Question about insurance for DVC points

[becca-becca]

I was getting ready to buy my points for our trip to WDW in December when I read yesterday that the insurance is backed by AIG. Does anyone think it is a bad idea to buy this insurance? We are going in December, traveling on developer points and 2007 points. We have a December UY.

Do you all buy travel insurance for your points? Will you do that after this past week since AIG is the backer?

 

[DebbieB]

The government is making sure nothing happens to AIG.

 

[Anal Annie]

The only time we have insured our points was for a cruise we did on points this past summer... (The cruises are just so expensive and we felt like there was more that could go wrong with the weather etc...) We normally don't insure our land based vacations unless we have a significant cost involved with airfare or unless we're traveling when weather delays could be a factor etc.

The gov't is supposed to be taking care of AIG...so you're probably OK if you want to insure your points...

 

[jaurban]

The insurance company businesses are running as per ususal.

 

[hellerjw]

I believe the DVC trip insurance only covers like $5/pt or something like that. Its been a while since I saw the flyer but this number sticks in my head. It never appealed to me since you would still take a pretty significant loss if those points were unusable.

 

[CarolAnnC]

We do not purchase the insurance to cover the points. As mentioned above, reimbursement would only be $5 per point anyway.

Now, we do purchase travel insurance through AAA to cover medical, trip interruption, luggage and air fare. I am always worried about needing a Medivac off the Disney Cruise ships, eek! Very reasonable and worth it IMHO.

 

[Anal Annie]

I believe the DVC trip insurance only covers like $5/pt or something like that. Its been a while since I saw the flyer but this number sticks in my head. It never appealed to me since you would still take a pretty significant loss if those points were unusable.

When we insure a vacation like a cruise (which costs us like almost 2 years worth of points) and which has a cash value of well over $3,000 then I feel spending $150 or whatever to cover those points (esp. in hurricane season) is important. I am not looking at it like you are with the $5 / point thing - I am looking at the cash value of the trip. I consider that we scrounged & scrimpted & saved our points for 2 years worth of vactions and we obviously did not have the $3K+ in cash lying around unused, so for us, insuring an expensive trip such as a cruise booked on points is a smart move - and one that would also cover the baggage delays, medical evacutations trip cancellations etc. as mentioned by CarolAnnC. We typically do not insure our summer WDW vacations as those typically are not such a high dollar trip since we are usually spreading that point value out over several trips.... The last time we went down in January I didn't insure our trip but I worried about it the whole time (for weather / travel delays). Next time we travel in the winter I will probably insure that too. One bad storm up north somewhere can muck up the whole flight system. My next door neighbor had a big extended family trip last winter to the Bahamas over the holidays and her sister and her family could NOT get out of Chicago due to the weather. Flight after flight, day after day was cancelled. They never did get to go - but they had insurance to cover all that.

I think you really have to weigh the circumstances for your particular trip and evaluate if you can afford to eat the loss if something goes wrong.