Taking a Year Off

[eporter66]

I hear you. We go every year, and have been steady visitors since 1999 (joined DVC in 2003).

Our daughter is still young enough, and has not gotten bored with WDW yet (sad to think that someday she will). We thought about banking this year to do something different, but decided we would take her out of school one more time to do a trip off season.

We will probably take a year off soon, but I may still use the points for a winter golf getaway, or something like that. If not - it will be nice to have the extra points the following year.

I honestly think I will miss WDW, since joining DVC, we do have relaxing vacations (no one buys that, but we do). We take it easy, enjoy as much as we can, and really feel comfortable their.

 

[cemeb4dk]

we thought this after last Oct trip, so we did not buy season passes, because we were taking a year off. Well after the first of the year started looking at things for vacations, My DD5 wanted a beach trip, so looked into a beach stay somewhere, and after looking at costs of hotels and what not. Needless to say we are going back to WDW this Sept, and doing a split stay between there and Vero Beach. We are doing at a surprise to my DD. She doesn't think we are going back til she's 7. I know we can use our DVC elsewhere, its just we couldn't decide where to go and for the best bang for the buck we ended up back with old reliable WDW. The sad thing was I had to purchase all new tickets again, I should of just went with my gut and bought season passes last year.

Next year we are not going to WDW for sure, its a trip out west, and hitting Disney Land and the grand canyon and what not.

 

[toniosmom]

One thing I am mulling over is the cost of tickets. We were able to squeeze 2 weeks of Disney vacations into our last set of APs but they recently expired. Now that our kids are older, the cost of 4 tickets for a 7-day visit is getting expensive! BUT like you, it breaks my heart to thinking of skipping a year...

Since I am not always sure we can make it back more than once in the same 12-month period, I buy non-expiring passes. They are a bit more expensive, but you can get quite a few trips in, especially if you don't go to the parks every day. I buy the 10-day and it lasts for years. And....if you add on the waterparks option, it's like you get 20 days because it's 10 days of parks, PLUS 10 days of waterparks. You can really make it stretch. Of course, it doesn't beat having an AP where you can go to a park for a quick hour and not feel like you've "wasted" a park ticket day. But....it is a money saver over time.

Good luck!

 

[kent285]

This is one of the reasons I love DVC...even if you wait, at least you know you WILL be going back, and by storing up your points only makes your next trip better.

 

[loveswdw]

Just another factor is the cost of Disney.

This is us too! We went to WDW in June 2010 then tried HHI in October 2010. We are heading back to WDW this October then we'll probably do HHI again next year. Cost is a BIG factor driving us to do other trips. We haven't even purchased our airfare for this upcoming trip (we may drive) because its been too high for me to stomach. I won't pay over $1000 for the 4 of us to fly. But that said, factor in airfare=$1000, car rental=$400, 4 day expiring hoppers=$1100, dining plan=close to $600. That's $3100! Not including MFs we pay for the BCV. $3100 is quite a chunk of change to me.

We did HHI last year and absolutely LOVED it. So much in fact, we are hoping to get a small resale contract so we can do WDW and HHI alternately years. HHI was a relatively inexpensive vacation for us. Drove instead of flew and had most meals in the villa. We dined out 3 times in our 6 night stay. Hubby played golf 2 days, kids did several activities at the resort and spent A LOT of time in the pools. Everybody loved it.

Now I know a lot of folks will say that you don't have to do the dining plan at WDW but as much as we are "on the move" at WDW, the last thing I want to do is come back to the villa and have to cook or even think about throwing something together. At HHI, I didn't really mind because it was so relaxing and I felt I had the time to prepare meals, etc.

So another vote for HHI!

 

[marynvince]

I looked into that but I am not sure the kids would have enough to do. They will be 9 and 7. What do you think?

the kids would love HHI. The CMs are the absolute best, lots of organized activities. We like the island so much we added on there.

 

[delaneyc52]

We are also skipping WDW this year and heading to Vero Beach instead. I understand Vero has great programs for children, but I have no little ones so I cannot attest to that.