Just scheduled a DVC tour...

[Mr Tom Morrow]

Good points made above especially about impulse buys.

I am constantly amazed to see the GF and Poly on resale sites. My goodness they only bought them maybe a year ago! Now there could be a very sad reason for the sale but I suspect it was overstretching coupled maybe with unemployment etc.

[BarryandCaron]

Originally Posted by Mr Tom Morrow

Good points made above especially about impulse buys.

I am constantly amazed to see the GF and Poly on resale sites. My goodness they only bought them maybe a year ago! Now there could be a very sad reason for the sale but I suspect it was overstretching coupled maybe with unemployment etc.

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You only have to look at posts on here...people buying direct without knowing all the ins and outs, not buying enough/too many points.

Our first contract we bought resale then direct when BLT was first announced.

[YorkshireT]

The Facebook groups are the worst. The DVC Neighbourhood group often shows an astonishing level of ignorance about a product they spent 10- 20k on. From 'Why can't I get a room booking a month out on October its disgraceful,' to having no idea you can rent points, to people who have been owners for a decade and don't even know the basics. I've seen more knowledgeable people creeping in now, advising on things like buying resale (response is usually ' what's resale?') and giving good advice sometimes but goodness, a lot of wrong info is given out. Newbies need to ask questions and won't know anything but I'm talking actual owners here. On another forum this week I saw one guy saying he was buying direct on finance as he didn't have the money to buy outright so was financing it all as he had to have it now, but it was OK as by scraping about he was managing to trim $75 off his monthly household budgets. Someone else quite rightly pointed out if he was even talking about trying to make savings of $75 a month on household budgets, then was he really in a position to be taking a 20k loan for a non essential luxury purchase and why didn't he save up and buy a small resale contract instead. I know people want DVC badly but do it with your head not heart and don't become another statistic. The timeshare industry thrives on impulse and ignorance and DVC is no different.

[Shooby doo]

I wouldn't buy DVC to use elsewhere, just looked at Tokyo Disney & a week in Celebration during value season is 269 points plus the $95 fee ! That's a lot of "Direct" points.
We are still seriously considering our add-on & to give you an idea of the differences on a 125 point add-on:
Copper Creek - $22000
VGF Resale - $17500
SSR Resale - $11500
So in the case of Copper Creek is the extra 13 years contract worth an extra $11k? In theory I'll be 102 when the contract ends & Ds will be 72, for VGF Direct would be slightly lower than the £22k so if this was where I wanted I would probably go with Direct.
I just wonder how many new owners are buying 100 point contracts just to get their "feet in the door" & there is obviously a reason why they dropped minimum buy in from 160. I realise that everything needs to go up but $176/point is scary !

My last thought to the OP is that whether you buy Direct or resale, if for some reason you need to sell then both contracts are worth the same & both classed as resale contracts!
SD

[Gelatoni]

Again lots of interesting points here. We will still go ahead with the tour just to get a feel for things. As I said neither of us are the type to sign up on the spot for anything. Ultimately we will want to know if it will save us money for our frequent Disney trips. If the answer is no we won't bother.

[Dutchdisneyfan]

Originally Posted by Gelatoni

Again lots of interesting points here. We will still go ahead with the tour just to get a feel for things. As I said neither of us are the type to sign up on the spot for anything. Ultimately we will want to know if it will save us money for our frequent Disney trips. If the answer is no we won't bother.

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For us the answer was no, but that is because we book with the free ddp deal and the SSR discount. If they stop this deal, it would be a different story.
The reason we also decided not to do it is, it's for 50 years! I will be 87 then, would love to live life to the fullest but I'm afraid I will not be traveling at that age.
We have 2 kids who love Disney, but who says they can afford to travel and pay the annual fees.

But every now and again I have a look at the resale sites because the intrest on our bankaccount is now just 0,1% so better spend it and enjoy.

[KarenG]

Originally Posted by Mr Tom Morrow

I'm going to put another spin on this.

All of us existing DVC Owners know the system. Have been a few, many or a lot of times. We are very good at spotting what discounts are out there. What we want time after time. How we get into the TOWL, how to exploit our Points with value rooms etc etc.

But most of us bought direct in the first instance and then added on with resale apart from the minority like the poster above who went resale straight off.

So I can see why people are drawn first time to a direct sale and if thats what they want and are fine with it then who are we to decry them. Hindsight is a wonderful things and I wish now there had been resale when we bought back in 2003, there was but it wasn't well marketed and it was in its infancy so I wouldn't have touched it.

But thats water under the bridge as we paid $73 a point direct!

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Resale was hardly no different in price then - like you we bought SSR and it would have only saved us $500, and I was ok to write that off against the hassle factor. Never would I write off the thousands and thousands of dollars difference now, especially at today's exchange rate

Originally Posted by YorkshireT

The Facebook groups are the worst. The DVC Neighbourhood group often shows an astonishing level of ignorance about a product they spent 10- 20k on. From 'Why can't I get a room booking a month out on October its disgraceful,' to having no idea you can rent points, to people who have been owners for a decade and don't even know the basics. I've seen more knowledgeable people creeping in now, advising on things like buying resale (response is usually ' what's resale?') and giving good advice sometimes but goodness, a lot of wrong info is given out. Newbies need to ask questions and won't know anything but I'm talking actual owners here. On another forum this week I saw one guy saying he was buying direct on finance as he didn't have the money to buy outright so was financing it all as he had to have it now, but it was OK as by scraping about he was managing to trim $75 off his monthly household budgets. Someone else quite rightly pointed out if he was even talking about trying to make savings of $75 a month on household budgets, then was he really in a position to be taking a 20k loan for a non essential luxury purchase and why didn't he save up and buy a small resale contract instead. I know people want DVC badly but do it with your head not heart and don't become another statistic. The timeshare industry thrives on impulse and ignorance and DVC is no different.

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Totally right - timeshares the world over run on the "holiday" purchase, and buyer's remorse can soon kick in.

My friend at work bought a large number of points at OKW very early on. He didn't get the "forever AP" but he got the "free park passes until year XX" so I don't exactly know when but I guess '97 maybe? I was horrified to discover that on the years he didn't go he just let the points expire - had never understood the banking / borrowing concept. I'm sure he's not alone.


Another work friend just bought Aulani but never plans to visit Hawaii. Why you would do that, pay through the nose, and not intend to use one of the home resort advantages I just can't fathom. People do make emotionally driven decisions - I'm sure we all do at times!

[Guest]

Originally Posted by Dutchdisneyfan

For us the answer was no, but that is because we book with the free ddp deal and the SSR discount. If they stop this deal, it would be a different story.

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This is a very important point for us, the free DDP and discount at OKW means DVC isnt that attractive, but we still purchased our contract, its DVC, i always wanted to own it

Of course people will remember I had purchased Marriott Vac club, we couldnt afford DVC, we owned for 4 years at MVC and never used the weeks ( I sold them to cover costs ) then we purchased at SSR and decided to try Marriott, Wow, from a AKV Studio to a 2 bed Marriott unit, it was bigger than my house, took 17 mins to get to the MK car park and we were out of the car , the resort was outstanding, yes it is off-site, but wow, it blew our mind, it was just as good as disney, but for a fraction of the cost

So maybe look at the MVC contracts on ebay, they are still selling them for nothing money, just found a 2 bed unit at SABAL PALMS Orlando and its still $1 and ends in 2 hours, this will trade very well in Interval international and you will be able to trade into anything in around orlando, the fee's are more than disney though, at $1203 per year for the 1 week

we own at Marriott Grand Vista, but traded and stayed at Cypress harbour, which had all the wow factors of any WDW resort

[dippiedawnie]

We did the Hiton Grand Vacation tour this year. They have based their timeshare on Disneys with the points. You can swap from Hilton into the DVC hotels ( if there are rooms off course!). They have way more hotels all over the world to choose from too so you aren't swapping out as they are all in the Hilton family. We already have 2 timeshares so didn't buy another but once the DS has gone we may move to Hilton for the greater choice. Not Disney I know and I have no idea if we will ever tire of Disney but it did open our eyes to what else is available out there. now after saying that it's Boardwalk and BLT for us in 5 days and we will love every minute and wouldn't change it for anything at the moment 😀

[YorkshireT]

Originally Posted by matt987106

This is a very important point for us, the free DDP and discount at OKW means DVC isnt that attractive, but we still purchased our contract, its DVC, i always wanted to own it

Of course people will remember I had purchased Marriott Vac club, we couldnt afford DVC, we owned for 4 years at MVC and never used the weeks ( I sold them to cover costs ) then we purchased at SSR and decided to try Marriott, Wow, from a AKV Studio to a 2 bed Marriott unit, it was bigger than my house, took 17 mins to get to the MK car park and we were out of the car , the resort was outstanding, yes it is off-site, but wow, it blew our mind, it was just as good as disney, but for a fraction of the cost

So maybe look at the MVC contracts on ebay, they are still selling them for nothing money, just found a 2 bed unit at SABAL PALMS Orlando and its still $1 and ends in 2 hours, this will trade very well in Interval international and you will be able to trade into anything in around orlando, the fee's are more than disney though, at $1203 per year for the 1 week

we own at Marriott Grand Vista, but traded and stayed at Cypress harbour, which had all the wow factors of any WDW resort

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The problem with a lot of this other stuff is they cannot give them away (prime example- £1) and in many like Diamond the dues go through the roof. You then often cannot give them away and they are locked into a never ending increasing liability. DVC isn't like that- if you look at the historical resale data for the last 25 years, the value of resale has steadily always climbed- seems to be accelerating at the moment. I was surprised to see my last Saratoga contract has increased by $10 + a point in 6 months albeit it will probably drip back a bit at Xmas/ New Year. However even with DVC if you'd bought new today, and sold in the next 5 years you'd likely lose some money after fees etc, and for Brits the US Government hold back I think 20% it is now which can be challenging to get back.