You are correct - we looked into
DVC. We prefer cruising to land based vacations generally. Don't get me wrong, we enjoy Disney greatly. But we so much enjoy sailing other cruise lines and non Disney locations, that if we spent our vacation budget on DVC, then we'd miss out on being able to cruise other lines or visit independently. I know you can use DVC points on other locations, but it's at a premium that we found would be cheaper by working magic on good deals! So, in the end, we did not view it as all that great a value for us and choose to work the system and put our money that would go to points and maintenance fees into savings and then withdraw when we find the right deals!