Why Aren't You a DVC Member?

It is the financial end. I can only get to Disney every three to five years. In the future I am considering renting DVC points so I can enjoy staying at a deluxe resort.

We were told by the DVC rep we would not benefit from the program Since we love the FQ so much and would prefer to stay there over any of the other resort he said it would be a waste of money. I have said a million times before we love how small it is there. We don't spend much time at the resort and our son doesn't like Disney.

Though if I was going to buy in I would buy in at Grand Floridian.

It is the yearly maintenance fees that are the main reason I don't purchase. The cost of the maintenance fees alone would pay for a good vacation at a value or moderate resort. Also if there was a global incident (war or terrorism etc.) between now and 2042 or whenever the contract runs out, we may not be able to travel to Disney from UK. Hope that doesn't sound too morbid - I have always had an over active imagination and consider all scenarios!

It used to be finances - paying off the mortgage and university for our son for 5 years pretty much left us poor for a while. We are done with those finally, but now we are , (well, getting there, anyway! ), and we aren't sure how many more trips we will be making. I see at least one or two in our future, but after that, we aren't sure.

Its the overall cost for us. We're planning for an early retirement and dropping that kind of cash now would make it harder to retire when we want to. I may look into renting DVC points though for the next big family trip!

No matter how I look at the numbers they just don't make financial sense for me. While I (it's just me no kids or spouse) do go once or twice a year for at least 8 nights or more my resorts of choice are the value resorts particularly Pop Century. The dues alone would pay for most if not all of one trip each year & the initial buy in amount would pay for one trip a year for many years. Plus, while I love Disney & go there regularly I also like to travel to other places & while you can go other places & even cruise using your DVC the value isn't nearly as good as using your points at DW. I just can't justify spending the amount of money it takes in buy in costs & annual dues when my trips are already very budget friendly & I easily pay cash for them without putting anything on a credit card to pay for them. I prefer to stay at the value resort & eat most if not all of my meals at quick service restaurants. I also usually get an annual pass & schedule a second trip before it expires.

If I would have had a FT job back in the late 1990's I might have bought IN!
My kids were at the right age. But I was a SAH mom so finances didn't allow it. Now, I work FT, my kids are in college and it's just not a fit. BUT, if either of my children wanted to buy somewhere down the road, I could be persuaded to join in.

For me it's the money and the knowledge that there are other things I need to do with it. Even buying resale, for $10-$12K for 160 points, I really should put that money towards new windows, paying off my student loans, or paying off my truck. I actually think the yearly maintenance fees aren't too bad, particularly since you can pay it in monthly installments. BUT if I ever get my financial house in order (or find a rich man with a Disney obsession!) I'm buying in!! I think it would be worth it.

For us it's distance more than anything. It takes us 14 hours of travel to fly to Orlando. Anaheim on the other hand is about 3 hours. But the price per point for Grand Californian is crazy. Resale is about 120. I think I will stick to more frequent trips to Disneyland with a trip every 5 years or so to WDW.

It just has not made financial sense to us AND we want to travel to other places. While WDW is the only vacation spot I hit as a kid every single year, I would like to see other places. I cannot get over the maintenance fees either. As others have posted, it will pay for a vacation in itself. We will probably only visit every few years now so it would not be worth it.

So top reasons:

1. Maintenance fees (that go up yearly!)

2. Wanting to see other destinations

Plus, I can rent someone else's points and let them pay the maintenance fees!

Everyone keeps talking about maintenance fees. What is the average for monthly fees. I know it depends on the resort and the amount of points but I am curious. Lets say AKV 150 points.

AKV right now is 5.67 per point every year.

We normally stay at Value resorts so the cost of DVC isn't worth it for us. Plus, I can't see dropping all that money when we have a mortgage to pay off and plan to start a family in the next couple of years. However, for some reason it really appeals to me even though there is no savings We plan on looking into it (probably resale) once we get the house paid off. We are also discussing renting points in the near future to see what DVC is like.

For me its financial. I can't afford it, although i do dream about coming into a huge amount of money and just buying however many points i wanted Also, the flights from the UK are so expensive that even if i was a dvc owner, there is no guarantee i could afford to fly over. Atm, we visit once every 3 years for 2 weeks but who knows, when my dds are older and i go back to full time work then dvc may be a real possibilty.

It's DH and I's goal to stay at every resort at least once. With our plan to stay at such a variety of resorts, DVC doesn't make sense for us. Now if they had an option that would allow you to use points at Values and Moderates and it was more of a system to save/budget for a Disney vacation each year we'd be more likely to buy in. But I totally understand why DVC is the way it is now.

We own three weeks of non-Disney timeshares. We bought all three as resales for less than $2,000 each (resales cost even less than that these days). For the cost of our annual maintenance fees we can go almost anywhere we want, including exchanging into DVC properties. We stayed at Old Key West last year and are going to Sarasota Springs this fall. So I really can't see paying the premium to own DVC.

I would say that for us it was always financial. I honestly never even looked into it because knowing how much a single trip costs, I never thought we'd be able to afford to purchase DVC. I also didn't think we'd use it much after our son left home.
However, we went to DL last year and now we're planning a huge trip to DW this year and we suspect we'll enjoy it just as much or even more as adults only. In fact, we've already talked about our trip next year.
So we've been seriously looking at becoming members and we plan to take the tour, etc in October when we're there. Still not sure if we'll bite the bullet, but I guess I figure if we're paying X amount of dollars to go every year, we might as well just roll those dollars into being owners (I think we would be 3/4 of the way paid off by now, judging on what we've spent the past two years). Then we'd only have to pay the big fees for a few years and after that, it would just be the maintenance fees and any exchange fees. We'd drive & bring more food in, so that would balance out the fees we're spending on air flights and dining plans. Looking at it, the maintenance fees are a couple thousand dollars less than what I anticipate we'd spend every year. That just makes financial sense to me. So we might end up being owners anyway.

It's great to hear that the DVC reps are honest because I'd really like to be able to lay out what we spent last year, what we spent this year, and figure out with them if that's the best way to go.

Coming up with that initial fee is stopping us. We were truly going to do it last year while we at the WDW. We figure this is definitely something that we will pass down to the grandson, but at that time, we had just, and I do mean just, 1 day before our trip, moved to another state so finance were definitely unsettled at that point. Now, I'm just trying to get through these college courses I signed up for, so it will be another few years before we even approach it again.

Our current discussions are dues as we will be retired and old by the time the contract ends....if dues were frozen it would be easier to budget...that being said we will most likely buy and if money becomes an issue later we will sell. It just appeals to me to be an owner

Being an owner is why I bought myself one share of Disney stock.

HA HA! We also own one share of stock. I bought it for Joe on our first anniversary. It's the "paper" anniversary and I couldn't think of any better paper gift to get.

Its good to take the tour and actually look at the numbers. They don't pressure you into buying. That's always my recommendation. Go through the tour and look at the numbers to decide if its the right fit for your family or future family.

Great gift idea My husband got me one share of Disney for my birthday one year. I framed my first "dividend check" and hung it under the certificate. Now Disney's books will be off by $.60 forevah!!! mwahahahaha!!!

My hubby did the same for me for our first anniversary

We did get stopped by a rep in HS while we were there. He was very nice and just asked us if we had ever thought about it. When we told him that we didn't think it was financially a good move for us because we probably wouldn't get to come but about every 3ish years, he actually agreed with us and said that if we were not going to come yearly, it wouldn't be a good fit for us.

I was impressed that he was so honest and he still gave me stickers!

My reasons are the same as the others. We want to travel other places, so it will probably be about every 3 years for us.

We went on the tour on our last trip and were seriously considering buying in especially because my fiance's mother loves Disney too and would have probably bought in with us, but we didn't pull the trigger because it did not make financial sense for us at the time. We liked the idea that we could use our points to stay at other places besides Disney (we do want to travel to other countries as well as making trips back to Disney), but again, it just didn't seem to fit in with our budget. Maybe down the road when I am done with my degree and am making the BIG money....LOL, yeah in my dreams! For now, we will settle with renting points to still experience a Deluxe resort.

For us it is all about money. We are annual pass holders and in 2014 it is our goal to spend at least 50 days at Disney World~ That means at least 25 nights in Orlando. It would cost thousands of dollars for us to own enough DVC to cover that.

I am a "couponaholic" so I belong to some amazing coupon sites. I regularly book 4 star hotels(OMNI, Rosen Shingle Creek, and Melia, are some of our favorites) between $60-$85/night, with perks like food credits, room upgrades, or no resort fees. If we owned DVC we would have to cut our time at Disney in half, or even less than that. For us, more time at Disney World definitely wins over owning DVC.

For our 10 year anniversary in a few years, we want to rent points and stay at a Deluxe Disney Resort