As far as whether
DVC is worth it or not, it depends upon your perspective. I bought 180 points which i got for $92 per or roughly $16,500. I'm staying in a room for five nights in June which if I were paying cash for would run about $800 per night. My Alabama public education tells me that is $4000 not including taxes. My first stay in a DVC resort as a member was June 2007, after our upcoming trip in June in less than one full year our room costs had we been paying cash is in the $8,000 range. My common sense tells me that it will not take very long for the DVC to pay for itself. I didn't buy DVC for the perks, though I appreciate them and hope they continue, i bought DVC because it makes financial sense to us.
I tend to agree with you, to a point. Where we don't necessarily see this the same way is the basic premise that I would NOT be staying in equivalent accomodations (dollar-wise) were it not for my DVC membership. This keeps the comparison from being apples to apples.
For years, I have stayed for rack rates, or AP discount rates in recent years, in Disney's
moderate resorts and have generally been pleased with the accomodations. sure, there's almost always some sort of snafu during the stay, but all in all, I've mostly had good experiences there.
I can stay in a moderate for 5 nights for about what you're claiming one night would cost (rack rate, of course) in a DVC resort. I've done it 20 times. Literally.
My guide did the 5 year payoff thingie with us too but I was a math and comp sci major and that dog won't hunt with me as we say in NC. I don't stay in the deluxe resorts so those numbers don't cut it with me.
I DID buy DVC as a long-term investment because my daughter is 3 and she loves Disney. So do my wife and I and even just the two of us have gone twice a year for virtually as long as I can remember.
Will DVC pay for itself with us? Yea. Prolly. In about 12-15 years best I can figure, but we'll have much nicer accomodations during those years than we would have had and we really do feel like we own a piece of the magic. There's that intangible with us too.
Sorry to highjack the thread but just wanted to throw that out. I think a LOT of DVC owners fall into the same category as us. Middle to upper middle income America for whom DVC is mostly an affordable luxury as long as things don't go totally to "he" double hockey sticks. My point is that for this category of folks, there needs to be something else.
Others in this thread insist that DVC keeps selling itself. Lots of non-Americans are buying right now because of the value of the dollar. This WILL end. Maybe not today. Maybe not next month but this WILL end and depending on the US economy, we'll see if DVC can maintain and sustain during the US's recovery. My bet is that once the world gets kicked out because of the US's recovering economy, you haven't even BEGUN to see incentives like you'll see then but I could be wrong. We'll see.
1) MYW discounts. AP discounts are a token. Either deeply discount one or both of these or remove the illusion that it's a perk at all.
2) Daily Mousekeeping-there's enough dues to support it already. Make it happen.
3) Incentive points-At slow DVC and slow park times, do double or maybe even triple point incentives maybe even on short notice so as to limit the number of families taking advantage of it. this serves a marketing purpose too in that some of us would get to stay in accomodations we might normally not be able to "afford" and might incent us to buy more points in the future.
In our younger days, my wife and I learned a trick from a friend that we used a LOT. We used to cruise every year and we used this almost every time we cruised the last few years (Now we do Disney LOL). We used to pack our bags. Fly to Miami (at the time). Go to the docks and buy tickets for pennies on the dollar. we figured if we ever didn't get on, we'd spend a nice weekend in Miami. We always got on. Usually for about 30% of what it would have cost us at their normal BEST fare. Why? Food's on the boat and the beds are empty. Cost the same thing to open the MK with 10,000 guests as it does with 25,000.
I've got some others. I doubt anybody from DVC will ever see this thread but I'll post them this afternoon. Some of them are like #3 and I thkn they'd be pretty nice and pretty unique.
Sorry so long...
