Using Disney Points vs. Using a Travel Agent

[cayennews]

I am planning to take my family on a cruise in 2019 and we have never been on a Disney cruise before. I am a DVC member and have points, but I have heard that if you book a cruise through a travel agent and pay for the cruise that it might make more sense, and you might get some perks through the agent that you would not get otherwise. Has anyone else looked into this? Which is more cost effective? Not sure where to being with all of this.

 

[NS8VN]

It makes a lot more sense to book rooms cash than with points. If you choose to rent out your points, even through a broker, you will have to rent out fewer points to pay cash for a cruise than you would use to book. And as you mention, some TAs offer additional financial incentives. We did this for our upcoming cruise and booked with Costco and came out way better than we would have if we had just used points to book.

 

[cedricandsophie]

The points needed per person for a seven day cruise range from slightly 100 under for the 3rd or 4th person up to over 900 in a balcony room depending on the time of year. While we have 1400 points it just doesn’t make sense for us to use points for a cruise. We do a cruise once a year and usually do A min of 9 or 10 days for up to 7 or eight people. And we don’t rent out points because we mostly use them for a annual trip to aulani, for two or three trips to Disney world and usually one trip to Vero Beach. And we never stay less than a week often two, in a one or two bedroom. So for us it makes no sense to use a Large portion for a cruise which would probably end up only paying for a couple people anyway, giving up the other trips. As long as the value of our Disney trips exceeds our admin costs, I feel like we are ahead. The actual cost of the points is moot for us at this point. Although based on the way we have used our points, I still believe we are ahead or will be in the next couple of years.

 

[cayennews]

It makes a lot more sense to book rooms cash than with points. If you choose to rent out your points, even through a broker, you will have to rent out fewer points to pay cash for a cruise than you would use to book. And as you mention, some TAs offer additional financial incentives. We did this for our upcoming cruise and booked with Costco and came out way better than we would have if we had just used points to book.

Looking at Costco did not cross my mind. I am going to look into that. Thanks for the idea.

 

[rcchello]

If you use cash you can cancel up to the paid in full date and get your money back, if you are not concierge. If you use points you get back points that can only be used for a trade out of DVC or another cruise, even if you change your mind 5 minutes later. The points also cannot be banked.

 

[Geomom]

It is a very bad value to use pts for a cruise. I can give an example...we went on a 1 week August 2016 Alaskan cruise in a category 9C--2 adults, 2 children (16, 12). The cruise cost us $6300 in cash. If I had used pts, it would have been close to 1000 pts plus the $95 fee to use the pts for a cruise. We can get so many more vacations at Disney for that amount of pts. That same year, we had used 373 pts at Bay Lake Tower for one week in a 2 bedroom lakeview--we had 8 people stay there. Rack rate for that week was $11,500--and that is for about 1/3 the pts the cruise would have cost us.

 

[com_op_2000]

I am probable one of the few people on this board that will tell you that it can be a good use of points, but there are limitations to those times:
1. If you bought your points early in DVC (before '02). I have found in my research that after '02, the price per point that DVC charged does not fit well when converting to DCLs prices.
2. You do not want to bother with renting points nor can stomach the possible problems that renting can encounter.
3. If you have points that will go to waste if not used and you do not want to deal with renting.

I have taken 8 DCLs, 4 of them paid for all on points and on 3 at least one person on DVC points, and on two of those seven used points to book multiple rooms. The one time I paid cash for a room the price was $100 per person per day.

I find that with my DVC points and the price I paid for them back in '93 & '98 (paid within $1 for all of my points), that when taking in all the things on a DCL it can be a good value:
international travel
ship
recreation
entertainment
port taxes
food

When compared to a DVC stay at one of the WDW resorts you still pay OOP for:
entertainment
food
parks
and you do not get the international travel.