DVC: all POINTS bulletin

@DisneyJean plus if you do a tour thingy you get a free icecream! anything free in Disney is for me! If you go any DVC site you can basicaly figure out the different seasons and point totals required for each day. It really is a good deal for a larger room with a kitchen.

My parents bought our first 100 points, so I wasn’t there for that sale, but when they asked me to consider joining their contract and adding on 50 points, I got the tour. They were selling at AKL pretty much exclusively at the time (I don’t think they sold as quickly as they were hoping at that resort since they were still selling there for a number of years after that).

Anyway, I enjoyed our conversation and the run through of the program. At no point did I feel rushed or pushed, in fact I felt rather comfortable. I thought that was a rather refreshing and clever sales tactic of theirs But anyway, our agent hid nothing about costs or financing or dues. He broke down our no-nonsense monthly cost for us and at the end I was ready to sign on. Then came the ice cream, fastpasses and the private ride to wherever we went from there (I don’t recall where we were headed afterward). :mickey:

It all turned out exactly as explained. I have absolutely no regrets about joining and if I had the cash to spare, I’d be delighted to go through it all and add on again and again.

@DisneyJean – Definitely go to the tour for the free ice cream and Fast Passes. Just keep in mind that if you want prime location for Food and Wine, you’ll want to consider Boardwalk Villas or Beach Club Villas via resale instead of buying direct (since they’ll likely be selling Polynesian, Aulani, and Copper Creek Villas at Wilderness Lodge). Outside of the home resort, where you actually own & you get 11 month booking priority, you have to wait until 7 months out to book. Boardwalk and Beach Club will both fill up quickly, with little availability at 7 months out during Food and Wine.

That being said, we own at the Polynesian, and are super happy with our decision. I’ve been looking at buying DVC for a couple of years, but never discussed it in any detail with my wife. On one of our last trips, we took a tour, and that gave us a chance to actually discuss. I’d done the research, but my wife is the accountant. Literally. She is an accountant for a living. She ran the numbers, and we ended up buying.

@Mr.TomMorrow – They do give you the Gold Annual Pass at the same price as Florida Residents. I know that only helps if you go enough to justify the Annual Pass, but it’s better than nothing.

I wouldn’t mind having just the flexibility of a monthly payment that they offer to FL residents for APs. It would be easier to digest than the several hundred per pass in a single payment.

I’m very late to this post but I would like to share our experiences. We actually bought resale Old Key West before they changed some of the benefit rules. We love the fact that we can stay at resorts that would otherwise be way out of our price range. We have been fortunate to have enough points that we’re not usually worried about borrowing, but recently we had an experience where we wanted to cancel a night of a reservation as well as book a last minute night. (Saying farewell to Ellen and Great Movie Ride) Somehow it was showing that we had to borrow a bunch of points on their end but we were seeing enough points from the website. Long and confusing story later, it was fixed but not without finding out that banked points were not allocated correctly so they wouldn’t be able to be used. The cast member was great and helpful but I still don’t understand why it has to be so complicated. Since we used our 11 month window and planned our trips ahead we were actually going to get screwed out of our excess banked points. Next time we bank points we now have to call them to reallocate them to already made reservations.

We really have enjoyed our membership though. We like the home feel with at least a partial kitchen, limited housekeeping services, and free access to laundry. We have our favorite places (mine is the Boardwalk), and we are working our way through all of the DVC options.

Last I’ll leave a little extra suggestion/tip. We spent the money on the purple box and absolutely love it. It’s worth it to not have to worry about toiletries, ponchos, sunscreen in the winter, over the counter medicine, condiments and snacks etc. DVC members still get a discount I believe and the service has more than paid for itself. How much time and extra money wasted buying what you inevitably forgot is gone now and your packing list is much less! I have a list of everything in the box with expiration dates for items that comes home with me so that I can replenish anything in between trips. Highly recommended looking into it!