I have read all the comments on this thread. Every situation has plusses and minuses. In this situation, if you have the money to spend on RIV and don't care about possibly not being able to resell it later then absolutely do it and don't look back. We recently bought our first
DVC contract at BCV. We bought resale after RIV was available. To us, the ability to stay at Riviera (and soon Reflections) didn't outweigh the restrictions DVC put on reselling Riviera.
Like most people on here, we have kids (two teenagers) and we don't have any plans to sell our contract down the road. We plan on having this contract until it expires. However, I am also smart enough to know that plans change. There is no telling what the future holds. Some things come up that are unexpected, unfortunately. We had the money to buy into Riviera direct, but knowing that it could be near impossible to sell later (if we or our children had to) made it very unappealing in our eyes.
And speaking of how uncertain the future is, we made our DVC decision based on current Disney circumstances. I have read many comments on this thread predicting how many future DVC resorts will open in the future. That is all speculation. What we know for absolute certain is that there is currently only plans for Reflections, and that reselling Riviera (or Reflections) later will be difficult to do because of the restrictions to prospective buyers. Speculating on what DVC may or may not do in the future is folly. And, like many others on this site, we don't know for certain what our kids will want to do. Gifting a timeshare to others can actually be a burden for them, given the costs associated with it. That's why BCV (as well as the other "original" resorts), to us, had the perfect amount of time left of those contracts. We will have many, many years of great memories with this contract and it will carry our kids well into adulthood. Then if they want to continue DVC via a new contract they can choose to do so. And if they don't want the burden of a timeshare, they won't be obligated to carry on the contract we bought.
We aren't Riviera "poo-pooers" by any means. Like I said to start this comment: if you have the money and don't care about possibly taking a big loss down the road then who cares? If there were guarantees of, say, 6-7 new DisneyWorld DVC resorts to open in the next 10 years then we probably would have bought into Riviera. But as we all saw in 2020, there are no guarantees. I, personally, only go by what I know when weighing decisions. No matter what decision anyone makes regarding their home resort (or buying direct vs resale), there will be years of happiness experienced either way. Good luck!!
