Would You Purchase?

[timandjanl]

I'm curious what you DVCers would do... I have 2 small boys and plan on more kids. My husband and I love disney and are considering a purchase in DVC with VGF as our home resort (we want something close to MK). One of the primary reasons we find DVC attractive is b/c we want to be able to vacation with family and friends and we see this as an economical way to do that. Most of the time our family and friends cannot afford to stay at a deluxe hotel. If that we're your only or primary reason for purchasing DVC do you think it would be worth it? Thanks!

 

[Msmithmd]

If you have cash on hand to afford the points you need, if you're comfortable you will continue frequent vacations at Disney for decades, and if you are okay paying the premium to stay on-property DVC, versus off-property nearby timeshares or hotels- then yes, it may well be for you. Be certain that $150/pt at VGF is right for you, versus a resale at another resort which can vary from $60-100 depending on location.

The end of your post is an interesting scenario that comes up from time to time. If you mean that you'd rent points to friends and family, or at least split costs with them, then good for you. If you mean you'd have them stay with you "for free," then two things are true:

1. I want to be your friend...

2. You should be equally willing to pay for their lodging when you vacation elsewhere. Because understand clearly that the maintenance fees over the next 50 years are much larger than your initial purchase price. There is no such thing as bringing along friends and family "for free." Your wallet won't know if you bought them a separate room on a trip, or just bought more DVC points.

Some people seem to get a different mentality when it's "points in a timeshare" versus just paying cash for an extra room. So think that through completely before you decide.

All that said, I have brought my parents with us to enjoy parks with our kids. Babysitting while wife and I go to night EMH or TOWL: money well spent!

Good luck...

 

[timandjanl]

Thanks for the thoughts. We have the cash and love disney. I think my husbands biggest concern is feeling like we would be obligated to go every yr or every other yr. I am totally fine with that. It makes us take a vacation which we don't always do. If we can't go for some reason and our banked points would expire we could always rent them or let friends or family use them that yr right?

As for taking friends and family, when we go places with them we sometimes wind up footing part of the cost to stay at a nicer place. So I was thinking we would be able to use points to get them a room with us. Or a 2 bedroom we could share.

 

[bakerworld]

You're still in the 'building' stage with your family so match it with your DVC. Buy re-sale at BLT. Start with a smallish contract for your family/friends size - say 160 to 250. See what develops because you can always add on. This way you can always borrow or bank to allow every other year usage without paying a ton on annual dues.

You can stroller the kids over - future progeny replace the present stroller inmates - and you've the monorail for 'adult' time. In-room dining plus eateries without having to walk outside to the 'main' building. Pirates club leave from docks next door.

It's a nice shimmy in without a killer outlay

 

[timandjanl]

Good tips!! I have been eyeing BLT as well. Buying resale scares me a bit. Is there a resale site you recommend?

 

[DizBub]

Nothing economical about buying VGF especially if you need the points for a 2 bedroom every year. 340 points standard view for a week in Sept (lowest point time) versus 239 at SSR. If you want to go in the summer it would be 468 points at VGF versus 315 at SSR. You could get a Grand Villa at OKW for 349 points in Sept or Jan to accommodate more people.

I agree with a previous poster, buy BLT resale.....save roughly $17,000 if you do buy 350 points. Buy SSR resale and you could save $24,000 over VGF. THAT'S enonomical.

 

[Dean]

I'm curious what you DVCers would do... I have 2 small boys and plan on more kids. My husband and I love disney and are considering a purchase in DVC with VGF as our home resort (we want something close to MK). One of the primary reasons we find DVC attractive is b/c we want to be able to vacation with family and friends and we see this as an economical way to do that. Most of the time our family and friends cannot afford to stay at a deluxe hotel. If that we're your only or primary reason for purchasing DVC do you think it would be worth it? Thanks!

I don't see enough info here to know if DVC is a good choice for you or even Disney most every year. GF certainly won't be a savings for you, it might (or might not) give you a controlled price on nice vacations. I think it's a mistake to buy DVC with the hope that you'll like Disney most years and an even a bigger mistake to buy GF to use for access to the system and only stay there a small % of the time. As described, DVC will cost you a lot of money, not save money. DVC can save money over paying cash for a deluxe room but mostly with a studio or 2 BR compared to 2 hotel rooms. Buying to bring family and friends will simply cost money even for the cheaper resorts, far more money at GF. Your choice of course, we do it all the time, just realize you're not going to save enough with DVC to have savings and do a lot of sharing both, esp at GF.

 

[timandjanl]

Thank you for all the thoughts. Our current plan is to visit WDW or one of the other DVC properties at least every other year with the intention of banking points so that we have 2 years worth of points to use at a time. We may wind up going every year, but for now we aren't ready to mentally commit to that. We do have the cash on hand so we wouldn't have to finance. I've spent a lot of time pricing week-long vacations at several of the DVC deluxe villas/resorts and it typically winds up being at least $6k (including park tickets). Part of our thinking is that doing that every other year is going to add up to a lot more than the cost of DVC and we'd be vacationing by ourselves most likely. If we wanted friends and family to go we'd have to stay at a value resort. Have any of you purchase your DVC membership through the resale market? I have seen a few websites offering them for resale, but it does make me a little nervous. My understanding is that resale purchases do not get all of the benefits of a person who purchases directly through Disney. When I talked to a guide a couple days ago he told me we could get on a wait list for BLT and that they had had some openings come up recently for that one.

 

[bakerworld]

Thank you for all the thoughts. Our current plan is to visit WDW or one of the other DVC properties at least every other year with the intention of banking points so that we have 2 years worth of points to use at a time. We may wind up going every year, but for now we aren't ready to mentally commit to that. We do have the cash on hand so we wouldn't have to finance. I've spent a lot of time pricing week-long vacations at several of the DVC deluxe villas/resorts and it typically winds up being at least $6k (including park tickets). Part of our thinking is that doing that every other year is going to add up to a lot more than the cost of DVC and we'd be vacationing by ourselves most likely. If we wanted friends and family to go we'd have to stay at a value resort. Have any of you purchase your DVC membership through the resale market? I have seen a few websites offering them for resale, but it does make me a little nervous. My understanding is that resale purchases do not get all of the benefits of a person who purchases directly through Disney. When I talked to a guide a couple days ago he told me we could get on a wait list for BLT and that they had had some openings come up recently for that one.

Dean - you want to step in??

 

[timandjanl]

Did I say something stupid BakerWorld?

 

[DizBub]

We have bought direct and resale. Resale buyers are treated no different than direct buyers. The restrictions are that you cannot cruise DCL, use Disney Collection, Concierge Collection or Adventures By Disney with resale points. All these are considered poor uses of DVC points.

Resale takes a couple of months to get through the process but the savings are well worth the wait. Our direct contracts are at BLT but we bought when the prices were around $100 per point, roughly the price of resales now. Today BLT prices are $165 per point direct from Disney.

I was also very leery of buying resale but read as much as I could on this board and others and after hearing mostly good news decided to take a chance. We are very happy with our resale purchase and actively looking for another.

 

[Dean]

Dean - you want to step in??

Sure but with the intent of helping them think and make the best choices they can for their situation.

Thank you for all the thoughts. Our current plan is to visit WDW or one of the other DVC properties at least every other year with the intention of banking points so that we have 2 years worth of points to use at a time. We may wind up going every year, but for now we aren't ready to mentally commit to that. We do have the cash on hand so we wouldn't have to finance. I've spent a lot of time pricing week-long vacations at several of the DVC deluxe villas/resorts and it typically winds up being at least $6k (including park tickets). Part of our thinking is that doing that every other year is going to add up to a lot more than the cost of DVC and we'd be vacationing by ourselves most likely. If we wanted friends and family to go we'd have to stay at a value resort. Have any of you purchase your DVC membership through the resale market? I have seen a few websites offering them for resale, but it does make me a little nervous. My understanding is that resale purchases do not get all of the benefits of a person who purchases directly through Disney. When I talked to a guide a couple days ago he told me we could get on a wait list for BLT and that they had had some openings come up recently for that one.

I still see a lot of unknown's here, esp whether you have enough Disney history/experience to have a good feel for what your long term habits/wants might be. A lot of people go a time or 2, either stay on property or wished they had and then look at DVC assuming they'll have as much fun every time for the next 30 years. Some don't, others do.

I don't know your situation nor do I want to in detail, but the statements of having the cash on hand (which also implies to me you don't have other debt) and only being able to do values (even with guests) doesn't fit together very well. If this is a one time windfall situation I'd be very cautious.

As for resale, there are restrictions. IMO, none of them reduce the true and real value of DVC. Put another way, the options lost with resale in almost all cases would cost you money if you used them rather than saving you money. The few that wouldn't are simply neutral and not guaranteed. NONE of them would save you money over simply buying less DVC points and paying cash for the other options (DCL, ABD, etc). If you're set on the MK area for MOST trips, I'd look at BLT resale. If you just want to stay there part of the time and try all the resorts, I'd consider other cheaper options like SSR for even more savings but with some compromises.

I think you're making a mistake comparing the price of a full trip including tickets to DVC. Your best comparison, IMO, is room only compared to what you would pay if you were going on cash (value, moderate or deluxe).

I'd spend time figuring out what you want to do and what's best for you. IMO, that usually takes several months of active investigation. As a rule, I'd rather see someone underbuy (lower resort, less points) than overbuy. IF you decide to proceed, I think it's far better to buy at a cheaper WDW resort (assuming WDW is the goal) than to overbuy. Get comfortable with the resale process, paying thousands for a false sense of security might not be the best choice.

 

[Dasha Hermosilla]

OP- you did nothing wrong.... From what I have experienced Dean is the person who most often steps up to the plate for the resale vs Direct analysis. Don't worry about it.

I will say... We bought direct and while yes we could have saved more money with resale- we just did not have it in us. Maybe for an add on, but we bought direct, booked a trip a couple months later and never looked back. Waiting and watching and bidding was not going to suit our vacation and personal time needs. But... Everyone is different. We also bought more than we "need" for our immediate family each year - my husband wants to be able to bring family along (at no cost to them) often, so you are not alone in that either. We are new purchasers but so far we are very happy and I expect we will be for the foreseeable future.

 

[timandjanl]

Thanks Dean. You are obviously a veteran w/ all this stuff and I appreciate your helpful thoughts. I grew up in FL and had annual passes as a kid. My husband and I both have visited WDW several times and do love it. It has something for everyone in our opinion and we really want to be able to share the experience with our boys throughout their childhood.

I can see how my comments about staying at value resorts w/ friends and family may have been confusing. The reason we'd have to stay there is b/c those are the only resorts most of them could afford if they are paying for the trip themselves. There is no way most of them could afford to stay at a Deluxe resort with us. We usually compromise on the accomodations b/c we really enjoy vacationing with family and friends. I had hoped that with a DVC membership one of the ways we could use it would be to "pay" for a few people to vacation with us ocasionally by using points for their room.

I am definitely going to keep an eye on the boards and check out the resale market. We have been considering a DVC purchase for several months now, but I've really only started actively investigating over th last month and I keep going back and forth on the pros and cons and whether it's right for us right now. We will most likely be planning a Disney vacation for 2014 so we may wind up doing our research and then visiting with a DVC guide again when we go next year. I am really intrigued about BLT now. We have stayed at SSR before (not a villa though) and thought it was very nice. My only concern w/ buying there would be not being able to get a room at one of the other properties w/ only the 7 month window. Anyway - thanks again. I'm sure I'll be posting more questions in the future and I'll try not to be repetitive!

 

[k3chantal]

I'm curious what you DVCers would do... I have 2 small boys and plan on more kids. My husband and I love disney and are considering a purchase in DVC with VGF as our home resort (we want something close to MK). One of the primary reasons we find DVC attractive is b/c we want to be able to vacation with family and friends and we see this as an economical way to do that. Most of the time our family and friends cannot afford to stay at a deluxe hotel. If that we're your only or primary reason for purchasing DVC do you think it would be worth it? Thanks!

This was not the reason we bought but it is what we do. We get a two bedroom villa and have another family come with us. They buy their own airfare, tickets and food and we 'give' them the accommodations to share with us. For us, we enjoy the addition adult company and our kids enjoy their friends.

So would I do it if it was the primary reason....... hmmm, as long as your friends and family do not 'expect' to go all the time. You must always remember, that they 'will not get the gift you have just given'. I am not saying that in an 'unkind' way. There's no way. With one set of friends that we have taken; their financial situation is not ours and they can't afford a what we can. Half way through the vacation, I realized that the enormity of the gift was lost on them. We enjoyed them and their family and had a great trip; but I learned though to not expect an epiphany to occur from their side.

 

[Dean]

Thanks Dean. You are obviously a veteran w/ all this stuff and I appreciate your helpful thoughts. I grew up in FL and had annual passes as a kid. My husband and I both have visited WDW several times and do love it. It has something for everyone in our opinion and we really want to be able to share the experience with our boys throughout their childhood.

I can see how my comments about staying at value resorts w/ friends and family may have been confusing. The reason we'd have to stay there is b/c those are the only resorts most of them could afford if they are paying for the trip themselves. There is no way most of them could afford to stay at a Deluxe resort with us. We usually compromise on the accomodations b/c we really enjoy vacationing with family and friends. I had hoped that with a DVC membership one of the ways we could use it would be to "pay" for a few people to vacation with us ocasionally by using points for their room.

I am definitely going to keep an eye on the boards and check out the resale market. We have been considering a DVC purchase for several months now, but I've really only started actively investigating over th last month and I keep going back and forth on the pros and cons and whether it's right for us right now. We will most likely be planning a Disney vacation for 2014 so we may wind up doing our research and then visiting with a DVC guide again when we go next year. I am really intrigued about BLT now. We have stayed at SSR before (not a villa though) and thought it was very nice. My only concern w/ buying there would be not being able to get a room at one of the other properties w/ only the 7 month window. Anyway - thanks again. I'm sure I'll be posting more questions in the future and I'll try not to be repetitive!

Thanks for the additional info and perspective. I'd suggest you consider renting privately for your next trip to allow you to experience the DVC resort experience before committing. We do a family trip about every other year on average. We get the accommodations and invite family on our dime. We had 28 or 29 at HH (Marriott OF six 2 BR villas) this summer, 40 in Nashville 1.5 yrs ago and 36 in Gatlinburg a few years ago along with some slightly smaller trips starting 1998. We've only done Disney with a larger group twice but many times with friends/family on a smaller scale. Our most expensive option we've done has been HH. When we've done Disney, it was on a somewhat smaller scale (1999 with free passes) and several exchanges in through RCI (nine 1 & 2 BR 3 or 4 years ago). To do the family trip at WDW staying at DVC using points would by far be our most expensive option to date.

When we plan trips, we make every effort not to control other people's vacations. I require one meal together, no drama, everyone behave; after that you're on your own to spend as much or little time with the group as you want. I'd have to say though this summer's HH trip was our best vacation ever and the Nashville one before that the best to that point. We have great family and enjoy spending time with them that we would not be able to do otherwise. It's also our way of giving back to the family.

I'd far rather see one make a mistake underbuying than overbuying. If you must be at GF most trips, buy there, possibly a fixed week. If you simply must be at MK, consider BLT or possibly VWL. Of course there are many in between options such as buying some points now say SSR and then using that to gauge future options.

 

[e46m3]

I would go for it. Life is too short.

 

[DvF Diva]

When you wrote your description, you could have been describing me about a month ago!

I thought about buying DVC back when we booked our first trip to WDW with DS (DH and I had gone one time together years back early in our marriage), but decided to stay at the actual resort before buying. *Wish we had known about renting points because we would've saved at least $1000 over cash reservation, and had the benefits of being DVC members during the stay (we never use mousekeeping services, so that didn't seem like a loss to us).* I too plan to have family&friends join us here and there for WDW trips.

We picked BLT because you can walk to MK and, being stroller bound with a 28 month old, we loved having that alternative to the buses, boats or monorail. The only other park we visited was AK on this trip. As DS grows older, he will become interested in HS and Epcot...but not quite there yet.

We loved BLT and would definitely love it as our home base for the next few years, especially if we have (more) little ones who nap. I predict that we will eventually want a different home base, but since would never mind staying here (even the decor suits us!), we chose BLT to buy, and we can always try for other resorts at 7-month mark every so often.

The reason I bought was because I think we'd go every year or every other year, and would want to stay on property. Once DS is older and more interested in places like US or IOA, we can stay off property every so often using my parents' RCI weeks and points. I figured that buying into DVC would not be a "waste of money", since I would be spending the same (and probably more) staying at these very resorts. And with such a solid resale and rental market, you could always rent your points or sell your contract, if need be.

I just submitted a signed contract on a BLT resale. Veteran resale buyers would probably laugh at me for how much I paid, but I really wanted this particular resale contract and didn't want to drag out negotiations since we leave for vacation tomorrow. I had wanted this particular UY, liked the contract set-up and number of points, and the offering was pretty straightforward: almost all of the 2013 pts were intact and none from future years had been touched. I also offered to pay all closing and most of maintenance. Given the rather high $pp, I am hoping it means this will more likely pass ROFR. It just seemed the right fit for us and I didn't want to not get it.

Purchasing resale was so smooth (so far). I liked the listing, asked for info, made an offer, counter-offered, and then accepted. Easy contract to sign and then deposit sent. Once in escrow, goes to Disney for ROFR. Hopefully, the brokers, sellers and I have everything in order and I can start booking our next vacation by October!

IMHO, one gets more bang for the buck buying resale. If you were thinking you might exchange pts for a cruise or to stay at one of the international locations or at one of the non-DVC resorts, then you might want to buy direct. If you weren't going to use points for the latter, then I encourage you to look at the resales. For me, there were two particular Use Year that I preferred, and with resales, one gets to "choose" by just looking at whats for sale with your desired UY. That said, if you can't find one contract large enough for your points needs, you may have to buy multiple in the end. The three or four resale sites recommended by people here are really great. And as people on most DVC forums will tell you, if you love DVC, you may end up buying more points at other resorts, so you start multiplying your 11-month window booking options and your point collection can keep growing with your family and needs.

Feel free to contact me if you want to discuss some more of this in detail. I just figure that since you're going through the same thought process that I just went through, I could share my reasoning and my recent purchase experience with you (I bought through Resales DVC because they had the contract I liked most. I was looking at two other contracts listed through other sites, too).

 

[timandjanl]

DvFDiva - I tried to message you but I have to have 10 posts first. LOL. Anyway, here is what I was going to message you:

Thank you so much for the very helpful information!! I really think this would be worth it for us in the long run. However, one of the reasons we were thinking of doing this is to occasionally use points for a cruise or a non-DVC property somewhere in the US (realizing that you don't get as much bang for your buck of course). My understanding w/ resale is that you can't do that. We would be "limited" to DVC properties, which isn't necessarily a deal breaker given what we could save in the resale market. I need to do some more research on that issue.

Do you mind telling me which resale website you used? We have been discussing this w/ some friends and ideally I would like to rent points w/ those friends next year (probably rent a 2 bedroom villa and split the cost of it). That way we can check it out, get more info, and enjoy a trip w/ friends. I may think of additional questions if you don't mind. Congrats on your purchase!

 

[timandjanl]

Sorry - just saw that you purchased through resales dvc. Thanks!