How much did you spend on your dvc membership

[Jack Kerouac]

I live near a port for cruises (used to have disney but they apparently pulled out this year) and I can find carnival cruises for about $1500 for my family for 6 nights but disney cruises are quite a bit more especially since now i will have to travel to get to a port. the closest port with disney cruises is now 5 hours away in Galveston.

Gotcha. We are near Chicago, so we have to fly or drive for any cruise port in the future.

 

[CourtneyAshley]

Gotcha. We are near Chicago, so we have to fly or drive for any cruise in the future.

We close enough to New Orleans to happily take a boat from there without any overnight stay or lengthy drive. Im hoping DCL will return to New Orleans in the future.

 

[Memorymakerfor4]

How would you compare the cost of a visit to Aulani to WDW, if you have been to both? I am interested in going to Aulani, but my biggest hurdles are the flights (about 10h from where we live), the time change for our boys, and then the cost of food once we get there. I do understand we wouldn't have the cost of park tickets though.

And keep the cars as long as you can. Mine is currently 11 years old and will be our 9 year old's first car once he gets old enough to drive.

I just happened to run the numbers on this yesterday. We went to Aulani last year for 6 nights for $8,000. Included a private island tour and the luau. Our WDW trip this year for 7 nights and is looking like $7,500. Park tickets for 5 days, Genie+, and MVMCP are killer, about two thirds of the cost.

At Aulani we budgeted $100/person per day for food, based off of recommendations I found online, and that turned out to be accurate. Oh, and that cost also included a rental car for a few days. We did venture off sight about half the time.

 

[Cybertruck]

I have a way to go before retirement that is for sure. I am hoping to be able to retire around 55-60. I work a job with guaranteed retirement at 62 (and with the number of years of service i will have i will get 75-90% of my pay) so I need to float myself for a few years before that to be able to do it. I am also hoping that I can help my kids with legs up that my family could not afford to do for us. When the kids get older i want to take them to DC so badly but it is a 16 hour drive and i am not willing to tackle that one yet. I am hoping to make enough memories that they forget some of the countless mistakes I know i will make as they grow. We also want to do a cruise but my son saw an ad for a disney cruise so now he only wants to go on the "big mickey boat"

Defined pension plan that is fantastic especially in this day and age when everything has turned into 401K. DC was just over 3 hours for us. We did that almost every summer when they were in school.

 

[VGCgroupie]

How would you compare the cost of a visit to Aulani to WDW, if you have been to both? I am interested in going to Aulani, but my biggest hurdles are the flights (about 10h from where we live), the time change for our boys, and then the cost of food once we get there. I do understand we wouldn't have the cost of park tickets though.

And keep the cars as long as you can. Mine is currently 11 years old and will be our 9 year old's first car once he gets old enough to drive.

We recently just cancelled a WDW trip for an Aulani trip.

For us the flights were about 1k more than to Orlando. (but they just had a flight deal and I could've gotten it $600 cheaper had I waited, so watch for flight deals.. they are out there)

I was spending 100 points for 4 nights in a 1bed at BWV. For Aulani we are spending 174 points for a split stay 2n Studio Ocean View / 2n 1bed stay Ocean View.

WDW we were spending $1194 on tickets. I just now have to decide what extras to pay for at Aulani. Im thinking we will spend around 800-1k not including food.

So we are possibly spending around 1k and 74 more points for Aulani. The difference here is a vacation to WDW is wildly fun but not relaxing, we get home needing a vacation to recover from our vacation. Aulani Im hoping my husband can relax and it be an actual vacation.

 

[CourtneyAshley]

Defined pension plan that is fantastic especially in this day and age when everything has turned into 401K. DC was just over 3 hours for us. We did that almost every summer when they were in school.

The pension was the biggest draw to the job. The pay is not very good but the insurance benefits and the pension make it a bit better. I currently have seven years in.

I love DC in 2017 when I was saving to purchase my house and to pay for my wedding my best friend and I desperately needed a vacation so we drove the 16 hours to DC and spent six nights in a hotel in Virginia because it was cheaper Took the subway into the city every day and all the activities in the city were free. I think we paid a total of $1000 for that vacation for both of us.

 

[MartyParty]

How would you compare the cost of a visit to Aulani to WDW, if you have been to both? I am interested in going to Aulani, but my biggest hurdles are the flights (about 10h from where we live), the time change for our boys, and then the cost of food once we get there. I do understand we wouldn't have the cost of park tickets though.

And keep the cars as long as you can. Mine is currently 11 years old and will be our 9 year old's first car once he gets old enough to drive.

We did a trip to Oahu this May. Flights, food, entertainment is around 20% to 30% more expensive than WDW. If saying in a suite with a full kitchen, you can offset some of the food costs. My wife brought several dry pastas and sauce with us. Went to the Costco near Aulani and picked up some other items.

 

[tidefan]

Just a question, does anyone remember when they started adding closing costs? Was it somewhere around 2011?

 

[RuntheMouse]

I love DC in 2017 when I was saving to purchase my house and to pay for my wedding my best friend and I desperately needed a vacation so we drove the 16 hours to DC and spent six nights in a hotel in Virginia because it was cheaper Took the subway into the city every day and all the activities in the city were free. I think we paid a total of $1000 for that vacation for both of us.

We were incredibly lucky that DH had an 8 week project in DC several years back. It was in spring so the weather was perfect to be outside being tourists the entire time, even got to see the cherry blossoms. It is truly one of my favorite places in the US.

 

[tx911]

I started reading this thread a bit upset cause the real numbers get scary and not so magical pretty quick, but as I read on I realized we’re all crazy and I don’t feel like the sole insane person spending ~$97,000 on 575pts! Thanks guys!

Our average isn’t that great at ~$168/pt and frankly, it’s only going to get worse cause we want more direct points but is don’t feel so bad anymore!

My average price per point sucks!
Almost all direct and what is not direct is resale VGC so it's all $$$$$.

 

[MerlinandtheMouse]

My average price per point sucks!
Almost all direct and what is not direct is resale VGC so it's all $$$$$.

But we’re happy and staying where we want

 

[VGCgroupie]

My average price per point sucks!
Almost all direct and what is not direct is resale VGC so it's all $$

But we’re happy and staying where we want

same... well if this resale I bought EVER closes. Resale is the hurry up and wait game.

 

[tx911]

But we’re happy and staying where we want

That's right, and we can use almost all of our points at RIV, so take that all you master class savers!

 

[tx911]

same... well if this resale I bought EVER closes. Resale is the hurry up and wait game.

I know. I can't stand the waiting for the right contract to show up, and then waiting what seems like forever until the points finally crawl into your DVC account.

I love the immediate gratification of direct. The dopamine hit is hard to beat.

 

[Tatebeck]

Lol I tried to get the best of both worlds. Cheapish overall price per point, great resort spread, and a decent amount of direct points and direct benefits. I think I did alright

 

[tx911]

Lol I tried to get the best of both worlds. Cheapish overall price per point, great resort spread, and a decent amount of direct points and direct benefits. I think I did alright

I think you did it just about perfectly!

 

[UrsulaWantsYourSoul]

My average price per point sucks!
Almost all direct and what is not direct is resale VGC so it's all $$$$$.

Twinning. Haha. All direct except VGC. My average per point is $193. Haha. Also hello from DCA - in line for Mater . It’s fun to think how we’d do DVC differently if we started over.

 

[Jack Kerouac]

My average price per point sucks!
Almost all direct and what is not direct is resale VGC so it's all $$$$$.

But you’re comparing apples to VGC… you’re fine. It’s not like my AKV, BRV and OKW points are sniffing VGC…

 

[macman123]

I have 4,000 points. Average say $160pp (direct and resale).

Thats $640,000

 

[atthebeachclub]

I have 4,000 points. Average say $160pp (direct and resale).

Thats $640,000

So….are you moving into the grand villas permanently? That is honestly incredible!