Advice for a newbie

[Enright78]

DH and myself looking seriously at DVC. Only the two of us now (DD left home!!. and likely to be travelling mainly in school hols.
Where would the best location be? And roughly how many points to start with?
Thanks .

[MickeyMcMouse]

Fiona

Location "technically" doesn't matter. where you buy is called your home resort which gives you up to 11 months ahead to book, the other dvc resorts can be booked up to 7 months ahead.

With the points system, you can stay at any dvc resort that has availabilty. The only thing that differs is the amount of points which depend on :- location, size of accomodation needed and time of year you wish to go.

We started with 200 points which we bought last year, this should give us about a couple of weeks a year depending on the time of year, maybe slightly more.

We will probably do a small add on when we go in July at the new Beach Club Villas resort which will give us the 11 month window there.

The minimum points buy at the moment is 150 but I think it is rising to 175 soon.

Any more questions, just shout and I'll try and answer, or I'am sure another DVCer will be able to help.

Check out their web site on Disney Vacation Club (http://dvc.disney.go.com/disneyvacationclub/intro)

David .

[Carole]

I'd recommend sending for the information video that they do. You can send for it from the Disney site. Once you have that they'll give you a ring and see if you're interested and if so send you more information. Once you have that, then do what I did, which is to ask away on the boards about anything you're not sure of.

We've just bought 212 points at Beach club villas. That's exactly the number of points to stay in a BC studio for two weeks in October.

[Enright78]

Thanks, lots to look at here! Ta .

[Jan]

David - it depends what you mean by a "small add on".  We bought 25 points at VWL (the smallest add on) but these weren't enough for the number of nights we wanted to book for and we could not use our BWV points. We had to have sufficient WL points available at the time we booked as it was more than seven months early.  After that disappointment I read the guidebook and there it was!  .

[MickeyMcMouse]

Hi Jan

This is where it starts to get a little tricky. I think we probably need about 70 points which will give us a studio for 5 days Sun - Thurs most times. That should let us have about 3 weeks in total between VWL and BCV ....... I think  .

Quick question - does it get complicated when you have 2 "home" resorts or would I be better trying to get more points at VWL.

(Should have just bought more at the beginning .  )

David .

[Enright78]

Carole, I can't find the link on the DVC page for the video? Any tips or phone numbers etc? Thanks .

[Carole]

Try this

Video link (http://dvc.disney.go.com/disneyvacationclub/requestinfo/requestinfoindex?id=RequestInformation)

[Muppet]

What amount of points do you reckon would be needed for a 2 week christmas stay at the beach club villas.

And then whats the approx price for each point.

[Carole]

For a studio:
Dec 15-23 # Sun - thurs 12 points each night
# # # # # # # # Fri - sat 23 points each night

Dec 24-31 # Sun - thurs 19 points each night
# # # # # # # # Fri - sat 43 points each night.

So, it depends on how many weekends your stay falls over.

We've bought at $70 per point as a special deal for prebuying into BCV but I think it would now be $75 pp. I think the price is going up to $80 at some point.

You could download the dvc manager program from here (http://hometown.aol.com/dmfredrick/Download.html) Makes it easy to work out how many points you need for any given time period.

[Muppet]

Cheers Carole.

Worked out an approximate, its pricey but not unobtainable.  One last question is there a time span to which you have these vacation eg for 10 years every year or 20 every other year. Any other charges like maintenace or cleaning charges.

[Carole]

You get your points every year until 2042. You can bank one years points if you don't want to use them that year or borrow from the next year if you want to do something special one year.

You have to pay annual dues of $3.7681 per point.

You can apply the points to any of the DVC resorts, any of the WDW resorts, DLP, DLC or the Disney cruise line. You can also use them for stays in certain hotels etc all around the world so it's very flexible.

There is currently a healthy resale market so you're not stuck with the points should you no longer want them. This is also a cheaper way to buy into DVC and the only way to buy into some of the resorts that are sold out.
Go here (http://www.dvc-resales.com/) for more info on this.

[Enright78]

Belated thanks Carole!