Psychological traps of DVC

[VGCgroupie]

Just using the website to view availability for fun or the feeling of swapping out resorts right at 8:00:01 am est at 7 months is worth the price of admission alone. The gamification of DVC might be the biggest psychological trap. It's like swapping cash for casino chips...they make you feel like it's not real money anymore....same with points.

And I love it...

Agree, agree, same

 

[cedricandsophie]

We bought in 1998. We now own at vero, aulani, old key west. Boardwalk and bay lake. Our old key west points we bought on secondary market. We have slightly under 1000 points. No regrets.
We usually go to aulani once a year for a minimum of 10 days and then to Disney world every March for about 2 weeks. My husband goes to vero in Feb and March for spring baseball. We rarely go to the parks. We just enjoy the resorts. We get a minimum of one bedroom and officially two bedrooms. We have an adult disabled daughter and always bring her best friend. For us Disney is a safe environment. They can go off on their own and we know they are safe and having fun.

Our fees run about $11000 a year which is a lot. But we figure we get way more than that value out of the rooms. 10 days in aulani in a one bedroom ocean view alone would cost between 1000 and 1500 a day if we were paying cash.

We have always been happy with our purchases. We were able to pay cash for all the points and I know we are very blessed to be able to do that. It was in no way a financial decision but solely based on the fact we love the Disney environment for our daughter, we can afford it and we love hanging at the resorts ourselves. We might go to parks every 2 or 3 times we are there.

 

[tidefan]

This changes over time, I think. We are now in our 17th year of ownership. We bought when our DD was 4 years old, but now she's out of college. Don't get me wrong, we still go and enjoy ourselves, but as you get older, sometimes tastes and priorities change.

We own at SSR, BLT, PVB, and VGF. I haven't used the 11 month priority at VGF or PVB since 2019. In fact, we've only stayed at PVB once and VGF twice (each for only a couple nights) in the past 6 years. What we have done is more Aulani stays. Also, at WDW, our last 4 stays have been at CFW, which allows us to bring our dog and do cool things like loop on the Golf Cart and do scavenger hunts at night, so that's now become our new favorite.

Quite honestly, I've thought about selling our VGF contract (the main issue there being that getting Deluxe Studios has become so much harder since they added BPK), but then I think about what I paid for the points back in 2013 ($145/pt) and I'm like, well, maybe I should just hold on to them. That said, we are banking hundreds of points each year, which probably isn't what you really want to do, and paying dues that I really don't need to pay.

All of that said, I keep thinking, "well, one year I'll take all of these points and do a blow-out and get a GV at Aulani", so maybe I'll consider selling after that