it turns out that overall people don't see
DVC as a way to fundamentally change their WDW vacation experience. It's mostly just a way to prepay for WDW hotels, and eventually (probably) come out ahead. The kitchens, laundry and other features are a bonus but almost never the point.
It didn't change my WDW vacation experience. Instead, it allowed me to replicate my vacation experience onsite. And that's probably why I never understood the evolution of DVC.
We did not come to DVC from (Disney) hotels. We were
anti-hotel-room from the start. Going back to our first "family" vacation when my oldest was one and my youngest was in-utero,
at a minimum we wanted a suite-style/Residence Inn kind of place. Our most common early-days vacation was renting a house in OBX for a week with extended family. Very quickly, the minimum unit size we'd consider for a week-long vacation was a 2BR.
Roughing it was when we were at a timeshare without in-unit laundry. We did squeeze into a 1BR at OKW for our first DVC exchange, and I actively resented not being able to use the living room while the kids were sleeping/napping. Heaven knows what it would have been like without the large veranda off the bedroom.
We are also not open-to-close park commando people. I was a HUGE TourGuideMike stan---it's marathon, not a sprint; take mid-day breaks; work in mornings or evenings off; all of it. Time back at the resort resting and relaxing was always a big part of our theme park trips, and not just at Disney. We did the same thing during long weekends at Cedar Point, our trips to the Smokies and Dollywood, Unviversal, etc. etc. etc. We've tried to push it, and it never works out for us. Our vacations are just better when we take the parks in moderation.
some people do a lot of cooking and non-park vacations are a thing
Interestingly, this
isn't how we use the villas. We do have breakfast in every morning, but as often as not that's cereal, peanut butter toast, some fruit, whatever, and by 10AM we're eating again. We also usually had one dinner in during the course of a week, but again that was assembly, not cooking. And we never took a full "resort day" where we didn't go to the parks at all. We might have only gone in for a few hours on one or two days during the week, but we'd go.
But, when we come back from a four or five hour rope-drop through lunch morning to recover before going back in for a show, the kids retreated to their room, we'd hang out in the living room reading, knitting, whatever, and I might pull out some chips and salsa or cheese and crackers. And, at some point during the trip, my wife and I would look at each other and one of us would say: "Hotel rooms. Huh. How would that work, anyway?" I mean, I knew people did it, but I had trouble imagining how that would work.
Next year, for Spring Break, I am forcing myself to try a RIV studio for my stay to see how it works out. I may have someone join me for part of the week, but mostly I will fly solo. This is not my first solo trip, and in the past they have always been in 1BRs, because that's the smallest unit size that gets deposited to RCI/Interval. But two years ago it felt like I was rolling around in a 1BR Kidani unit, and the size of it felt, for the first time, uncomfortably large.
