Disney Vacation Club

[socalRCfan]

Hello Elissa and Robb,

 

What do you think of the Disney Vacation Club? Have you ever been interested in joining? Anyone have experience with the DVC?

[coasterfreak101]

I couldn't give you too much info on it, I'd have to ask my parents, but we are members. We're actually heading down to Veera Beach (we've already been to WDW and still have half our points left over) in August.

 

From what I can see and from what I hear them saying, they are pleased with it. It's definately a decent amount of money ($18,000 or so), but out timeshare is going to keep us part of the Club until 2042 (that'll make it 36 years total), and each time we go we get free hotel stay.

 

Along with the free hotel stay, there's a decent amount of stores around the resort that offer discounts to Vacation Club Members. I'm pretty sure there's more benefits than just those two, but I'm not sure what exactly they are.

 

To sum that up, you'll save however much money you'd normally spend on Disney resort hotel stay (not too sure about that figure, but I'm assuming well over $1,000) and get verious discounts every time you go. I'm sure that it all adds up in the end, and in 36 years I'm sure you'll get your money's worth!

[BarryH]

DVC is pretty much Disney's version of timeshare. I avoid timeshares like no one's business! I can usually vacation cheaper and have more flexibility using hotel discounts through AAA, Priceline, or Hotwire.

[USRoadTripper]

...and each time we go we get free hotel stay.

 

No, you do NOT get free hotel stays. You have to have an initial buy in of X number of points at however much money per point...there is a minimum, but you buy however many you will need to give you however many days of vacation you will want every year. Keep in mind that the number of points you need for a specific hotel on a specific night varies greatly from one day to the next, and from season to season. On top of your initial buy-in (which is always multiple thousands of dollars) you pay a monthly maintenance fee per point. One person I know pays about $200 PER MONTH just for the maintenance fees on their points.

 

If "free" to you equals not having to shell out one lump sum at check in to pay for your hotel stay, then I guess you can consider it free. But in reality, you are shelling out hundreds of dollars a year for those "free" stays.

 

I'm by no means an expert, but from talking with people I know who own DVC memberships, it would seem that the only time you come out ahead with it is if you always stay at the high end hotels anyway. If you consistently pay over $200 per night for your hotel rooms, you break even much, much faster than if you stay in the value resorts. We did the math a few years ago for my family, and based on how much we normally spend on our hotel rooms (considering that we only stay when we get AP discounts) we determined that we would never break even on it. They also have rules about banking points for use in future years, and borrowing against future years points for use in the current year...it's really complicated, and requires serious number crunching before deciding to join or not.

 

I for one don't think it's worth it, but I know tons of people who say they love it and are very glad they made the investment.

 

-Julie

[mcjaco]

As you stated, you also only get it until 2042. Once that's gone, it's gone.

 

My parents had originally looked into DVC years back and did not like what they heard. They figured if they were going to drop some money on a timeshare, they should be able to keep it, share it with others, and be able to tranfer ownership when their time came. It's exactly why we have timeshares with Marriott now.

[SharkTums]

Robb and I have looked into it pretty seriously. Basically, if we ONLY vacationed at Disney and had the opportunity to go during offpeak times during the year it would pay off big.

 

For us though, it wouldn't pay since we like to go to different places all the time, and quite often we need to visit Disney during high peak times.

[cfc]

My rule of thumb is no time shares--ever! You own nothing yet have the liabilities of ownership, you pay condo-association-like fees, and there's no tax break.