My biggest mistake...

[pinnocchiosdad]

My regret is UY. In spite of what many say, USE YEAR matters. We have 3 contracts all August UY. Life happens and we have had to cancel trips. Most of our trips are in the summer when the kids are off from school. We would like to travel in June or July but we don't want to risk missing our banking window in case of a cancellation. There fore we only travel to WDW in the summer during August.

 

[johnsonville5]

One thing we have learned in over 10 years of ownership is that everything changes and you cannot possibly plan for all the change. I do believe that the adantages and flexibility of DVC lets us adapt to most of the changes and we have no regrets for buying. As our kids have become adults with their own kids we still love DVC. What we said we should have done 5 years ago no longer applies. Always fun to talk about what if, but life is not that way. Enjoy DVC and you family.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

That sounds perfect!!!. I think that is exactly what we will do. But it will have to wait 2 years because DH wants to pay it in cash since both our contracts are paid. He doesn't want any loans.

 

[NewDCLGuy]

While I totally agree with your point, I come to the complete opposite conclusion.

It's a 30-50 year contract. Things change. Things you can never anticipate. Before buying, I thought long and hard about how we would use DVC. And got it totally wrong. My parents ended up retiring to Florida (something they swore they would never do) and now join us anytime they can. More points please. We have friends who though they were in the winding down stage of their Disney life... then they 17-year old daughter let them know they were going to be full-time grandparents / part-time parents about 10 years sooner than they anticipated. I know others who loved spending all their vacations at Disney, then realized they like other places too.

My advice isn't to try and plan for the future... but to plan for as much flexibility as possible.

 

[hoffmann2828]

We bought 200 points back in 2002, for just my DH & I (then 28 and 26). After MANY failed attempts at getting PG, we finally had one DD. We're done (not really by choice). We added another 100 points on just a few months ago.

We had always figured we would give DD the 200 points when she gets married, so she can hopefully continue the tradition. Then, we figured we could stretch the other 100 point contract (which is going to last us longer anyway - until we are in our 80's) for a few trips here and there.

That being said...that is only a plan. If I got PG tomorrow, I wouldn't hesitate to buy additional points if we needed them.

 

[Goofy's apprentice]

Very interesting discussion...

We bought 6 years ago...kids were 12 and 9. Each year we have taken a spring vacation with the kids (and sometimes extra family and friends) and a fall vacation just the two of us. Some were on the spring break and some were taking the kids out of school. Our schools are supportive of it, if the kids do the work to catch up. We never regretted it and they both handled the school implications well (one is a "scholar" the other....not so much)

The key for us, strangely enough, is that the parks are not the main attraction...the family time in a place where everyone can find something to do is the attraction. We actually have had quite a few non-park trips and loved them. At this point the teens love SSR the best and keep busy without the parks on many days.

At this point, I can't see us having too many points (we have 530) because I see many different options available (just a girlfriends trip, the oldest takes his friends, taking family (it worked well twice already), taking only adult friends, banking and taking a big blowout vacation in a GV...

through various add-ons we now have the points split in smaller contracts so that they can be evenly passed down or sold in smaller increments. This will hopefully give us the flexibility to work around life changes, which I hope include more vacations at DVC rather than less.