My first purchase was stripped. I was focusing on price pp too much.
It worked out because it was poly so value went up and excited about new tower but knowing what I know now, I’d look for a loaded contract.
I think the most important thing when it comes to adding on, in any form, is to have a longterm plan for the points. Map out a few years and make sure adding on these ##-#### points means you're getting the stays you want and not
needing unplanned points or ending up with unused points.
Stripped contracts can be great for this. Our recent BCV add-on was fairly stripped and will give us the exact longterm plan we were hoping for.
With a loaded contract, you also need to have a plan for the short-term points. And hopefully that short-term plan doesn't poison the longterm well.
If you're buying a contract to stay in Studios in your longterm plan, using your short-term points on a 1BR+ has a
chance to poison the well and lead to either A) addonitis or B) longterm dissatisfaction with having points for 'just' Studios. Studios are awesome and the best deal in
DVC.
Even worse is winging it. Like me right now.
I admit I'm in this situation right now with a loaded CCV contract waiting for ROFR. It has 220 points that will expire before my first trip in our longterm plan and I don't have a concrete short-term plan. During the buying process it was a "I'll figure it out later" problem that was discounted because the contract size was fairly uncommon but exactly what we needed for our longterm plan (220pts when 220-230pts was the goldilocks zone).
I can whittle the 220pts down to 115 unused points with some points shuffling of a trip that will have 7m availability, but we don't have the flexibility to travel more before these points expire, are otherwise traveling at times with limited 7m availability, already have 'ideal' reservations booked at 11m, and we don't rent out. So I'm left with some less-than-ideal options:
- Lose the points
- Gift a stay to a friend -- normally a great idea but the primary friend we're thinking of has a family size that won't fit into a CCV Studio/1BR and 115-220pts might not be enough for a 2BR (and their only trip before our points expire might not have anything else available at 7m)
- Hope for availability at a Bungalow on a specific night of interest
- We don't do 1-night stays in Cabungalows/GVs as it's a terrible value in terms of pts/hr, but I'm willing to consider it only because I have points to burn and only for this one particular night (and we're already staying in a Poly Studio that night)
- Add 'ready in the morning' pre-arrival night(s) to existing stay(s), if available, so we have a room to go to straight from the redeye flight
- Unlikely to be bookable for most stays considering 7m availability
- Normally we drop off our bags and hit the parks and have a great day, though we have done the 'ready in the morning' room once before and it was nice to get settled then go to the parks
- Re-arrange a yet-to-be-booked stay into a split-stay, something we don't really want to do and will have its own longterm risk of unused points
).
