New Point Comparison tool

[Tagrel]

I've found myself comparing different resorts/rooms/point costs whenever planning a DVC vacation, and thought this was a GREAT use for a computer...

Finally got going, and created an online utility to do just that. You can pick the desired DVC resorts along with entering your check-in and check-out date. It will then list all your chosen resorts, and show total point cost for each resort (for each room type).

Had to try it out for the year, and here are the results:

OVER 36000 points to stay in a BWV GV for a year!

Anyway, it would be great if people could test it out and let me know what you think.

You can find it here: DVC Points Comparison Utility

Thanks!

 

[gchiker]

I tried the BCV studio, check in on 10/29/04, check out on 11/2/04. Your program says 82 points. DVC and the DVC Forum points calculator say 70!

 

[Nlihte]

I put in points for my upcoming trip. It worked perfectly.
Thanks for the hard work. Dennis

 

[Tagrel]

Thanks for the quick replies. I checked out gchiker's dates, and there is a weird problem with it calculating the number of days incorrectly for those dates...

I'll fix it as soon as I figure out why THAT date range is special...

Thanks gchiker - bugs like this are exactly what I want to track down!

And thanks Nlihte, glad it worked for you.

 

[Tagrel]

OK - found it! THAT was a weird one. The way I was computing the dates included a check for daylight savings time. Since the dates 10/29 - 11/02 included DST we subtracted an hour, which pushed my calculations from 4 days to 5 days.

Anyway - its fixed now! Thanks again! I NEVER would have found that one!

 

[disneyeveryyear]

Plugged in some hopeful dates and was thrilled with how it worked.

Thanks for all of the hard work!

Now I just need to convince DH to buy!

 

[JimC]

Great utility. Thanks for the great effort!

 

[Pluto4Pres]

Tagrel:

Great job! That one is bookmarked for future use. Thanks!!

 

[bwvBound]

Very nice utiility! Thank you for sharing your talents and efforts

Small request ... others may disagree: Might you consider removing the heavy blue line between BWV Pref and BWV Std? I'd rather not see a separator between those rows ...?

Again, thank you!

 

[TW1]

Awesome. Thanks for the hard work, making my life easier, and planning our next trip home more fun!

DW thinks we need more points now!

 

[PamOKW]

At first I thought, poor Tagrel has way too much time on his hands.

But, this is actually very neat and potentially very useful! I think the full year calculations threw me off as being a bit crazy. But, this is actually quite terrific! Thanks for taking the time to put it together and for sharing it with us. All kinds of very neat things (like your trip reports) come out of the Tagrel website.

 

[Tagrel]

Thanks everyone. I somehow overwrote some of my code last night, so the comparison table is now looking a bit better.

The line between BWV-P and BWV-S will most likely stay there as each is treated as a different 'resort' by the code. No more blue line though!

PamOKW - Yup, the year long thing was just a side affect of testing. But its nice to have ALL your DVC options show up in one table for your desired dates. It lets you easily see how many points are needed for all your options. I can see this being useful to both members and renters so they can figure out whats best for them.

AND after playing with this, I've learned that the OKW GV is a great deal on points! No wonder they fill up first thing!

 

[pumpkinboy]

Nifty!

I have it bookmarked now. Thx very much.

 

[LIFERBABE]

You have just made my life much easier!

With multiple contracts, I can plan my points at a glance.

Here is my wishlist for the program: (having no clue how to do this myself)

A calendar feature to click on desired dates

And maybe a reverse calculator feature where you enter in the number of points you have, and it tells you where you can stay, unit size, what season, and how many nights. This may be a new program altogether, Im just throwing it out there.

I have pretty much written the info you compiled in my Vacation Planner and would have to flip back and forth to do the comparison plus it's a mess to look at. Thanks Again!

 

[chainkid]

DVC POINTS CALCULATOR is not accurate for the time frame I'm going for. Nov 26th thru Dec 5th. It fails to capture the change due to the thanksgiving period. You need to look at three different times to get the correct number of points. I know I'm right and not this calculator because Member services had the same total as I did which was alot less than DVC had.

 

[Tagrel]

Originally posted by chainkid
DVC POINTS CALCULATOR is not accurate for the time frame I'm going for. Nov 26th thru Dec 5th. It fails to capture the change due to the thanksgiving period. You need to look at three different times to get the correct number of points. I know I'm right and not this calculator because Member services had the same total as I did which was alot less than DVC had.

Hmmmm.... Could you tell me which resort had the problem? I just ran these dates:

Check in: 11/26/2004
Check out: 12/5/2004 (not staying this night, right?)

And the totals checked out for BCV... so I know that the changes per season are working correctly. It could be a data problem for your resort, so knowing which resort/room type had the problem can help me track it down.

thanks!

 

[TwirlerGirl]

Hi Tag!

Another great job! Hail to the cheif!

Sandy

 

[psimon]

As a techie, I have to ask.... is this built with Cold Fusion? If not, what's the engine?

Just curious... Great job!

thanks!

Paul

 

[Tagrel]

Originally posted by psimon
As a techie, I have to ask.... is this built with Cold Fusion? If not, what's the engine?

Just curious... Great job!

thanks!

Paul

Thanks!

Using PHP with a MySQL database. Really just getting started with PHP, and I find it pretty powerful and fairly easy to use.

 

[jmminarik]

Thanks for coding and posting this...now I have to go back and re-do all of my planning because I learned the points calculator at the top of this page is incorrect...at least as far as an OKW 2BR 11/27 - 12/05 of this year. I think the bug (on this site) is they have November 27 listed as Magic and not Choice Season (it's in the charts right). Anyone know who to nudge about this?

-Joe