My apologies for my unwitting borrowing of your comments

I read through the first five pages or so and then skipped to the end to see whether the thread was still on topic...so I missed a bunch of posts!
dvczerfs: the only thing we have more of in DC than politicians are lawyers... I should know, I am one!
Ka-Chow: I think that you're definitely right to acknowledge the emotional quotient involved in these decisions. I did not buy in thinking I was going to make money. Honestly, I don't see how someone could purchase a timeshare or other vacation product thinking that they would use it to generate investment returns. That said, it's not that you can't generate some sort of cash flow from DVC (i.e. members who rent their points out to cover dues) and I know that a number of older DVC members have realized an appreciation in the value of their contracts over time. I think people just need to be smart enough to realize that those are not reasons to buy in to the system. I doubt that the people who bought OKW in 1993 really believed that their points would eventually appreciate the way they have.
Still, I have decided to believe that I will save some money (ignoring opportunity costs of course) on accomodations over the next fifty years after factoring inflation and other cost increases to hotel accomodations that won't affect me because of my ownership. Does that mean Disney couldn't decide to destroy me with maintenance fees in the future? No. Of course they
could do that if they wanted to, but I don't think they have an incentive to do that. If maintenance fees have scared off as many people from buying as this thread would lead me to believe; a drastic increase in those fees would only scare off exponentially more potential owners.