Traveling Outside Disney Properties....?

[disney junky]

I'm retired and my wife is soon to follow. We are hoping to do a lot more traveling, and I'm wondering how many DVC owners are regular travelers in the traditional sense. Disney has been our default location for trips for the past 30 years with most other trips to the beach. This past year has given me pause as we've not been able to use all previously available points, and the trips we have taken have been so different. I never thought I'd consider selling but at this point, there is a lot of money tied up in DVC, and we'd like to explore other areas of the country. What are some other members' experiences, particularly in our phase of life? By the way, we love WDW just the two of us.

 

[Evita_W]

We are not necessarily in your phase of life, but oddly this past year has allowed us to do more travelling than normal and to places other than Disney. We aren't the scared to death of COVID people, we take common sense precautions and are cautious, but not overboard and afraid to live our lives.

In our traveling, we actually found the RCI can be an excellent use of points, especially right now while the exchange fee is being waived. Just watch what the charges are for cleaning where applicable. But we have had some extremely nice places for around 10 points a night or less. Now this has been a few years, but we stayed right by Carnegie Hall for a week for about 120 points in a 1 bedroom (technically called a Studio as there was no door to the bedroom) that quite comfortably slept 4 full grown adults and a service dog.

So, my recommendation would be before selling to check where RCI resorts are and if it is something you are interested in.

Right now we have WDW APs, but after they expire, we are considering taking trips and picking where we go based on where RCI rooms are available for when we want to go and the find interesting things there. Of course we will also have to factor in actual coat.of traveling to and from such destinations as well.

 

[Travel60]

We retired about 12-13 years ago. Years vary but a typical Disney year includes a week or two at a DVC just two of us plus about every other year a week in 3 BR villa with kids and grands OR a 7 day cruise with whole family. Last year we sold our Florida vacation condo so spent almost 3 weeks this January/February at VB. Bought more points last month planning to stay longer at VB, HHI or WDW next winter.

Outside of the Disney bubble, we also follow our favorite college football team attending every home game (about 10 hour drive so long weekend) and often one out-of-town game. For that out-of-town game, I check out Disney or RCI offerings in the area and maybe make it a week's getaway (2019 was a game in San Diego and we stayed at Del Coronado...fantastic). Have found some very nice places, some just ok, no bad ones yet. I'm not real picky as long as it's clean.

Finally, we try to do one or two longer, excursion-type trips every year or so (bucket list places). Due to Covid, stuff got cancelled/rescheduled so next year we are doing DCL WBPC in March, a 16 day trip to Germany's Passion Play and Danube cruise in June and a 14 day cruise around northern Europe and fjords in July. That last one just got added because pastor and folks from church put it together and a shorter but similar DCL cruise got cancelled last year. Trying to figure out if time between June and July trips should be spent site-seeing in Europe or worth flying home and back.

 

[limace]

If you want to trade into RCI, I highly recommend spending some time on TUG forums-there are free to acquire timeshares you can pick up to get a big chunk of RCI points, that will be a much better value that using your DVC points to trade (you could rent your DVC points out for spending money instead).

 

[Marionnette]

I'm retired and my wife is soon to follow. We are hoping to do a lot more traveling, and I'm wondering how many DVC owners are regular travelers in the traditional sense. Disney has been our default location for trips for the past 30 years with most other trips to the beach. This past year has given me pause as we've not been able to use all previously available points, and the trips we have taken have been so different. I never thought I'd consider selling but at this point, there is a lot of money tied up in DVC, and we'd like to explore other areas of the country. What are some other members' experiences, particularly in our phase of life? By the way, we love WDW just the two of us.

My husband is semi-retired (don't know of he will ever fully retire). Being the business owners, we can travel almost whenever we choose. The past few years, our trips have been limited due to the need to care for aged parents.

Like you, the shine is wearing off of DVC ownership for us and we are thinking about paring down our ownership. We have decided to wait on selling, although the hot resale market is very tempting. We're going to take a few years off, rent out our points and then see whether visiting Disney regularly is something we still want to do.

 

[bwvBound]

My husband and I are travel addicts. Favorite form is cruising, specifically to new destinations. We've been chipping away at our "World Cruise" for some 23 years and are now 1 segment shy of completion. We had a great cruise selected for that final segment ... but Covid took it away. Ah, well ... maybe later ... ??

We also have other timeshare which we use heavily with direct booking (in-network), exchanges via RCI/II, rental weeks, etc. We tried RV'ing ... and found we prefer smaller rigs to larger ones ... but mostly as a means of comfortable transportation from "one timeshare to the next" on long road trips. We do enjoy a good road trip ... provided our accommodations along the path are clean, comfortable and fairly well equipped (full kitchen, gas grill, etc.).

We are at the point of questioning our DVC points: keep or sell? For 2020, we booked a nearby property using DVC's Concierge Collection and loved it. Yes, a ton of points ... but a fabulous trip. We were living 'large' and look back on the experience fondly. We are in a "wait and see" mode for now and hope to delay any "sell!" decision for another year.

Best wishes in your discovery of new ways to satisfy wanderlust!

 

[crisi]

We are regular travelers - probably a little younger than you (in our mid-50s). My husband still works and some of our travel has been me tagging along on work trips. I'm semi retired and own my own business - with a laptop and internet, can do my job in a few hours a week whenever I want. We only do a DVC trip every other year - and it will be six years between WDW trips (HHI and Aulani in between).

Washington DC is completely worth a few days if you like museum hopping So is Boston. So is San Francisco or New Orleans.

If you've never been to the Grand Canyon it is amazing.

We've used our DVC points to snowbird in HHI, and like that a lot.

We are Minnesotans and I should put in a plug for the local and wonderful North Shore of Lake Superior. If you like waterfalls and trails and sitting around looking at a body of water with no opposite shore (its COLD though), its beautiful.

My husband and/or I have been to - in the last five years - London (several times, its a favorite, and he has a conference there, so its airfare and extending the hotel room), Sydney Australia, Amsterdam, Tanzania (if you have a chance to go on safari - do it!), Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, Mexico. Peru is scheduled for Fall and Hawaii for next Winter. India is up soonish as well - and I want to get to Vienna and Prague.

Tours are nice as you age, you get to be in a bubble not unlike the Disney bubble. That was how we did Tanzania and how we will do Peru. I've also done the British Isles and Germany that way. Luggage is handled for you. London can be easy to do by yourself, but its Disney World levels of walking and insider knowledge - once you figure it out its easy. Until then you are standing next to a tube station trying to figure out which line you need to get on and where you need to transfer to go anywhere.

 

[bwvBound]

We've used our DVC points to snowbird in HHI, and like that a lot.

Had to do a double take on that one. My first read presented an image of snowboarding ... but, wait, HHI? What? Oh ... snowbirding ... entirely different ... LOL