What was your purchase philosophy when choosing your home resort(s)?

[DebbieB]

I think I'd wait to see how they handle the DVC expansion at VWL (which may tip Disney's hand on how they'll handle BLT when the evenually add the 2nd tower - I mean if DVC keeps selling they're going to have to do that right?).
VWL carries the same 2042 expiration as the early resorts. They can't add more DVC with a 2042 expiration date. Soooooooo..... do they extend ALL of VWL for free (lucky early buyers win), try another OKW type option for people to extend their ownership at a "nominal" fee, just carry two different expiration dates (as they now do for OKW)?

It will be interesting watch that unfold. I'm sure they'll just have two different expiration dates for VWL, but curious to see what they do.

From the recent announcement, it sounds like the new rooms will be a separate DVC resort with its own end date. If that's the case, they will not be home resort for current VWL owners.

As far as myself, I started thinking about DVC in 1999 when I stayed in an OKW 2 bedroom with friends. At the time, I was also traveling with my mom to WDW and was thinking spring at OKW and early December at BWV. I had never stayed at BWV but loved the area when I stayed at the Beach Club the year before. Those were the only WDW DVC at the time (VWL was under construction). OKW was sold out to direct sales but resales were available. BWV was selling direct with very few resales available. I went with BWV because I knew that would be harder to get into at 7 months. Good choice since early December is very hard to get. Never regretted it.

 

[pangyal]

We really took the " buy where you want to stay" mantra to heart and literally did exactly that. Our reasons were:

-AKV: value/concierge access
-BWV: walk to two parks, great water slide, and now the added bonus of Star Wars Land !
-OKW: "cheap" points to use for Aulani and GCV if we can, or rent out to cover some of the MFs on the others
-VWL: Christmastime! Really hard to get in there in December. Not too happy about the construction etc. right now, and I am anxious to see what happens with the new addition there as it was definitely not a part of what we were happy to buy into. But we'll just have to wait and see.
-BLT: walk to MK, and that pretty much covers that one!
-GFV: we bought a Guaranteed Week here (resale) after numerous fallen wait lists. We love the resort and it was just getting stressful imagining how we might not be able to book even if we bought in, so the GW takes a lot of pressure off.
-PVB: I had such a miserable time trying to book this resort for December that I vowed I wouldn't go through it again! We love the Poly and again, I just wanted to be able to consistently book the first few days of a split stay without the stress.

Now I think we are done .

 

[mickeymom629]

We are probably the only ones who bought at 2 places (HH and VB) they don't plan to visit (much). In 1999, we had 4 young children. I was a Disney Store cm, which got us a discount. We bought at HH, which must have been less expensive than BWV (I can't remember). We bought the minimum (150) points and paid it in full. In 2003 (?), DVC was offering 50 VB points and I was able to use my discount. For us, this was a good addition of points to give us a little more flexibility and we could afford it.

We have never been to VB and have no plans to. We have been to HH once for 2 nights on our way back to MD after a Disney cruise. I could see us going there, again, and I have planned to, but every time I think of going that far south I decide I really want to go all the way to WDW!

I wish we could have bought a Disney World property, but it just didn't seem to work out that way.

 

[rickste]

I bought on the resale market for GCV as I want to ensure that we can stay there. I thought about buying into Aulani but we would only be interested in going there maybe every 3 years but DL we would go more often. Even with the added cost of the GCV points compared to other location it was more important to be able to book out 11 months.

 

[ScubaCat]

I bought on the resale market for GCV as I want to ensure that we can stay there. I thought about buying into Aulani but we would only be interested in going there maybe every 3 years but DL we would go more often. Even with the added cost of the GCV points compared to other location it was more important to be able to book out 11 months.

Same with us regarding BCV. I'd say it's even worse for VGC given how small it is, but both tend to get pretty full right at the 7 month mark. This way, we can exactly get the room we want, when we want it, and not have to compete with every single other DVC member.

 

[Meandnevaeh]

I bought SSR at a good deal, IMO, overall financially the best choice, but I know that I will be perfectly happy staying there every year. Of course I will try to switch out at 7 months, but I will make reservations at 11 months for the time I want to go. I will not be disappointed if I don't get to switch out ever, but hoping that over time I will get to try out a few other resorts.

 

[Happy2BMommy0812]

I love reading these replies because we are new members who may add on in the future.

We have not added in points.

We bought direct at poly and are 100% happy. We seriously seriously considered backing out and buying resale - maybe animal kingdom. But we crunched numbers and made a pros and cons list, and even tough we could have saved a nice chunk of change upfront, in the end it came down to us really wanting to usually stay at poly, and maybe sometimes try to get animal kingdom or Epcot area resorts (ha ha, probably not likely). If we had gone resale, we decided we would have been unhappy spending the money and possibly never getting into poly at the 7 month mark, making the investment a disappointment (even though we would save a lot of money, we would still be spending a lot). We are thrilled with poly and, as we bought after April 4 are happy to get all the perks, since those are actually important to us - special gatherings, etc.

We may not ever add on points, as we have the points we need for our family, but selfishly, my husband and I would love a beach club package for a couples trip to food and wine when our kids are grown, so down the road we may look for a small add on there. Again, we would buy where we want to stay.

 

[bwvBound]

We may not ever add on points, as we have the points we need for our family, but selfishly, my husband and I would love a beach club package for a couples trip to food and wine when our kids are grown, so down the road we may look for a small add on there. Again, we would buy where we want to stay.

Caution: Slippery Slope ahead!

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

We may not ever add on points, as we have the points we need for our family, but selfishly, my husband and I would love a beach club package for a couples trip to food and wine when our kids are grown, so down the road we may look for a small add on there. Again, we would buy where we want to stay.

Poly is a good resort for F&W too. And you might find with waitlists or flexibility that you will be able to get into Epcot resorts now and then for F&W.

 

[SuperRob]

For our first contract, we bought what we could afford to buy in cash. That ended up being 60 points at SSR for $99 a point. We were fortunate to be able to stay at Aulani (twice, now), the Grand Californian, and the Grand Floridian in the first five years we had those points. When it came time to buy the second one, my wife insisted on the Grand Floridian, largely due to the wonderful experience during that previous stay.

So the first time around, it was "What can we reasonably afford?" After that, location became more of a concern than cost ... but that's because what we can afford has changed significantly in those five years.

 

[dvcdream4fld]

I bought resale twice based on cost. The first resale contract was SSR and I had never stayed at SSR. After staying at SSR, we bought our second resale contract based on location and just bought AKV. I think we probably buy BWV, because it's probably our favorite resort, but we couldn't find a contract that met our needs.

 

[Supplanter]

We don't plan on going to disneyworld much, maybe only one or two trips in the next 5+ years. (We live really close to Disneyland and go there weekly) But we plan to go to aulani most years and stay at the grand cal for a night here and there each year.
Since there wasn't a particular resort that we wanted most we bought cheapest with 300 ssr points.

Btw, youve been posting a ton lately but your posts are always full of broken links. Am I the only one they don't work for? I see them all like "www.disbo****************"

 

[bwvBound]

We don't plan on going to disneyworld much, maybe only one or two trips in the next 5+ years. (We live really close to Disneyland and go there weekly) But we plan to go to aulani most years and stay at the grand cal for a night here and there each year.
Since there wasn't a particular resort that we wanted most we bought cheapest with 300 ssr points.

Btw, youve been posting a ton lately but your posts are always full of broken links. Am I the only one they don't work for? I see them all like "www.disbo****************"

The OP, Mike, has been 'banned' so he isn't posting anything recently. What you are seeing are old threads with recent activity. Yep, broken links due to age/status of content and its sources.

 

[Supplanter]

The OP, Mike, has been 'banned' so he isn't posting anything recently. What you are seeing are old threads with recent activity. Yep, broken links due to age/status of content and its sources.

Oh cool thanks. I didn't think to look at the dates on them.

 

[JimC]

OKW points a combination of where we want to stay and low cost for use elsewhere within DVC.

Points at other resorts are we want to stay and we want owner booking advantage.

 

[djohn06]

I bought the best deal at the time. For us it was BLT at $85 pp. But, it had to be BLT, AKV or BWV.

 

[bakerworld]

Purchased our membership direct and originally bought a home we weren't interested because trading within the DVC system is fee-less. As the economy recovered this changed so we purchased to accommodate. Now we've enough points to 'make it work' with banking/borrowing.

 

[jeepnjudy]

We bought direct at VGF because it's on the monorail and we really love this resort!

 

[sharkyandbones]

We bought at AKV initially because it was the best deal combined with a resort that we would not mind frequenting. As it turns out, AKV is our absolute favorite resort on the premises so it worked out nicely! We later purchased BLT as an occasional alternative to AKV, somewhere in the middle of the action with monorail access. Love both.

 

[T00dles]

After you vote in the poll, please reply with your answers to the following two questions:

• If you have since added on points at another home resort, did you choose a different purchase philosophy in choosing the resort to add on? If so, why?

• Do you feel that your original or subsequent decision(s) to select your home resort(s) was the right one for you? Or would you now take a different approach should you add on again at another resort?

​

We bought at VGF April 14. We had originally called with interest in the poly but they weren't selling it at the time. We also followed tikiman at the time and were turned off by the lack of 1 bedrooms and refurb status. So we bought 150 at the grand and got all 50 years worth of the points.

Currently we are on our guides call list if points become available, we stayed there in March and fell in love.

The only thing we would have done differently would have been to buy more points. For the number of years we got, and where we bought, we feel it was worth it.