Here is a cut and paste of a post I made about the
DVC last November (took me a while to find it). It has some redundent information about the DIS DVC FAQ and the DVC discussion forum, but I left it in since this thread is also posted over on the Theme Parks Board:
If you're wondering what Disney Vacation Club is, it's Disney World's version of a timeshare, but without all of the negatives of the traditional timeshare. You are NOT tied in to a specific week or season, you can choose where you stay, what kind of accomodations you have, what time of year, and for how many days. It operates on a system of points - you purchase so many points at a specific DVC resort (although you have MANY options as to where you want to stay, it's just that you get 'first dibs' at reservations for your 'home resort'), and every year, at the beginning of your 'use year', you get a full allotment of points. Every day is a different amount of points. Some seasons cost more than others, but one thing is constant: Sunday nights through Thursday nights wind up MUCH cheaper than either Friday night or Saturday night. So if you're willing and able to arrive on Sunday and check out on Friday, you can actually squeeze QUITE a bit of WDW vacation out of a limited number of points. That all probably sounds something like greek, doesn't it?
Well, let me tell you more about our personal experience. We hadn't been to WDW since our Honeymoon in 1995, because we thought we couldn't afford it. This time we decided to splurge, though, and we booked at the Grand Floridian, a place we'd always heard about but never been to. Now I must say, the GF itself was BEAUTIFUL - the grounds, the pool, the buildings, *especially* the main building, were all gorgeous. But we were paying a LOT per night for our room, so when we got there and all it was was, well, a hotel room, I felt really disappointed. I guess I felt that for THAT much money, we should get something more than just a hotel room. While we were there, we saw billboards for DVC and watched the DVC channel on the TV for a while. While it piqued our interest, we didn't want to go on a 'tour' because we had such negative views about timeshares. But finally, on the last day, with a few hours left, we were pretty much ready to leave, and it was starting to rain. So we went up to a DVC booth at MGM, they sent a van (very quickly) to come pick us up there, drove us over to the Boardwalk, where the DVC offices are located, and agreed to drive us anywhere we wanted at WDW when we were done. The sales presentation, I am delighted to report, had ZERO pressure - it was strictly informative, and the program really sells itself. The part that really does the selling is when they take you on a tour of some of the DVC villas. Here's the lowdown: you can reserve studios (pretty much like a hotel room with microwave and fridge, costs the least amount of points), a 1 bedroom or 2 bedroom villa, or a Grand Villa (3 bedroom). For the 1 bedroom and up, here's what you get besides the standard bedroom that you would get in any hotel room:
First of all, SPACE. The 1 bedroom villas and up are HUGE compared to hotel rooms.
A full kitchen, fully stocked with pots, pans and whatnot. Microwave, dishwasher, full sized refrigerator, full sized stove. Now that doesn't mean that you have to USE them (ha ha), but having the ability to even just have breakfasts in the room or to heat up leftovers from a Disney restaurant are huge plusses.
Full sized washer and dryer. Again, don't HAVE to use them, but this DOES allow you to pack less and wash things partway through your vacation.
HUGE Jacuzzi tub
The bedroom itself is through a door, then there is a big common living area with it's own TV, VCR, fold out couch. So you can put your child down to sleep in the bedroom, and still stay up and talk, hang out on the balcony or watch TV without disturbing him/her.
In short, the DVC villas BLOW AWAY pretty much any hotel accomodations that I've ever seen - they *certainly* blew away our accomodations at the Grand Floridian! I wish we had taken the tour right away, then we could have taken all that money that we blew on the GF and put it towards our DVC membership, and stayed in a huge villa instead!
Here are some links that might be of interest to you. On this web page, there is a Disney Vacation Club discussion board. You might try going over there and either asking some questions, or just listen to what people have to say, but first check out their Frequently asked Questions page:
http://www.wdwinfo.com/dvc/faq.shtml
and here is the board itself:
http://www.disboards.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=28
DVC is a *truly* amazing thing, that will allow us to take our 16 month old to WDW pretty much every year, which just gets me ALL excited!!! (WDW was my absolute favorite thing growing up, but we only went about once every 4-5 years)
IF you go about once every 1-2 years and like really nice accomodations on site, you should *definitely* check it out! You can ask tons of questions over on the DVC board, or you can attend a DVC 'tour' when you're at WDW. (Remember, this was the absolute most important thing to us about the presentation: there was NO sales pressure WHATSOEVER) We took all of the paperwork, knowing we wanted to join, and went over all of the papers over the following 3 or 4 days, and then turned them back in and joined then. There was absolutely NO pressure put on us either to join at all or to join immediately.
Please let me know if I can answer any questions for you, but the best place to come is to check out the DVC board here at DIS.
Take Care!
