Questions about buying DVC

[Jenny Noel]

My husband and I saw the Boardwalk about a year and a half ago and now are thinking about buying a resale. I had a few questions:
1) My husband is active duty military and we have difficulty planning very far in advance. How much of a problem is this for us in planning our DVC vacations?
2) We are considering either OKW, Boardwalk or HH. Which place would you recommend for a family with 2 boys (currently age 6 and 8)? I think we would like to alternate between Disney and beach vacations.
3) What is the minimum points you would recommend? We were thinking at least 220 points.
Thanks for your help!
Jenny
inkbounc

 

[Firefighter Mickey]

Generally, the further ahead you can plan, the better off you are. But I have seen in the past people post experiences of getting reservations with very short lead time.

We love OKW, but a lot of people with teens and pre-teens seem to really enjoy BWV because of all the nighttime excitement/activities. OKW is a condo style setup, and a little more laid back. BWV is a hotel style and usually has more going on. Plus the proximity of BWV to EPCOT and MGM is also a plus. We always have a car, to proximity to the parks is not a major concern.

As always, the suggestion is to buy where you plan to stay the most. If you are going to alternate vacations, I'd probably suggest still buying at WDW. Or, you might do what we did which was to purchase at OKW and at Vero. While we don't have a lot of Vero points, with banking and borrowing we can usually arrange a very nice Vero vacation every other year, or add a trip to Vero for the end of a trip to WDW.

220 points is a reasonable place to start, but you should really site down with the point charts and look at when you are likely to go, for how long, and what accomodations. You might also want to consider that while a 1BR will probably work fine for you now, in the future you may find that a 2BR better suites your needs (we found this to be the case as our 2 kids got older).

 

[GCM13]

We've been members since March and so far we've been able to get reservations on short notice. One time it was 4 days ahead at BWV over Memorial Day weekend and the other was about a month and a half ahead. There wasn't a whole lot of availability at these times, but we still were able to get reservations. You have to be flexible with your resort though and take what they have.

 

[Jenny Noel]

Thank you for your opinions on DVC! We look forward to buying soon!
Jenny

 

[Caskbill]

Jenny, as to booking on short notice, note that that would be very difficult to do for the more popular (IE crowded) times. This would be holidays (Especially Christmas-New Years), and general summer dates. But also be aware, that because of point 'costs', many DVC members tend to book up the off-seasons so they can stretch their point value. Therefore I would suggest that you may be able to book short notices, but you should count on this only if you yourselves can be very flexible. That is, if 2-months ahead, you want to book a specific week, that might be tougher. If on the other hand, 2-months ahead, you want to book any week about 2-months away, then you would probably be a lot better off.

The advice to buy where you want to stay the most often of course only applies if you're planning on using the 11 month windows. If ALL your vacations were being planned in under 7-months notice, then I would guess it wouldn't make much difference where your home resort was.