How I learned to stop worrying about the cost and love DVC
I’ve written a couple of times about Disney Vacation Club (DVC) and while crunching numbers, I found it to not really be worth the money invested in it. Well, I’ve recently come across a change of heart and am now in the process of buying my first DVC contract. Here’s what changed my mind.
The biggest change of heart came from our recent trip to the Aulani. I have to say this is a wonderful resort. Also, my kids are getting older now and they are starting to refine their travelling tastes. Amusement parks are fun, but there is so much out there to experience and they are starting to realize that. Hawaii, is one place that we can all agree is a must-return-to destination. And the Aulani was simply the icing on the cake to that trip. It’s a beautiful resort located in the beautiful Ko’ Olina area of Oahu. I often find myself wanting to return and spend more time there.
The other reason I find myself changing my mind on DVC is the age of my children. They’re getting older. Something that I had never really given much thought to even though I knew it to be inevitable. I now have a teenage boy and a pre-teen girl. So, the sharing of beds that was so common on all of our previous trips is starting to become uncomfortable. A standard hotel room is at best two queens meaning my wife and me in one bed and the kids in the other. In just a few short years I’ll be looking at renting two rooms or a suite to give everyone the space they need. At Disney both of those prospects are pricey ones.
So, here’s my solution. Buy into DVC and when we go to the parks or someday Hawaii, we can stay in a one or two bedroom villa for a reasonable price. But making sure it is a reasonable price is truly the goal here.
Since staying at the Aulani is one of my chief goals for this plan, I’ll start there. I explained in one of my previous post that you could pay a lot less than retail to stay at a resort like Aulani. But to be fair, it’s still a large chunk of change. At the time of that article renting points at the Aulani was running $14 per point. Since we like to travel in February, I’ll quote some figures for that month. If you simply want to stay in a hotel room booking an Island Gardens View room online will run $2317 for 7 days, 6 nights. If you were savvy you could rent points and stay in a studio villa for $1512 and get a kitchenette but, lose daily maid service. However, as I mentioned, my goal is also more room for the kiddos. So, I’m really looking at a one bedroom villa. Retail on that comes out to just over $3200. Ouch! And, renting points is not really saving a huge amount of money with that total coming out to $3024 and that’s if you can get a DVC member to part with their points.
This leads me to my plan. Remember, I want to make this affordable. When I sat down with the DVC people on my last cruise those precious DVC points were going for $160 per point. And now, there are rumors of Disney increasing the price to $180 per point. Staying at the Aulani for a week in February currently runs about 216 points. That means I have to buy a contract of at least 225 points (if I want to go every year and believe me Laura does!) for a total of $36,000. It would take me 18 trips before I would come close to even breaking even (when you factor in the maintenance fees.) So, I’m not buying from Disney. Fortunately, there’s a robust second hand market when you are looking at DVC properties. In fact, DVC holds its value pretty well and in some cases has even appreciated in value. After a great deal of number crunching I finally settled on buying into one of the cheaper Disney properties. As my wife says “Points are points.” Whether you own them at one resort or the other they all spend the same. Well, she’s almost right but that’s the subject for another article. We settled on Saratoga Springs Resort. The average price on the resale market for this property is $74 per point. And I figure that if I managed to score it for less then I’m money ahead. I made my offer and it was accepted at $72 per point for 150 points. Not really the amount that I wanted (remember 225) but the affordability factor was way up there. Besides, with DVC you can bank and borrow points to make that vacation that you desire. The total price for our points came to $10,800. Less than 50% of the Disney cost for the same points. Now, the points needed for the same February stay at our home resort is just 191 points which means that I can’t go every year but every other year I’ll have more than enough points to go to Disney World or Hawaii with a lot of points left over. That will also free us up to experiment with other vacations on the off years. But, instead of taking 15-20 vacations to break even, it’s more like 4-5 trips to reach the break-even point. After that, the cost to me is just my maintenance fees which run about $775 per year. In other words, an every-other-year vacation will cost me $1550 for a room that normally runs from $2674 to $3,100. So, YIPPEE! That’s why I bought DVC.
Steve
