Thanks for your input. My favorites are GF and BLT! With GF having fewer rooms, I worry about obtaining a room. Also, in terms of status, I was wondering if the value of having a blue vs non blue card should factor into my decision. BTW, RIV is beautiful! My thinking was buy RIV - get the blue card at that entry point, then I could use the points to stay at BLT or GF or RIV. Is this thinking flawed? Thanks..
VGF and BLT and RIV are our home resorts! Until the pandemic, we had always talked about using our points to "sleep around" but never did, until a few last minute trips (<7 mo) made us look around because our home resorts were no longer available - during the pandemic we booked, BWV, BCV, AKV. we have two later trips we booked at 11 months at our home resorts, and even though there's availability elsewhere, we are not planning to move.
I will add that:
VGF standard studios are a hot mess no matter the time of year you are trying to book. And Christmas 2021 was an absolute bloodbath in January - perhaps because a lot of people had banked points to burn. Christmas 2019 was challenging but I could have booked a 1br standard until around 11am on the 11mo-to-the-day. This year, not so much, everything (including preferred views) was booked at 8am on the day of, lots of stuff appeared to be being walked. It took about a week of stalking and waitlisting to get exactly what I wanted, but I managed to do it. So yes, even owners can get shut out of booking right at 11 months, but I have managed, with some persistence, to get everything I wanted, even if it's taken a day-by-day process. If you only want to stay VGF once in a while, you could get a preferred view or a 1br at other times of year within 7 months (e.g. mid-August, 5 mo out, you can get a few nights in a standard studio, and 1br and 2br standards have some decent availability).
BLT has the cheapest points and standard rooms cost the least points of all the MK resorts (except BRV), which make it a good value. BUT - studios are small so I'd want enough points to get a 1BR at least... (200-225). If you got BLT resale, you could still use those points to switch to VGF but it costs a lot of points.
With either BLT or VGF resale, if you wanted to stay at RIV you'd have to rent points or pay cash. When we bought RIV direct in the spring 2019, I was making the case to DH that we should get more BLT points so we could stay in 2br there when we brought family, but then RIV wasn't that much more per point, we didn't have to go through ROFR, and we got another home resort, so it worked for us. And in terms of ## of points, we could still use them at 7mo for BLT (still a good deal for near-park extended family trips). (VGF points are for VGF only! LOL)