Our family has been debating whether or not to purchase points in the Disney Vacation Club for over a year now and finally bit the bullet last month. I thought I’d post a blog about our circumstances and thought process we went through as others may be going through similar decisions.

For those unfamiliar with Disney Vacation Club, basically it is a timeshare offered by Disney. You are buying points/membership into the vacation club that translate into vacation stays. A lot of members hate the term timeshare because unlike most typical timeshares, Disney Vacation Club membership is quite flexible. You use your points almost like cash and can choose to stay at numerous Disney Vacation Club resorts. In addition, you can also stay at Disney resorts all around the world and hundreds of participating hotels and resorts around the world. You can even use your points to take Disney cruises and go on their adventure tours. The beauty of the point system is the incredible amount of flexibility. You are free to choose when you stay at a resort and do not have to commit to a specific week(s) of the year. Many of us know of people that bought timeshares for a specific week each year at the same resort. Most don’t stay at the vacation resort every year and work on trading their time shares with others in this predicament.

So you use your points like you would money. Rooms cost more points during peak seasons and larger rooms cost more points. So you manage your points to plan your vacation. To add to the flexibility, Disney even allows you to “bank” and “borrow” points. If you don’t use up your points in a year, you can “bank”  your points and roll them into the next year. If you don’t have enough points for your vacation, you can also “borrow” points from the next year. So technically, you could use three years worth of points in a given year.

While Disney Vacation gives you a lot of flexibility to use points outside of Disney, non vacation club locations are much less cost effective. Our family plans to vacation at Disney resorts for the most part so this works for us. They have numerous resorts across the country including:

• The Villas at Disney’s Grand California (California)
• Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort (Florida)
• Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa (Florida)
• Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas (Florida)
• The Villa’s at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge (Florida)
• Disney’s Boardwalk Villas (Florida)
• Disney’s Beach Club Villas (Florida)
• Disney’s Old Key West Resort (Florida)
• Disney’s Vero Beach Resort (Florida 2 hrs SE of Disneyworld)
• Disney’s Hilton Head Island Resort (South Carolina)
• Disney Hawaii Resort (Ko Olina, Hawaii coming 2011)

The resorts are mostly near Disneyworld with a few exceptions. There are also hundreds of non-Disney locations in case you get tired of Disney but equivalent room costs may be higher. However, if you are tired of the Disney experience and just want a weekend in San Francisco, the option is available.

So Disney Vacation Club is well run and incredibly flexible so what is the catch. Mainly, it comes down to cost. There is both an upfront cost and ongoing maintenance costs. A typical cost per point is around $100-$120. The best deals are often referrals. All you need is the members name, city and state to use them as a referral. This can save you $10-$20 per point. We ended up buying 240 points at the Villas at Disney’s Grand California. The cost per point was $88 per point which was the lowest cost per point at any resort at the time. The original non-referral cost was $112. So the total cost for 240 points totaled just over $21,000 and expire in 50 years. In addition, the annual maintenance cost is about $600 per year. Our 240 points is roughly equivelant to 2 weeks in a 1 bedroom suite with full kitchen. So for the price of a typical car, we have a couple weeks worth of vacations for the rest of our lives. If we planned carefully, stayed off resort and went during low peak times, we could probably go on 10 annual vacations for the cost of the Disney Vacation Club. So why did we choose to join Disney Vacation Club?

Originally, we lived in Colorado and took a weeks vacation to Disney World. Our daughter was five at the time and absolutely obsessed with princesses. We decided to splurge and make this a once-in-a-lifetime type of vacation. We stayed at the Polynesian Resort on their concierge level with a spectacular view of Cinderalla’s castle and marina. The room ended up costing nearly $700 per night so our 5 night stay was about $4000 with taxes. This is already 1/5 of the cost of our Disney Vacation Club membership. On our final day of vacation, we decided to inquire about DVC and went on a tour and learned all about it. We had such a wonderful time, we seriously thought of joining then. However, after getting back to Colorado, we just felt that we would not make it to Florida that often to make it worth while. Fast forward a year and a new job opportunity takes our family to Santa Barbara, California. We promised to take Ella to Disneyland on her 7th Birthday. This was another wonderful vacation. While Disney is expensive, they are incredible about details. We again attended a DVC tour and discovered, they were actively selling a brand new resort right here in California. The rooms were wonderful and since we only live a couple hours away, we would be much more likely to take advantage of our membership. We also learned that Disney was opening a resort in Hawaii. This was the clincher for us living on the West Coast.

With a seven year old daughter- VP Product Development & Testing for Jr. Luggage and a son on the way as we finalize our second adoption, we figured Disney would be a major part of our vacation plans for many years to come. Disney is amazing at catering to families. In addition, as a somewhat work-a-holic, this will force us to take more vacations. So in the end, the decision to join Disney Vacation Club made sense for us and our circumstances. Everyone has different circumstances but hopefully, this post helps shed some light on the mystery of Disney Vacation Club.