Disney vs Resale Advice

I have bought five times and sold once. Two of my purchases were direct and three were resales. I have used the Timeshare Store and Fidelity. Both were very good and easy. I have no interest in using points for Disney Cruises or The Adventurers Collection as it is a very bad use of points. At this point, unless I were buying at Beach Club again and wanted a certain number of points and use year, I would be crazy to buy direct. It is the exact same product for 1/2 price.

If you have to have Poly or GF and can't wait for resales to show up, that is about the only reason I can think of to buy direct.

We used Resales by DVC and the transaction was VERY easy. I would highly recommend doing resale because of exactly what the Colonel said--it's a terrible use of points to use your points for DCL, adventures by Disney, or RCI exchange and those are the only benefits that you sacrifice. You are better off to rent your points to someone and use the money from the rental to apply toward your vacation.

If you buy resale, you do have to go through the Right of First Refusal, which means that if your offer is too low, Disney can buy the contract back from the seller and then resell it themselves for a higher price. The ROFR process is not difficult at all and the resale company handles the entire matter, but it is one layer of approvals that will delay your settlement. I think we submitted out contract sometime in mid-november last year and we officially settled right around Christmas.

As far as the math, we bought 200 Saratoga points for $60/point. Based on the time left on the contract when we purchased and current annual dues, I figured out that each point that we use costs us roughly $6 in current dollars. This means that if we have a year when we can't take a vacation, we could rent out our points via David's Vacation Rentals which pays $8 per point. SO renting all of our points for a given year would net us $400 profit. I think knowing your lifetime point cost is important because the vacation points are an asset that you can either use for your enjoyment or rent to others to generate income. If that potential income is positive, you win! Another important part of this equation is whether or not you have the cash to purchase because financing will significantly increase your cost per point. Also, I would try to buy in somewhere where the dues are less than $5 per point and if you intend to use most of your points in WDW, don't buy Hilton Head or Vero Beach for the cheaper buy-in because a) the dues will eat you alive and b) sometimes you can get a reservation at a non-home resort at the 7-month mark and then again, sometimes you can't. It depends on what you want.

Home resort is important for some people, but unless you always book your vacation more than 7 months ahead and you want to stay at the Wilderness Lodge for Christmas every single year, I don't see the location of the resort as being an important factor. I wasn't crazy about Saratoga Springs as a location and I got very nervous when I wasn't able to switch on our very first trip, but we have two trips booked in the spring and we switched on to Boardwalk and one to Old Key West. We're hoping to switch our trip for next fall to either Bay Lake Tower or Grand Floridian.

For us, we were able to find a contract that made financial sense all by itself, but there are some great benefits that come along regardless of who you purchase your contract from. For starters, we got a Premium Annual Pass for $399/person--just $74 more than a 10-day park ticket with no park hopper. I understand that the PAP was a special promotion, but there are always discounts on annual passes for DVC members. There are also some dining discounts, tour discounts (if you don't already have a Disney VISA), and other perks.

Wow that got really long really fast...I'm not a timeshare fan at all and we debated over buying DVC for about two years. I looked at the math from every possible angle and when it came right down to it, the risk was very minimal on the contract that we decided to make an offer on and it ended up being kind of a no-brainer. We have our first trip on points coming up in just 14 days!!

That is exactly the way we use our DVC points also.

I just wanted to echo what the others said. I bought once resale and once direct (as we added on at the grand ) but resale is the way to go if you ask me!

I forgot the Golden Rule... buy where you want to stay.

If you ever want to stay in a club level room or a value room at AKL you have to own there pretty much, worth thinking about!

Hi Spook, One of the great things about DVC is the ability to bank and borrow points. Bear with me if I don't have your example exactly correct, but let's say that you have an August use year and you are allocated 100 points on August 1, 2013. You will also be allocated 100 points on August 1, 2014 and August 1, 2015, so for any trip that you take from August 1, 2014-July 31, 2015, you could have access to up to 300 points.

Let's say that you stay with DVC in January of 2014 and use 60 points. (Balance remaining = 40 points; You must bank these points by April 1, 2014 -4 months prior to the start of your new use year- to avoid losing them) You want to take a trip the following April (2015) that will cost 212 points. You would reserve this trip at a non-home resort in September 2014. The DVC reservation system will automatically use your 40 banked points from 2013, then your 100 points from your 2014 allocation, then it will ask you to confirm that you want to borrow 72 points from your August 2015 contract.

Point availability is determined by the dates of the trip, not by the dates of the booking. For example, I can't borrow my 2015 March use year points for a trip next month, but I can borrow them for a trip that I book starting any date after March 1, 2014. Basically, you are able to access up to 3-years worth of points at a time, so if you only book DVC once every 3 years, a 100 point contract essentially gives you 300 points to play with per vacation. It's kind of confusing to think about, but it's a pretty slick system and there aren't a bunch of change fees and hidden costs like there seem to be with some of the other time share products on the market.

No you can book your home resort 11 months out, other DVC resorts 7 months out as long as points will be available when you travel. And with borrowing ( as I always am) your points for say, October 2015, are available oct 1 2014. Today you can make a reservation at your home resort for October 18, 2014 using your Oct 2015 points that you borrowed.

Just a note here - When you're figuring out how many points that you need to buy, don't count on being able to get a value room at AKL. There are only a handful of them and they go really quickly, so when if that's what you want you need to book it right at 11 months even in slow season.

Yes you can still buy one time use points x

at 7 months out

Colonel, may I ask why the Golden Rule is to buy where you want to stay? I understand the reservation time difference between 7 and 11 months. But are there any other concerns with buying at a one of the resorts while staying at a different resort. Some of the resale sites currently look to have great deals at Saratoga Springs. I believe our resort of choice would be to stay at either the Beach Club or Boardwalk because of their proximity to Epcot and Hollywood Studios. Thanks for any advice.

If you ever want to go for Christmas week or some other high demand week and you want to stay at one of the better resorts, you will probably not be able to get in at 7 months.

BCV and BWV are not an easy reservation at 7 months for any holiday or during F&W. I like to go during F&W and I wouldn't want to stay anywhere else.

Also, although highly unlikely, Disney can change the 7 months and 11 months and make it 7 months and 3 months- really whatever they want to do. They could change the home resort advantage in any way they can justify.

Although I don't agree, some view the ability to trade to non-home resorts as a perk. If it is a "perk", Disney can withdraw or modify that at any time. Or have black-out periods, etc. Then you would be stuck at SSR.

Peace of mind. I know, as long as I make my plans 11 months in advance, I can get BCV or BWV. I don't have to worry about being stuck at SSR or elsewhere. That is worth something to me. I don't want to settle for whatever is available.

If you don't mind where you stay SSR is probably the best buy. I am trying to find a BWV bargain add-on right now myself.

Thank you. I never gave any thought to Disney changing those timelines. But that is a good point. We'll keep that in mind for sure while we shop.

Ooooh do I hear an add on coming Ray?

I'm making bids all over the place, but it's a sellers market at the moment. Something will come through.

True Story.

I was told by a friend who has DVC that they never have trouble booking at 7 months and switching resorts. Based on the difference in price and dues, we decided that SSR would be fine for us. What I didn't realize is that my friend usually goes for 4-5 days and often reserves a 1-2 BR, which gives her many more options for availability. We could not switch anywhere (without doing a split stay) for our 11-day trip at the beginning of December. It's a low point time and is a time with tons of seasonal extras. We were staying for a long time and we had to have a studio so we could ration our points for 2014: the year of the three trips.

For our 5-day trips in April and May, no problem switching at all (one we switched to OKW, so that doesn't really count bc they have lots of availability, too). It takes more points to book then (less popular for other DVC members to book), we're taking shorter trips, and we needed a 1-BR for April and a 2-BR for May. We can switch for our September/October trip next Tuesday, so we'll see how that one goes.

It turns out that we like SSR just fine, so on the trips that we can't switch, we'll be perfectly happy staying there (knowing how much less it cost us then buying somewhere where I would have originally preferred to own).

I've had 100% successs on the waitlist. The two times I sayed at SSR were last minute things. But all in all- I would rather pay an extra $10 ppt and get what I want.

To me there is such a difference between at week at BCV and a week at SSR that it makes it worth it.

I used to own HHI points that I bought for $39- I used them at BW and BC. Then I sold them for $65 and bought BW points. I like the peace of mind.