Hi,
We only recently bought
DVC. My wife Melissa and I have been going to wdw together since 1998. We typically do two kinds of trips each year. One kind is a long weekend, Friday-Monday. We usually try to do this over MLK weekend in January and for a long weekend in the fall, Sept. or Oct. The other type of trip we have been doing in May, but we may go to spring break time in March. For that, we go a week, which is really 9 days with the two book end weekends.
We wouldn't ever change resorts on the long weekends, but (maybe because we do the long weekends) we couldn't imagine staying at one resort for 9 days! We'd get bored of it and itchy to go somewhere else. We typically split that stay to stay 1/2 the time at a mk resort and go to MK and AK while we are there, and 1/2 at an epcot resort and go to MGM and epcot while there. When we are at the MK resort, we can eat at the restaurants we like over there very easily; while we are at the epcot resort, we can eat at the resaurants over there.
Moving is very easy, just call bell services to pick up your bag and ask them to send it on to resort B, and go do whatever you wanted to do that day. That night, instead of going back to resort A go back to resort B and check in and pick up your bags. No big deal. To me, it is more of a hassle to be staying at wilderness lodge and decide that you want to go have dinner at flying fish, then do the transportation shuffle to get over there and back. I'd rather just do the one simple move and then enjoy the convenience of that new location. We don't have to worry about parking a rental car, and we don't have to ride busses every where we go. But then, too, we aren't heavy packers and only just take a carry on bag a piece.
Our weekend trip this past Sept was to AKL, and that seems like a perfect sort of place to split a stay with. Do the weekend at AKL and eat at boma and jiko and go see the Animal Kingdom. I wouldn't want to spend more than a couple of nights there, because everything is a bus ride from there. But wow those couple of nights are well worth it! Then move to dvc during the week. We haven't done it yet, but someday we'll probably try one of the universal resorts on the weekend. We've learned that in off season months it is better to spend your weekend days at the MK resort and your week night days at the epcot resort, because the MK hours are longer on the weekends whereas epcot and mgm are longer on the weeknights - that way, we can stay for illuminiations or go to mgm and walk right home instead of standing on a bus for the ride back.
For us, by the time you fly down there, if you are going to be there 9 days you might as well get a double trip out of it while you are there. Plus we don't have enough time to be able to go for 2 weeks at a time or something, so we are used to the "long weekend" model - so a week trip becomes two long weekend trips with one flight! I think I'd go nuts being at the same place for 9 days!
That's not to say we'd never use our points for a weekend, we have a long weekend booked on points right now. But it is great to have the flexibility to say "OK, in Jan. we can take a long weekend at bwv, in May we can go for a week, staying on cash at AKL for the weekend and then the weekdays at a studio at bcv, and hey, since we stayed the weekend at AKL we have enough points for a studio for a weekend at WLV in september!" On another year it might be a different plan. That is why the point flexibility, rather than buying into a given week, is such a great thing to me.
Isn't it funny how people look at things differentlly - the flexibility really is great, it works for people in so many different ways.
DR
Just added 100 BCV points to our 170 VWl points and are actually looking forward to a trip that is split between the two resorts sometime next year. We have never stayed at BCV, YCBC, Swan/Dolp or BW, so a stay at BCV with the boardwalk nearby and EPCOT at our backdoor sounds irresistable. But MK is still the park we want to visit first every trip, more MAGIC, so the proximity of the VWL to MK is a plus.
