Poll~Change In 2010 Points

[zulaya]

I'm probably in a mix here.

We have a good number of points. 430 to be exact.

Our usual routine has been early December for a week and then another trip some other time, usually around 4 days, give or take. In 2008, this was in April over our school spring break. In 2009, we're doing a long weekend in June for my DH's birthday and Star Wars Weekends.

The early December trip is 2 points more for the week.

If I did the June trip in 2010, I've save 10 points if I was at BCV and 8 points if I was at AKV. I didn't look at April because our Spring Break floats around each year and could be anywhere from early March to mid April. It doesn't always coincide with Easter.

I think we'll be okay for the most part. We have a lot of points and never planned on a certain week all the time. We love the space of 2BR for the 4 of us, but will downsize to 1BR if needed to conserve. I don't like being in a constant state of borrowing.

But my travel habits are in a state of flux with 2 kids in junior high in 2010. We'll have to stick to more school breaks than I like. I dislike summer and only go in early June because of DH's birthday. So I'm probably going to be stuck with our October fall break, Thanksgiving, Xmas week or Spring Break.

So really, I don't know what's going to happen in my personal situation.

 

[photobob]

Well it will affect us negatively. We have a smaller contract and have always planned on Sun-Thurs stays to be able to maximize the number of trips we can take. I just checked our previous vacations and our June 2009 trip and the point differences are 20, 25 and 25 points more respectively. I have 180 points and they sure won't take us as far as they used too.

I honestly feel misled, when we bought our contract our guide said that the great thing about DVC is your point values never change. She said occasionally a SMALL adjustment while be made, but if one goes up a little something else goes down a little. Folks, this is no small adjustment, this is wholesale change.
While they may not have changed in legal terms, the value has changed for me in practical terms. Since we were never intending to stay on Fri or Sat nights my points do not have the value they did before.

 

[disfountainofyouth]

I will be using studio on Saturday and then switch to 1br to counter point
increase that I'm experiencing.

 

[Laurabearz]

The change really effects our trips to Hilton Head where our typical point useage went from 462 points to 510 points. We will not longer be able to bring our friends every year. We will still go, but we are sad we can't afford to treat friends each summer.

We are also looking into other options for Hilton Head, but it seems that is opening up a whole can of worms we may not be ready for lol

Our other DVC vacations vary and are more flexible than our Hilton Head Trips and I haven't done the math, but since we normally stay 6 nights Sunday check out Saturday and head to Universal, I think we will have to pay a few more points, but thankfully we have a cushion to work with.

With that said... Releasing the new charts with virtually zero notice really hits me the wrong way.

And so help me if they don't start offering Chocolate Covered Bugs soon I will really be unhappy!

 

[bangzoom6877]

I voted "other". We were planning to give some points to some relatives next year so they could go with us, but they are still very indecisive about whether or not they will join us for sure. I know they will understand when I explain the change to them. Then, we will still be able to vacation at WDW as planned, 10 nights every other year in a 1BR at our home resort, BWV (standard view). I played around with the numbers and with banking and borrowing through the years, we will not have to lower our trip from 10 nights to 9 nights until the year 2032, 10 years before the contract expires! Plus my sons will be 25 and 27 in the year 2032 and we want to stay the 10 nights as they grow up and until they are out of high school! So a little playing with the numbers and it will still work out to the same vacation plans as originally intended. So no problems here!

 

[HookdonWDW]

Other.

We own enough points that it really won't affect our current travel needs, but this last round of changes have made us decide to hold off on the BLT add-on we were planning...

 

[keishashadow]

i voted other, as in adding another day onsite @ Universal , a short cruise, may even just start visiting MCO less & cruising for a week instead of a 2nd trip every year

i typically have nearly a year's worth of points banked @ any time, guess i'll just wind up dipping more into my reserve...when the points run out, so be it

 

[mom2rb]

I voted other. I will stay the same amount of days, but I will adjust the days that I am there. I normally go for 8-10 days and I always make sure that there is no more than two week-end nights. Now I will use the few extra points it takes to have more week-end nights during the trip. It will save DH vacation days at work. I will spend a few more points than before but it will be worth it to have the extra vacation days for DH.

 

[ashbradnmom]

I voted no difference. When if first thought about buying i was considering 160 from disney. Instead i got 200 on resale for cheaper than the 160 would have cost. But i do plan on adding on at some point just so i can leave my kids the same amount of points someday.

 

[Inkmahm]

I already added an extra night to our October 2010 planned long weekend trip to BWV for the food and wine festival after figuring out that we will save about 12 points per year with these new charts.

Of course, if we decide to do a large family gathering again in the future, I'll probably not spend the "extra" points on another night but save them instead. And also downgrade from 1 bedrooms to studios for a few trips so that I have extra points for a two bedroom.

I really don't understand the reaction of "the sky is falling" by so many people who only had an increase of a few points to their standard trips. Borrowing and banking are normal for me so I can't relate to people who HAVE to spend the same number of points for the same nights each year.

 

[mikeandkarla]

We will use our points to the fullest. It seems the way we vacation, it will shave a couple nights of our trips. We will not add on. One thought is to do Disney every other year and somewhere else in between. This move by DVC will cost Disney approx. $3,000-$5,000 of my vacation money every other year. I'm sure most people will just add on to make up their point difference, I can not justify that. I was sold on DVC as pre paid, inflation fighting vacations. So much for that.
I will no longer praise DVC as a way to save for future vacations.

 

[BroganMc]

I really don't understand the reaction of "the sky is falling" by so many people who only had an increase of a few points to their standard trips. Borrowing and banking are normal for me so I can't relate to people who HAVE to spend the same number of points for the same nights each year.

Might I suggest your point of view is not shared because you're one of the few who will be saving points with this change? Those of us losing out have plenty to scream Chicken Little about.

Now I personally have enough points and flexibility with my schedule to make the change work as best for me as possible. I can adjust without borrowing but just banking. Still I can also see where my total allottment is no longer as valuable as it once was. On principle that ticks me off.

When Marriott raised the amount of points needed to stay at hotels I saw that as just a minor bump in the perks. It was akin to DVC dropping II for RCI. No big deal since it did not directly relate to how many timeshare days/weeks I was entitled to per year. But this has changed the number of days a DVC member can stay with their contracts. In many cases it has altered a 7 day stay to a 6 day stay. That's not an incidental change to perks. It's a wholesale reduction of contract value.

 

[jennypenny]

I voted no difference. Since we stay for 14 nights, the total number of points won't change for us.

We stay full weeks and some full-week totals HAVE changed. I guess it depends when you stay.

 

[bangzoom6877]

I voted "other". We were planning to give some points to some relatives next year so they could go with us, but they are still very indecisive about whether or not they will join us for sure. I know they will understand when I explain the change to them. Then, we will still be able to vacation at WDW as planned, 10 nights every other year in a 1BR at our home resort, BWV (standard view). I played around with the numbers and with banking and borrowing through the years, we will not have to lower our trip from 10 nights to 9 nights until the year 2032, 10 years before the contract expires! Plus my sons will be 25 and 27 in the year 2032 and we want to stay the 10 nights as they grow up and until they are out of high school! So a little playing with the numbers and it will still work out to the same vacation plans as originally intended. So no problems here!

I would like to add to what I wrote above. When I first noticed the difference in points for our typical stay (14 more points for our 10-night 1BR stay), I was taken back and not in a good way. I was a bit disappointed at not being able to bring my relatives on some of our points and still go on our planned 10-night trips (but we bought our points with the intention of 10-night trips so we will still do what we need to in order to make those possible...and with banking and borrowing we can do it until the year 2032!). I want to point out that a HUGE reason why this ends up being no problem for us in the longrun is that, as I stated above, we will not be affected by this change until the year 2032. We are teachers so we always travel in the summer (July to be exact). But DH and I will both be retiring in the year 2032 when we will be 55 years old. So at that point we will be able to travel at different times of year besides school breaks, and that is exactly what we intended to do in the first place...go when the parks are less crowded for once! To a teacher it is a novelty to be able to travel while school is in session. That is what most teachers I know who have retired love to do!

So again, ultimately this is not going to affect our current DVC vacation plans, and most importantly, we bought DVC so that our children could grow up making memories with lots of Disney trips and we will still be able to do that! Do I still think it was poor thinking on DVC's part? Yes and no. Yes because many people are ticked off. No because I am sure that many people will now add on (yes, even in this economy) and that means more $$ for DVC.

 

[E-P-C-O-T]

Well, I'm not happy and highly dissapointed. We were thinking of doing the 100 point BLT add on, it is not even worth it anymore. For the first time I was getting us annual passes in May to use in our next 3 trips. Well, guess what? We don't have enough points for our 3rd trip, so bye-bye annual passes, hello 6 day one park tickets. We will instead go on a cruise next year and give our money to Royal Caribbean. It certainly changes our plans, but, we will not give DVC more of our money by adding on or borrowing. We plan on selling one of our contracts now and just keeping 160 points, so that we can still stay a few nights each year. I'm not going to "suffer" thru this, I'll just vacation elsewhere and spend our "wealth" somewhere else

 

[GANUT4WDW]

Because we live "closer" to the mouse, we have been maximizing our points since day 1 of our purchase and staying as much as possible - usually 2x per year at WDW and for the past 2 years a few days at HHI. With the new changes, we will either have to change our accomodations or drop a trip. In my calculations, that equals less $$$ for disney as I'm sure that our family will not be the only ones in this situation.

 

[WDWorld2003]

Not sure what we'll do - we sold a small contract last year and now wish we had a few of those points! I'm disappointed as no matter what season we look at we would have to use more points for the accommodations we would like

We have considered other timeshares down the line and Marriott has been mentioned more than once. That's where we would look rather than add on.

 

[supersuperwendy]

I voted to transfer in..if applicable.

I'm so new to DVC. Very new. We debated for a long time before signing since we are a family of five. We knew we would require larger accomodations for the next several years. My preference is a two bedroom sun-thur (in any season) but my points don't quite reach that now. My hope is that I can transfer points hopefully to make it work. When we signed recently we were given developer points that we are using for 2009. I'm happy I wound up banking my Dec 2008 AKV points - 160. So that gives me 320 to use in most of 2010. I'm going to try to bank as many of the dec. 2009 points as possible. I sat down with pen and paper last night to try to for see our dvc trips of the future and hopefully it will all work out.

 

[danielle782001]

We will feel no impact

 

[kerickson]

Coming from the west coast we stay at least a week including weekends (I bought DVC for more enjoyable vacations, not to move rooms during a trip to save money). We usually vacation off seasons, so this change will be a benefit to us.
It will change my plans for VGC, however. I was planning on waiting a year or two before I book an early Dec trip, but now I won't put it off in case they raise the points in the future - similar to what happened with VWL...
I am a bit confused that they changed the points at WDW to bring the weekend points down a bit, yet the weekend points for VGC are extremely high! They must think think DL locals will try to stay more weekends than FL locals?