Renting points vs paying seasonal discounted room rates

[Glent59]

We basically blew all of our points ( for current use year and next ), for a family vacation to Aulani in September!!! Cant Wait for that..

BUT, we had a travel situation kind of fall into our lap!! ( Jet Blue is starting service out of Albany NY begining December 10th this year and they put a crazy fare sale on... so we were able to get ROUND TRIP air fare for TWO of us for for 67 dollars ... yes thats round trip for both of us..) SO now we have to figure out where to stay. Since i have used all my points. am i better off renting points ( for three nights ) or just paying discounted Rack rates....

Looking at Boardwalk villas for about 45 points a night.. vs about 400 dollars per night never done this before so looking for some guidance. AND if renting points is better.. where do you get them from, and any idea the cost per point to do that??

Thanks!
Glen

 

[com_op_2000]

Good luck getting a reservation at any DVC resort and any room type during one of the highest use weeks of the year at this point.
You may be better off just paying OOP for a regular hotel room.

 

[MAO]

You 'rent points' from owners who have points they don't want to use this year. You can do that directly (check out the Rent/Trade board, in the DVC set of boards here on Disboards) or via a middleman such as David's (there are lots of ads for this guy here; not hard to find.) Basically you're buying a reservation from a DVC owner - usually one that the DVC owner has made for you, with your specifications as to what resort, what days, what view, etc. We just say that you're 'renting points' because the calculation for how much you'll pay the owner is predicated on the number of points said owner has to use to make the reservation you want. I think we also use the term 'rent' to try and make the point that you don't own the points, you don't own the reservation (at least, not until you get there and start using it,) and you don't get to make any changes to the reservation. (Remember - even though you may be *an* owner of DVC points, these 'rented' points aren't yours so you can't contact Member Services about the reservation.)

Cost is relatively easy to find - peruse the Rent/Trade boards and the middleman sites. As the com_op_2000 points out, finding someone willing and able to make such a reservation is probably going to be your biggest sticking point.

Personally, I'd take a look first at the cancellation policy of Disney and, if it's pretty flexible I'd make the reservation with them first. Then you can start looking for someone to 'rent points' from; you may discover it takes a while to get a reservation where and when you want. You may very well discover that it is impossible to get where and when you want. (Since you're a DVC owner, with access to the website for members, you might check out availability of where and when you want to stay - you may discover that there's a lot of availability or the opposite. If there's little to no availability, you can pretty much forget about 'renting points' and give up on that scenario, in my opinion.)

But, basically, 'renting points' is just the terminology used to say that you're willing to pay another DVC owner for the one-time use of their points if they use said points to make a reservation, in your name, where and when you want to stay at Disney.

 

[CraigInPA]

Quick answer: 45 points per night at rental prices are going to be a lot more than $400 a night directly through Disney. Plus, as others have pointed out, there is likely to be little or no availability in December at DVC resorts to use points for.