I may be posting early, as I have pages 3 & 4 to read, but I wanted to get this in. Plus, it is important for those outside the discussion looking into buying DVC!
First and foremost, free Dining is a promotional item that will disappear when it isn't required to sustain guest count, like it is during various times of the year. DVC is a long term proposition that can not accurately be considered against current hotel rates in a one time snapshot.
More importantly, however...
The hotel I priced was Animal Kingdom Villas, 2 Bedroom Savannah View. and paying out of pocket for dining is $3,024 (9nights), basic tickets for those 10 days for 6 adults (12,12,12,13,37, & 40) is $2032. My Points I priced as $11 a point for a total of 419 points is $4609, my dues for those points is $2486 for a total of $12,151, that same room for the exact same time with free dining is $10327. A difference of $1,824. And even if you value your points at $8 you are still spending $567 more.
This valuation is inaccurate. if you use the $11/point, that is an "all in" cost to include the purchase price
and dues together. If you rent those 419 points for $11 per point each year for 35 years, then you'll net $161,315 in income. Without price increases from Disney, the $2,032 room would cost $71,120 over 35 years. In this case, I recommend you rent your points to get the room.
However, the appropriate way to value the points is to take the purchase price, divide by the number of years on the contract at that time to get a price per year. Divide this by the estimated average number of nights you expected to get out of them to get a cost per night. Then take the current dues per point rate and use Excel's Net Present Value formula at 5% inflation rate to get the cost per year for the remaining years on your contract (from today) and multiply this escalating figure by the annual number of points, then add to the yearly total (in the initial cost formula) before dividing by the number of days. This will get a better approximation of your cost per point all in.
As for the dining plan, the retail cost of the plan is expensive for DVC members and should not be used. Instead, you'd need to calculate the cost of using the kitchen for breakfasts, some lunch, and some dinner (include leftovers in the mix), which saves a
ton on the food bill. Then plan the cost of eating at a WDW restaurant (with the 10% DVC discount, and no seasonal price increases for those affected months) a few times as desired (we usually do two table service restaurants per trip). Instead, you could determine the cost of eating in the restaurants using the TIW card (include the purchase price), if you plan to eat in a restaurant frequently.
The dining plan is horrible, since DVC members have access to amenities (a kitchen or wet bar) that regular WDW hotel guests do not.
Finally, think about how many loads of laundry you do/may do in your DVC room (or free at the hotel laundry mat) and subtract the cost per load at the hotel from the room bill of DVC points. Alternatively if you wouldn't do laundry in a standard WDW hotel room for nine days, subtract the airline baggage fee costs from the DVC room total, since with a washer/dryer you should pack lighter than you would otherwise. Of course you could bring the same amount of luggage with fewer cloths, leaving room to haul souvenirs home, but you'd need to subtract the cost of shipping stuff home from the DVC rate, instead.
Bottom line, DVC villas have a lot of intangible cost savings that need to be considered over a standard WDW hotel room. Most prominently is the full kitchen and washer/dryer. If you would prefer to stay at a value or moderate resort and get free dining, then DVC isn't for you, I'm afraid to say.
Good luck!
Bill
