To stay @ Disney Paris - use points or rent and get $$$?

[Raivyn]

We are thinking of going to Europe next spring and though we would stay at Disney Paris using points. But is it better to use points, or to rent them out and use the cash?

I had read that for Disney cruises, it is better to rent the points out and pay cash than to use points. Is that true?

And to stay at the Disneyland hotels, cash or points?

I'm tempted to buy more points, but if it turns out better to pay cash, then why bother (except that I love owning just for the sake of owning).

TIA!

 

[Inkmahm]

My guess is that cash is better. I was at DL Paris June 2008 and the issue I had was that you had to buy park tickets with the room or each night that you were staying on property. That may have changed, but I didn't need that many days as I was getting there late on Friday and leaving early on a Tuesday morning. I didn't need 4 days of tickets, only 3. This was for either cash or points.

I ended up staying off site in a hotel that was included in the early admission program at DL. It was one train stop away (about 5 minutes) and right across the street from the train station. Very plain hotel but comfortable. Much cheaper than staying on property and I got the same on property benefits! EMH in Paris is just as important as EMH at WDW.

You can get room discounts by joining the DL shareholders club.That requirement was to buy 20 shares (I think) to be a shareholder. It's confusing to do, I'd suggest going to the DL Paris DIS forum for help. I got ticket discounts that way for us, too.

 

[Disney_Villain]

We use points for DCL and DLRP (as we have enough points for our regular 3 weeks of vacation in a year and 300 points/year to spare).

Prior to having this level of points, we paid cash for DLRP and DCL. It made no sense to drain our annual allocation of points giving up multiple weeks of vacation for only one week in DLRP or DCL.

We have always used our points on the DL hotels. Those hotels are pretty costly for what they are and reservation points can get you them for as low as 170 points/week. That's a pretty good deal.

I guess it depends on how many points you have. If you're tight for points on your regular vacations, I'd hang on to them and use cash instead of points exchanges.

 

[Raivyn]

We're debating on adding on points mainly so we would have more options. We only have 160 pts, and it seems with that level of points you're really locked into 1 week a year and that's about it. I'd like to have other options, especially since we're on the West Coast, and I'm concerned that getting GCV at the 7 month mark will be extremely difficult.

We're currently using our points for a 10 day stay at SSR and 2 separate nights at GCH. I like the flexibility to be able to go to DL on a moment's notice and have a nice place to stay.

Decisions, decisions...