Need advice

[Jabba]

I normally go to Disney every year and rent a villa, this time I stayed at AKL and really enjoyed it. I am thinking of purchasing points from DVC. Is it more economical to purchase DVC points than book a holiday the normal way. The average holiday for cost £2,000 excluding spending money. How long will it take to recoup my outlay.

Thanks

 

[hunty]

Hi Jabba
Not fully upto date with point values but this is my experience.
Similar to you I was always paying £2000 per year on accomodation and it was not really that nice. Stayed on Disney for a few £'s more and the difference was obvious... so In 1997 we bought 270 points at Old Key west - cost about $15,000 plus about £600 per year annual dues so if it was a cost vs value graph its probably into the 6th year before you make savings.
However we get on average for our points 10 days a year in Old Key west in a two bedroom luxury appartment. If I paid for this each year I think the rack rate is about $500 per Night!! plus taxes .
Therefore I probably would go back to staying in cheaper accomodation each year, and miss out the fun.
Benefit One therefore is you stay in great accomodation (really great) all the time when going to Disney
Benefit Two The value of My points as seen on resale sites is still at least $15,000 so I have the original asset.
Benefit Three I don't have any problems booking holiday just phone disney and its sorted very easily.

Only my opinion but its one of the smarter moves I've made for holidays

 

[MickeyMcMouse]

Hi Jabba

The minimum points you can purchase thro Disney is 150 @ $80 per point, altho I think this is shortly to go up to $84 . So around £ 8000 ish. ( you can purchase points thro a reseller in the US at around $60ish a point )

This is only your accomodation - not flights so around 5 or 6 years and you should kinda break even . The good news is your points last for 40 years.

There are also annual dues to pay, I think around $4 to $4.5 a point which you need to add into your budget.

If you like 5 star accomodation with a bit more freedom than staying at a hotel and are likely to visit Disney at least every 2 years DVC is great. ( you can also trade points for hotels all around the world ).

I am sure the "senior" members can explain a bit more

IMHO DVC was the best money we ever spent at Disney

David

 

[MickeyMcMouse]

Only my opinion but its one of the smarter moves I've made for holidays

Great minds think alike

David

 

[Hilary]

How long will it take to recoup my outlay.

I don't think I can answer that in simple terms of x years, only tell you how we weighed up the financial outlay.

We bought 150 points which would allow us to spend at least a week in a studio every October - this suited our current holidaying trend of taking a week in WDW and a week elsewhere in Florida. We bought the minimum number of points with a view to being able to add on if we felt we needed more points, and have since bought another 25 points.

Our total of 175 points at VWL cost us approx. (depends on exchange rates and the dues increasing in future) £400 per year, against a moderate on-site Disney hotel room for the same time which would cost around £100 per night at the moment. The costs of Disney hotels are inevitably going to increase dramatically over the next 40 years, whereas our dues will surely increase but hopefully nowhere near as much!

That little equation, however, neatly ignores the inital outlay - a significant sum in anyone's book! We were fortunate in that we had a 'windfall' which enabled us to purchase without getting a finance deal, so we viewed it as money which would otherwise have been invested. We didn't buy DVC with a view to reselling, but it was at the back of our minds as a possibility somewhere in the next 40 years if we decided to try to recoup some of our outlay. I am not saying that DVC purchase is an alternative to investing that money!

So, for us, owning at DVC means we have 40 years worth of points to spend as we wish (within certain limitations, obviously)on holidays to suit our changing needs, at an annual cost of less than we would have paid for Disney accommodation. On top of that we still need to pay for air fare, car hire, park tickets, etc., so quite how that all equates with what we would spend without DVC I'm actually not sure!

I hope that goes some way to answering your question!