Why so many points on the weekend?

[weathernlu]

Man, I must not have looked at this as well as I thought when I bought into DVC, but the points on the weekends are crazy. I can stay 5 nights (sunday to Thursday) for the same points that it costs for Friday and Saturday night. I am thinking I am either going to be doing a lot of 5 night trips instead of 7 or I am going to be staying the Portifino Bay at Universal on Friday and Saturday nights. What does everyone do? My 150 points won't go far if I am paying 54 for a 2 bedroom at OKW on Friday and Saturday nights.

 

[kramer_clan]

I don't know about a lot of other people, but we tend to buy Annual Passes and use an AP discounted rate on the weekends. It gives us a chance to hang out at the non-dvc resorts that we love. We have also gone to Universal first and then into Disney on Sunday morning and do the Sunday to Friday thing. I think that it is ridiculous the amount of points on a weekend.

However, we banked last year and borrowed next year to do a 17 night stay in a 2 bedroom at BWV this summer. This is going to be the first time that we actually have stayed in our resort over a weekend and this will be two weekends.

Vicki

 

[Pa@okw95]

I believe the more point on the weekend thing has to do with demand, the local people would swamp the DVC premises on the weekends otherwise. That is just a guess, nothing official. I stay only 5 nights then move out to another area, then come back again if I wish to stay another 5 days. In 17 trips I only stayed on a weekend day once and that was because I was so tired and it was late to find a room elsewhere for the night, I arrived early. Not every member moves out on the weekends, but plenty of us do. MOst of my trips are 6 or 7 nights, first 2 days non-DVC and final 5 days DVC.

 

[goofy4tink]

I know a lot of people stay at the Universal hotels for 2 nights. We're using the AP rate for Fri and Sat nights at POR before we stay at BWV. We are using those nasty week-end points for our Thanksgiving stay tho. Hoping to get to try out a lot of the other resorts using AP rates over week-ends.

 

[goldilocks_63]

but we stays weekends.

I made 2 BR reservations for OKW during Easter next Spring, and almost had heartfailure - 100 pts / night!

But, hubby's parents and mine are now getting in the 80's, so it's now or never.....

Oh well....

We feel like we make up for some of this buy eating 2 meals a day in the room. Sometimes we have family get togethers of 21 people, so this can add up quickly.


Goldi

If I couldn't do this, I'd use Universal, Animal Kingdom, or All sports, depending on my budget.

 

[Chuck S]

Since I normally are in a studio or 1 bedroom, I stay put over the weekends and figure it as part of the overall cost for the "week". Prior to adding on points, I did move on the weekends...it just wasn't worth the "hassle" for me.

I'm sure there is a reason the point charts were set up that way...my guess is they were based on trends Disney saw at their regular resorts.

 

[VMS]

We go down and spend a few nights at a Universal Resort for the beginning of our trip and spend the weekend nights there. That way we get FOTL access. Also, my kids are getting older, so they want to do some of the big rides there. It works out perfectly for us. This time we are trying HRH.

 

[Tagrel]

We'll sometimes stay one weekend night, but not both. We like to go the 'Universal hotel on weekends' route.

Question: Why is it that DVC resorts would fill up on weekends, but the rest of the resorts don't? Disney doesn't charge a premium for regular hotel rooms on the weekends... Why for DVC then? Why don't the locals fill up the other resorts on weekends?

 

[raparker13]

We usually pay cash through DVC for the Friday and/or Saturday night and don't move.

 

[CarolMN]

Originally posted by Tagrel
..(snip)....Question: Why is it that DVC resorts would fill up on weekends, but the rest of the resorts don't? Disney doesn't charge a premium for regular hotel rooms on the weekends... Why for DVC then? Why don't the locals fill up the other resorts on weekends?

But they do! Prior to DVC I had to change our vacation dates or first choice of resort many times because a Friday or Saturday night was not available, even though the rest of the days were available. If you follow the resort board, youi will often read laments about weekend nights not available. This may not be always true, but it happens more often than you might believe.

 

[Tagrel]

Originally posted by CarolMN
But they do! Prior to DVC I had to change our vacation dates or first choice of resort many times because a Friday or Saturday night was not available, even though the rest of the days were available. If you follow the resort board, youi will often read laments about weekend nights not available. This may not be always true, but it happens more often than you might believe.

thanks CarolMN - Never ran into this problem myself, and we have used a Disney resort on the weekends a couple times and didn't run into problems then either. Hey - maybe its us DVCers that don't want to pay those weekend DVC point rates!

 

[DebbieB]

To stretch my points, I sometimes pay cash for a weekend night. I got a 30% off AP rate for a Friday night at OKW a couple of weeks ago. When I went to the front desk to get new keys on Friday morning, everyone at the front desk seemed to be doing the same thing. Our 1 bedroom was 100 points for Sunday to Thursday total, Friday would have been 48. I paid $301 incl tax or the equivalent of about $6.27 a point. Not much more than maintenance.

 

[jodifla]

If we do weekends, we stay in studio accommodations. But most of our trips are five night affairs. After a long week at work, it's all I can do to get the laundry and packing done on Saturday so we can leave on Sunday.

 

[Dean]

I don't think I've ever read anything official from DVC as to the reason points are so high on weekends. I, and many others, have always postulated that is was due to the weekend usage issue. Remember guides are, by no means, official sources. I dont' know of a points system that is not weighted to weekends being very high. With Bluegreen, they're about 5 times weekdays. I think the two most common visit ploys are to stay for a week or more with one weekend or to stay for just 5 days. Some of those that say 5 days try other DVC hotels and some stay off site such as Universal. Doing long weekends on points is simply insane.

 

[ear_poppin]

I am going for three weeks in Oct staying at Royal Pacific one weekend, SSR for a weekend and Portofino Bay for one weekend...have made the points streeeeeeetch into three weeks that way !

Denise

 

[aikodude]

We usually pay cash through DVC for the Friday and/or Saturday night and don't move.

Please excuse the noob DVCer question (first timer here! but how does that work?

I thought you HAD to stay on points in the DVC hotels? You can pay cash too? Do they have AP rates? What's the typical cost?

Next year I'm thinking of doing the poly on points sun. - thurs. then jumping over to one of the all stars or a moderate for the weekend, but hadn't even considered you could stay in a DVC room for cash.

dave

 

[DebbieB]

CRO does have some rooms available for the DVC resorts. These come from points that DVC owns plus rooms available due to member tradeouts. Also unrented points rooms can be rented through CRO at 60 days prior. OKW usually has the most availability through CRO. I got an AP discount of about 30% for a 1 bedroom. They were running a AP discount on an OKW studio about 40% off.

 

[BWVDee]

We love staying at not only the DVC resorts but also the non DVC resorts at WDW, so we usually start the trip on a Thurs or Fri night and stay at a non DVC resort for 2-3 nights (with a great AP, etc rate) then move to a DVC resort Sun to Thurs or Fri, depending on the length of the trip. If we are spending a second week at WDW then we move out on Fri for 2 nights to another WDW resort and then move back to a different DVC resort for the second week. We have many times stayed in 4 resorts during a 14-16 day period.
We have always stayed at a large variety of WDW resorts, way before there was even a DVC. We really enjoy it. We will always stay at non DVC resorts for a few days here and there, we love them! BWV will most likely always be our favorite WDW resort but there are some other pretty nice WDW resorts out there, that are a whole vacation experience to themselves.

 

[aikodude]

Thanks! It's great to know there are so many options, and so many people thinking the same things. I love staying at the non-DVC resorts too, although that may change after our first trip "home" on Thursday!

 

[Happy Birthday Cat]

The high weekend points give us an excuse to go to Universal and stay at the Hard Riock Hotel for either our first or last weekend in Florida. We normally stay at DVC for 7 nights and begin or end at the HRH.

HBC