Still battling DVC. World Passport Collection

[disneylady]

Thanks everyone for your posts. It got a little tense there for a moment, but I still learned alot. I think from reading posts ALL DAY long, I've made up my mind.

I've called several resorts today, both Disney and World Passport, and it seems that I will save more $ by not buying into DVC. Especially since we plan to do Disney only every couple of years.

We've decided to do the Grove Park Inn and Spa in NC for 7/4 and found it much cheaper to just pay cash and not use concierge points. Apparently, your concierge pts double for 4 people because they are based on double occupancy.

As for other World Passport Resorts, we are not interested in being gone for a full 7 days. Therefore, we'd loose points by booking a 7 day w/II.

Anyway, thanks for the insight.

Sandy

 

[calypso*a*go-go]

Sandy -- Sorry you couldn't find a way to make it work.

Are you still within the timeframe to cancel the contract? I hope it won't be too much of a hassle for you to back out of the deal.

It really does sound like you might be better off with a vacation club like Marriott (or similar) that already has locations worldwide. Don't forget that you can find those contracts via the resale market as well (and usually with a pretty good savings!).

 

[yitbos96bb]

Almost surely not. We find the exchange options to be great alternatives to consider, once in a while, but if you're not going to be staying at DVC resorts most of the time, you can probably save money by buying elsewhere.

Another option is to buy DVC and then rent points to pay for off-Disney vacations.

 

[yitbos96bb]

Because they make a good margin at it. That doesn't make it a good value to the owner. Once you're a member, you are captive to a degree. Some like the convenience, others don't want the hassle of renting points. Disney makes money when you trade out - this is not just a service provided to members.

I would say also some people can't afford a lot of additional dollars to go on another vacation. SO they trade for their week. While it isn't cost effective for someone like you who is wanting to trade all the time, someone who wants to trade once every few years, it might make more sense. Personally I say rent the points and use the money for vacation. It takes 160 to trade for a 1BR week. You can get about 1600 for that in rental. That will pay for a lot of hotels. DO the math and figure out where you are going.

 

[Johnnie Fedora]

If you want to get a positive answer, you need to ask your "points value" question here a little differently. Just ask how many DVCers feel Disney cruiseline is a good value when you use points OR if other onsite Disney hotels are a good value on points OR are Fri and Sat nights a good use of points??

You'll have DVCers coming out of the woodwork telling it's soooooo worth it AND there your points, use them as you please AND we bought points to vacation AND we don't care about getting the most value out of our points...blah, blah, blah!

Sorry, can you tell I've been around these boards a while??

Now for my opinion, buy a smaller point package for DVC use and pay cash for other trips or buy both DVC and Marrriot.

Good Luck!

 

[Dean]

Alright. I can pretty much see from viewing your posts that if routinely staying at a WDW resort, you have saved by doing DVC.

Well, we are interested in traveling all over. That's where the World Passport Collection comes in.

If you know ahead of time that the majority of your vacations will be through World Passport and every couple of years, you'll do Disney, then is DVC cost effective?

No, it will cost you money and reduce your options. Buying with the idea of trading routinely is an extremely poor choice. But it is nice to have options even if not perfect ones.

 

[Dean]

When travelling to Disney, we know that we want to stay onsite. The only vacation club/timeshare option that offers the best possibility is DVC, but we want to travel other places as well. DVC also offers this option. We have young children and know that we will be back to Disney many times in the upcoming years, but we know that we do not want to go there every year.

It would be great to hear someone's experiences on travelling using the World Collection who actually is a member of DVC and only travels to Disney every two or three years.

There are members who do this but most have less points and do so by banking and borrowing. If one wants to stay at DVC periodically but do other trips as well, there are FAR better choices than buying DVC and trying to force it to work out for the other options. You could buy the number of points you'd use at DVC and then bank and borrow for trips every couple of years. Then buy another timeshare or system for other options. You could buy something that fits your overall needs better then try to trade in and/or rent DVC for the occasional trips. Or just do cash routinely and not own anything. There are great ways to do this and some are cheaper than others. But be prepared to learn any system inside and out to make it work for you. That's a lot of work but worth it. And for those not prepared to learn the system, don't become a member of the system in question.

 

[shantay1008]

We just got back from our first trip to WDW as DVC members, and while we were there I watched some snippets on the DVC cable channel and was interested to see that quite a lot of the marketing was aimed at encouraging people to buy into DVC because of all the places they could travel around the world. Several couples were interviewed talking about how they planned to travel to exotic destinations using their DVC points.

I certainly can say that one of the reasons that we bought into DVC was because of the lure of traveling to places like Hawaii, the Virgin Islands, etc. I was starting to feel a little foolish reading all the posts about how DVC doesn't make sense for people who don't plan to visit WDW a lot, but when I watched the marketing tactics on the DVC channel I remembered where I got the information about worldwide travel in the first place!

We'll be happy visiting WDW every two years (or more often if we can get good airfare for all 6 of us, or if they come up with a room for families with more than 4 but less than 8 people so we don't have to use up so many points on a two-bedroom ) but I hope the opportunity comes along for us to use the World Passport or Concierge Collection.

 

[rocketriter]

We bought enough points to give us 2-bedroom accomodations every other year at WDW at high season. Sometimes we wind up travelling in a different season instead. Since we're planners, we know far enough in advance to pile up extra points and burn them off in an occasional trade out through II. We feel no shame in doing so, even though we could get more bang for our buck by renting those extra points and so forth. For us, time is money, too, and we don't want to spend the time turning time-share resort management into a hobby. However, the fact remains that our primary use of DVC points is for DVC stays, which makes the most sense on many levels.

 

[bicker]

I'm sorry but I do not believe that 50% of DVC members spend more than half of their points on exchanges.

 

[Caskbill]

I think most agree that things like the Disney Collection or Concierge Collection are not the best uses of points.

But you asked about the World Passport Collection. This can be quite different. Let's compare apples to apples: A full 7-day week's stay.

For example, you can get a 2-B/R villa in Interval International, Mid Season, for 252 points.

A 2-B/R mid season (Dream) at VWL, BCV, or BWV preferred, is 314 points.

Likewise, High Season for II is 270 points while at WDW the 7-nights would be 350 points for Magic Season, or 462 for Premier season.

On the low end, an II trade is 207 points low season, while the WDW resorts are 270 for Adventure Season, or 282 for Choice Season.

For 1-B/R villas, the II trade points vs the WDW points are:

Low Season: 124 vs. 200 (Adventure), 214 (Choice)
Mid Season: 144 vs. 252 (Dream)
High Season: 160 vs. 270 (Magic), 350 (Premier)

There is a $75 booking fee.

If you only judged based on the maintenance fees (approx $4.25/pt), your mid season II exchange for a 1-B/R villa is $687 (144 x $4.25 + $75.00), while that same week at WDW would be $1071 (252 x $4.25)

Where members save is by only using a 5-day week at WDW, but if you would be staying 7-days anyway, then II trades can be pretty good.

And, Disney DVC has excellent trading power.

On the downside, DVC is fairly expensive to purchase, so if you only want to trade II, there may be other timeshares to consider for that purpose. Just keep in mind the trading power of other timeshares. Something like Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt would have good trading power, but then you start getting into costs that are similar to DVC's.

 

[Dean]

We just got back from our first trip to WDW as DVC members, and while we were there I watched some snippets on the DVC cable channel and was interested to see that quite a lot of the marketing was aimed at encouraging people to buy into DVC because of all the places they could travel around the world. Several couples were interviewed talking about how they planned to travel to exotic destinations using their DVC points.

I certainly can say that one of the reasons that we bought into DVC was because of the lure of traveling to places like Hawaii, the Virgin Islands, etc. I was starting to feel a little foolish reading all the posts about how DVC doesn't make sense for people who don't plan to visit WDW a lot, but when I watched the marketing tactics on the DVC channel I remembered where I got the information about worldwide travel in the first place!

We'll be happy visiting WDW every two years (or more often if we can get good airfare for all 6 of us, or if they come up with a room for families with more than 4 but less than 8 people so we don't have to use up so many points on a two-bedroom ) but I hope the opportunity comes along for us to use the World Passport or Concierge Collection.

Such is the world of timeshare sales. I've watched the TV run a number of times in the last few months along with the DVC they sent out recently. While there are choices of poor value discussed, there was nothing misleading that I could tell. It seems many DVC members have the idea it's Disney and I'll put my trust in Disney and not even do my homework. And while DVC does require quite a bit of Disney trust, one must know what they're buying or not sign until they do.

I'm sorry but I do not believe that 50% of DVC members spend more than half of their points on exchanges.

For II, it's less than 3% of members and likely less than 2% of total points.

 

[Dean]

I think most agree that things like the Disney Collection or Concierge Collection are not the best uses of points.

But you asked about the World Passport Collection. This can be quite different. Let's compare apples to apples: A full 7-day week's stay.

For example, you can get a 2-B/R villa in Interval International, Mid Season, for 252 points.

A 2-B/R mid season (Dream) at VWL, BCV, or BWV preferred, is 314 points.

Likewise, High Season for II is 270 points while at WDW the 7-nights would be 350 points for Magic Season, or 462 for Premier season.

On the low end, an II trade is 207 points low season, while the WDW resorts are 270 for Adventure Season, or 282 for Choice Season.

For 1-B/R villas, the II trade points vs the WDW points are:

Low Season: 124 vs. 200 (Adventure), 214 (Choice)
Mid Season: 144 vs. 252 (Dream)
High Season: 160 vs. 270 (Magic), 350 (Premier)

There is a $75 booking fee.

If you only judged based on the maintenance fees (approx $4.25/pt), your mid season II exchange for a 1-B/R villa is $687 (144 x $4.25 + $75.00), while that same week at WDW would be $1071 (252 x $4.25)

Where members save is by only using a 5-day week at WDW, but if you would be staying 7-days anyway, then II trades can be pretty good.

And, Disney DVC has excellent trading power.

On the downside, DVC is fairly expensive to purchase, so if you only want to trade II, there may be other timeshares to consider for that purpose. Just keep in mind the trading power of other timeshares. Something like Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt would have good trading power, but then you start getting into costs that are similar to DVC's.

I'd agree with Bill in theory but there's a problem. Only a small subset of II resorts and weeks are reasonable to trade for, maybe 20% of the resorts on the DVC list and even then only a portion of the weeks. And they are the ones that owners usually use, rent themselves or trade privately. If you knew you could consistently get those top choices, DVC would be a great deal for exchanging. But you don't and in most cases, never will get the top choices even using DVC. If one wants to own DVC and shoot for the moon on trade options and not worry if they don't get it, I think that is a wonderful approach. But to buy with routine or frequent trading in mind is still a poor choice even given this perspective.

That mid level or lower season trade that costs you 207 or 252 points for a 2 BR could likely be gotten with an II deposit where the entire purchase price, that years fees, exchange fee and II membership fee were less than the value of the points given up for a single trade. And most of those options could be rented for around half what you could rent out the DVC points for. Plus I think that many on this BBS have the idea that DVC is the end all in trade power. That is not the case and there are likely many options that trade as well, likely even better than DVC on the open II market. Not to mention that a significant proportion of the trades of appropriate value are Marriott's where other Marriott owners come ahead of you even if their trade power is far less.

 

[dianeschlicht]

I'm sorry but I do not believe that 50% of DVC members spend more than half of their points on exchanges.

For once, Bicker, I agree with you. If 50% of the DVC owners were trading into DVC every year, there would be far more availability for those folks plannign to trade in than there actually appears to be.

 

[bicker]

Exactly. The earlier statement in that regard made absolutely no sense.

 

[cobbler]

Our guide told us that 80% of people that buy into DVC, stay at DVC resorts, that is why it is much harder to trade into DVC than out of DVC.

For me, I use my points for DVC resorts, used them for a Disney collection (which I won't do again, I could have stayed longer if I rented out my points) and I would consider an II trade if we were Disney'ed out for a year. I can't see myself using Concierge unless I had some points that were going to expire and would rather use them than lose them.

So if you plan on Disney, buy with Disney, if not, then it might not be a good choice.

 

[used2LuvDisney]

Exactly. The earlier statement in that regard made absolutely no sense.

Maybe not to you but I can see it. Normally I only read but this board has been getting a little crazy lately so I finally had to respond. At least the poster who stated that percentage got the number from Disney. Where is everyone else getting their figures from? It seems to me that Disney would probably be the best source for that info. Please don't tell me that these percentages are coming from reading the responses of others on this board. I'm sure that not every member in DVC uses this board. My guess is that a majority of those using it are those who are Disney fanatics. My GUESS is that the average member of the DVC member never visited this board. Notice, I said my guess, instead of pulling a number out of the air and saying 65% of DVC members.

Someone suggested that Disney makes a profit off of WC and that's why they offer it. So, does that mean that people don't use it on a regular basis? The last I check, almost everything anyone sales, they are trying to make a profit. By the poster reasoning, I should not buy a car with AC because the car company is only offering me it so that they can make a margin on it. Totally forgetting the point that I maybe I think AC would be a nice feature to have and maybe I'll use it on a regular basis. It's a win-win, they make a profit and the user gets the benefit. If no one purchased AC in their vehicles, believe me, the auto maker would not offer it. So, my guess is that people are using it on a regular basis.

Someone posted "For II, it's less than 3% of members and likely less than 2% of total points." Please tell us where that figure came from?

I see that people are trying to tell others what is reasonable for them. Someone wrote "20% of resorts on DVC list are reasonable for trade." According to who? 20% may be reasonable to YOU but to someone else, it may be higher or lower.

What is ideal for one user does not make it the know all and only way to do things. Just because something works for you does not make it the best way to do things. If someone wants to travel using WC then let them. It's their money.

 

[used2LuvDisney]

OMG...I had no idea so many people supported what I had to say. For the many PMs I received thanking me, you're welcome. I was only saying what I felt. Sorry I can't personally return all of the PMs, but I wanted to thank you all for sending them.

 

[calypso*a*go-go]

Well I personally feel about the same percentage of people PM'd you that use the WC.

Your user name indicates you really shouldn't even be on this forum -- if you no longer love Disney...why do you even care about the items being discussed?

The O.P. asked for opinions of DVC owners regarding WC not once, but twice. And that's what she received. Others many feel differently and are certainly welcome to chime in at any time.

I was sincere when I told O.P. I was sorry things didn't work out.

 

[used2LuvDisney]

Well I personally feel about the same percentage of people PM'd you that use the WC.

Your user name indicates you really shouldn't even be on this forum -- if you no longer love Disney...why do you even care about the items being discussed?

The O.P. asked for opinions of DVC owners regarding WC not once, but twice. And that's what she received. Others many feel differently and are certainly welcome to chime in at any time.

I was sincere when I told O.P. I was sorry things didn't work out.

You can personally feel any way you wish, but others have the right to feel as they wish as well. My stmt was about when someone quotes info that they got from a source and then other start by saying they don't believe it or come up with other numbers but no backing from when their numbers come from. And from people telling others what's a reasonable II resort. If you disagree with someone, that's fine but when people start saying my way is the better way or what is a reasonable resort, then I have a problem with that.

In regards to my user name, here we go again. Why suggest I shouldn't be on this forum due to my user name? I used to love Disney very much but comments like that are why my user name is what it is. A few can spoil it for a lot.