You can stay at Poly but it is way more points then if you stayed at a DVC resort. It tends to be less cost effective if you stay at a non-DVC resort. I noticed you are going to the Poly in December. If you compare the Poly and a DVC resort you can see where Poly requires a lot more points. For 1 week in the beginning of December at the Poly with a garden view it will cost you 319 points. However, for 310 points you can get the first 3 weeks of December at AKV in a studio with a savvana view. They are your points to use as you wish but you get less when you trade out.
If you really locked into staying at Poly, DVC is probably not for you. However, you may want to look at some of the DVC resorts. AKV has some similarities.
Note that you can't use your DVC points to stay at a value resort, or the "sister" resorts, i.e. you can't use your points on the "hotel" side of AKV, BWV, BCV and VWL.
Yeah, we just found out about the $95 fee when we couldn't get into the BWV for July 4th and wanted to try the Contemporary instead. Needless to say we told them to just forget that idea.
First it takes more points, which we were willing to use, then they want to charge $95 on top of that, which we were not willing to do. You are much better off just paying cash instead at that point. The cast member said it was to make things more equal for all "exchanges". I am not very happy about this new policy but what can you do........
We will be staying home and enjoying all of the neighbors illegal fireworks instead.