. We have reservations in Nov at POR. We have plans on going every year while the kids are young and then as they are old maybe every other year and bank points to bring family with us. I just can't commit. What make you decide to buy?

In answer to your subject question, "How long?": 6 years. We took our first DVC tour in Sept 1998 while staying at BWV in a Studio Villa as part of our Land/Sea package on the then brand new Disney Magic.

The pitch made sense -- but we didn't see ourselves traveling to Orlando annually for vacation purposes and didn't buy. The decision to "not buy" was a good one for us at that time.

However, the tour had successfully planted the thought of "timeshare" into our brains and after some research, we purchased our first timeshare two years later in a larger points-based club with lots of properties in the western states. Buying that first (non-DVC) timeshare was another good decision!

Fast forward many years to 2003 ... my husband and I saw changes to our employment as both employers were purchased by a mega-corp. Our former employers had been paying full-fare conference travel to WDW since 1996. The new mega-corp cut off that funding. Sooooo ... in answer to your last question, "What made you decide to buy?": Changes in employment status! We knew we'd want to continue attending the business conference and bought DVC in 2004 to help us maintain that habit.

Again, we found that buying DVC at the time we did was a good decision. Color us happy.

 

[Carys]

I put it on my "someday" list during my first visit in 2005, and have been seriously contemplating it for the last 2 years. This year, I'm taking the plunge, and I am currently in the process of purchasing a SSR resale (fingers crossed for me that it all goes smoothly )

Why DVC and why now?
- My current and likely future patterns of travel make financial cents (bad pun, I know) to buy DVC over paying cash for the larger deluxe rooms. You'll need to number crunch this, and also take into account whether you usually take advantage of "free dining" etc deals.
- I tend to vacation with other adult family members, and the condo-style accommodation works much better for this; more private space, laundry facilities, cooking facilities, more bathrooms, while all still being together in communal areas.
- The length of contract runs for a few years after retirement, but not too many; it works well for my personal lifespan/situation.
- I prefer to be on-site, especially as I'm not used to driving on the right side of the road and therefore rely on Disney transport, so the premium for a DVC timeshare is worth it.
- After waiting, I have cash to buy instead of financing (I hate debt)

If you can't commit and you're having to talk yourself into it, maybe it's not the right decision for you. Wait a couple of vacations, rent points, and see if your view has changed to "I wish we bought in 2 years ago, let's not waste more time". I would have bought in earlier if I was willing to finance.

 

[katieam1]

We took a little over a year to decide. I am glad we took the time. Although in someways I wish we would have done it right away I am glad we took our time and did it when it was the right time for us.

Good luck!!

 

[cloudnut220]

We actually really only thought about ours for a few days. But my parents had been DVC members since 1994, so I felt like I had 15 years of experience with the program when my husband and I bought in 2009. We knew it was something we wanted to do eventually (we wanted more control of our vacations than we had just going with family on their points) but when we toured BLT because we were curious we fell in love.

 

[Caren90]

We spent 2 years checking things out during which time we stayed in a DVC resort, took the DVC sales tour and visited every DVC resort, several of which we got access to a DVC room. Our first purchase was BCV. 5 resorts and 26 contracts later, here we are today.

It continues to amaze me how many resorts are purchased sight unseen. Some people spend more time choosing a ripe melon then they do a $20,000 deeded real estate purchase that will commit them to Disney for up to 50 years.

Bill

Bill, Don't discount the value of picking out a good melon!

I too am amazed when someone says they purchased without visiting. We spent a rainy weekend in Disney and visited all of the resorts. Now we are 7 contracts and 3 resorts into it.
Stephen

 

[saintstickets]

I am still on the fence. I have been reading, and reading, and reading. I have a family of 5. I understand it won't really save money. We usually stay at values. But now that I have a family of 5 the on values would be suites or POR. I love the idea of staying at a deluxe villa. We have reservations in Nov at POR. We have plans on going every year while the kids are young and then as they are old maybe every other year and bank points to bring family with us. I just can't commit. What make you decide to buy?

We were thinking about taking a Disney vacation in mid-2009. We had not been to WDW in over two years and it was 10 years before that trip since the previous one. I started looking for information and found the DISboards. It was while I was on here that I found out about DVC. Since we love Disney and were planning on taking more trips, this seemed like a good fit. We did our research and quickly found that resale was the wiser choice for us. Within a month, we made an offer on a small contract at OKW. It was the only DVC resort we knew about because we stayed there during our last trip. Our offer was accepted and by Nov, 2009, we were DVC owners! Our contract had some extra points but not enough for the 2br we wanted to stay in for our 1st trip so we rented a few points from a fellow DISboarder and made our reservations for May, 2010. By my calculations, we figured the purchase would pay for itself after 3 trips when comparing rack rates vs DVC purchase + annual MF's. I know others consider various sophisticated formulas with the value of money invested over time + loss of free dining + blah, blah, blah. I keep it simple and say what would it have cost me to stay at a deluxe villa vs what it cost me to purchase DVC and the annual maintenance fees.

With that said, before we even made our 1st trip and after spending countless hours on the DISboards, another small contract became available at BWV and my Christmas bonus was eating a hole in my pocket! We purchased it and closed in March, 2010. With that contract, we added days to our family May, 2010 trip and made reservations for just DW and I the week after Thanksgiving, 2010.

Since that time, we have added 3 more small contracts when bonuses or other windfalls came our way and the right contract was available. To get back to your original question, it only took a month for us to make the decision but we were lucky and had the funds available at the time for that 1st small contract.

By what I have read here on the DISboards and by my own personal experience, if you are planning on visiting WDW at least every other year, would rather stay in a deluxe villa, can plan your trips at least 7 months in advance and can afford the upfront costs + annual maintenance fees, then DVC is a good choice. It is not an investment. It is for entertainment and personal enjoyment to a place that you enjoy enough to visit again and again.

Good luck with your decision. Ask all the questions you want from DISboarders (including me). They have provided me with tons of good advice and information. BTW, where in LA are you located? We are across the muddy river near Hattiesburg, MS. Hi neighbor!

 

[jekjones1558]

And now a totally different perspective:
We visited the Boardwalk during a Disney vacation. We walked into the Boardwalk preview center. We liked it. We didn't even realize there was another DVC (OKW). We were totally uneducated about timeshares in general and DVC in particular. We didn't know there was such a thing as a resale market. We asked the guide how many points he thought we should buy. He suggested 220, so that is what we bought. We signed papers and made a down payment on the spot and mailed a check when we got home.
We have since added on many times since then and have enjoyed every point. Our buying story is not one I could recommend to others but in our case, no regrets whatsoever (except maybe when our big dues statement arrives! )

 

[zavandor]

I went to WDW last January and planned the trip far in advance. I discovered DVC last November, while researching on this board info for the upcoming trip. It was too late to switch and try renting points, but while in Orlando I visited two resorts. One was AKV that I really liked from pictures, the other BCV that I hated but I wanted to go to Cape May for dinner and take a look to the Boardwalk area. Well, after seeing BCV I was stunned. I was prepared to the beauty of AKV, but BCV surprised me. I thought that if I liked so much in person this resort that I disliked looking the pictures on the Internet, I would have loved every other resort.

Moreover, I've always been a Value person, always trying to save every penny for my vacations. I could afford staying in a deluxe, but the rack rates always seemed really too much, not worth it. DVC is the right compromise, a deluxe accomodation (I think I deserve it ) but without spending too much.
After I came back home, I searched for a small contract and now my offer has been accepted for a 65 points resale contract, that I'll use every other or every 3 years, banking and borrowing. Visiting not too much I think I'll never burn out from Disney (I already visited DLP any times, It's never enought )

So, from discovering DVC to buying it: 4 months.

 

[ToddyLu]

DH and I made our first visit togther to WDW in 2002. I was 34 and it was my first trip (DH had been in 1976). I was in love with the place instantly--I got it!!

We had so much fun that first trip we went back the next year, and the year after that, and the year after that.....

In 2004 I had a nurse friend who owned DVC at OKW. She loved Dsiney too and on occasion she would tell me how nice her villa was. Her good firend who I also worked with bought points because she had stayed at OKW with the first girl. So that is when I first heard about DVC--Disney's Best Kept Secret. I had seen the advertisments but had no clue.

In 2009 I had been on the Disboards reading and posting for about a year. I started reading the DVC forum just to learn. I read how we could get a discount if we purchased X amount, and then another X amount if we had a referral from a DVC member. Well I talked to DH and he agreed that we could do it and the rest is history.

We always stayed in Values up until our purchase. We were going for 9 nights EVERY year and that was not going to change--it became "our vacation spot". We are well into our 40s and the thought of staying Deluxe really was tempting. Once I walked in that studio with a savanna view at AKV, I was overjoyed and elated at our choice in purchasing DVC. Until that moment there was always a little doubt about it being worth it. In that first 30 seconds in that room DH and I were "home" and happy. He loves it as much as I do and we have never looked back. Some people buy a cottage on the beach or a timeshare in Colorado. Our choice was Disney.

Now that we have had it for two full years, we no longer hesitate in going back to the room to get a cold drink and watch giraffes. I mean who wouldn't love that...and to do it every year, twice even, on a fireman and nurses salary....PRICELESS!!

 

[Crazy4Disney06]

We started thinking about it in 2007 during our first family WDW vacation. We decided when I graduated college we would look further into it. We returned in 2008 and again thought about it some more, but again decided to wait until I graduated college. We visited DL in 2009 and then back to WDW in 2011, although I don't graduate until later this year, we decided this was the right time for us. We now have two children and know we will be visiting Disney for many more years to come. In the past 12 years we have made 9 Disney vacations and the timing to buy in to DVC just seemed right. We just passed ROFR and I can't wait to actually use our membership!

 

[E2ME2]

Cool thread.
We love to share our decision process. We are empty-nesters, about to be grandparents, and we have traveled on 2 - 3 vacations per year for the last 8 years of our marriage. We were thinking about buying a winter place in Florida, to use as a snowbird site, as we get closer to retirement. But, with the pending grandchild, started thinking we would probably not get the maximum use out of owning a property. At best, we would probably only be in Florida between Mid-January to Mid-February.
We were on our 3rd trip to Florida, researching properties, including villas, condos, and campgrounds, when we stopped at Downtown Disney for dinner. We saw the DVC Kiosks, and started chatting with one of the CMs. Next day we were touring the DVC showroom at SSR, and afer 3.5 hours, we decided to buy on the spot. (we were the reason it took 3.5 hours, not the guides fault) I wanted to see every inch of the place, and we looked at every model. I had the guide run the numbers for every possible resort. And i convinced myself that the payback would be around 7 years for us, considering our vacation pattern over the last 8 years. We are going to book our first DVC trip for January of 2013. And I'm planning a golf-outing with the DS & SIL, for next spring. Once the grand-baby can walk & talk, we are sure to do the Disney Cruises, as well. After many years of "value" vacationing, when our kids were little, we realize the benefit of traveling in moderate-to-deluxe accommodations. We feel the DVC gives you the deluxe resorts, at a value price, and we are happy with our purchase. We also think buying direct will pay off for us, since we have a history of foreign travel, and are sure to use the Disney collection and adventurer offerings in the future.

 

[etemplet]

It's fun and interesting to read the paths we take to the same decision. How different we all are. Pretty cool !!

 

[mjc2003]

We spent nearly $9000 out of pocket on cash villas in 2009/2010 at BCV. We loved the resort, and loved the larger accommodations. We realized we'd be very happy coming back to BCV, the kids love it, they are both young (now 6 & 3 and we have a 3rd on the way), and therefore we'd be back many times over. I didn't really quantify it much more than that. We had the money to buy it outright, I was not comfortable financing. We became members in April 2011, and got 2 vacations in 2011 out of the points we bought. We won't be back until 2013, but already are wishing we could go this year. While it's frustrating that we can't go back right now, the sentiment also goes a long way towards validating our decision to buy.

I grew up going to WDW. I want my kids to share in the joy of my experiences as a kid and DVC helps facilitate that process.