NaptownMom
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2020
- Messages
- 59
First bookings after buying DVC resale went much better than I expected!
I sat on the fence for a LONG time about buying DVC, so I thought I would tell our story, because if I had known earlier what I know now, I would have felt a lot more confident about our purchase!
When I first learned about DVC, my experience with WDW was pretty limited. I'd grown up on the west coast, so for me Disneyland was the place to go. We had done a WDW Disney "adult" trip in 2012, staying at a timeshare that a friends' family had that wasn't a DVC property, then one trip to Swan & Dolphin with our firstborn (now 12) and an AirBnB trip after the next two were born (now 6 and 3). (We also had done day trips to Disneyland Paris when in France and Disneyland Tokyo in Japan, but in neither case were those truly "Disney" trips.) So the idea that I knew for sure we would always want to stay in a "deluxe" resort wasn't really obvious, which made me hesitate. Especially because I'm sort of cheap, and always looking for a deal.
But then, last August, we had booked an AirBnB that fell through at the last minute. My mom hopped on the Disney bookings site and saw AKL was running specials for under $400/room, and it felt like fate. Even better, we got some major pixie dust, upgrading us from the lowest tier view to Savannah, which was a dream come true. I've seen people describe the experience as "drinking coffee on the balcony with the giraffes," which is completely accurate, but somehow also downplays how magical it really is to share lodging with all the savannah creatures. I especially love tropical birds (and never miss the Tiki Room) so the loping crown cranes and iconic flamingos were also a joy. There was an incident involving a standoff between the wildebeests and an escaped giant beach ball that had my kids in stitches. Also, the cast members at AKL were all fantastic and so fun, and I really started to fall in love, and gotten over the idea of spending the rest of my kids' Disney trips at cheap AirBnBs.
On that AKL trip, we were enjoying a bit of resort-hopping, and made a stop at VGF for French onion soup. There was a DVC tours stand, and we were easily talked into a tour for gift cards, which frankly, we would have done for free, once I laid eyes on that Grand Floridian lobby. My mom and her husband were with me, and we went way over the allotted time with the sales rep going over all the pluses and minuses. My stepdad was especially concerned with the time-value of money aspects. I'm sensitive to that too, so I asked about financing, but the rate had my jaw on the floor, so I didn't give it another thought.
Unfortunately for her commission, I already knew about resale contracts, so by the time we got home, I was casually pricing out options. When December bonus season rolled around, I knew what I wanted for Christmas.
Now one concern I know many DVC-curious folks have is, how to pick a resort? Having so loved every little thing about VGF, that was appealing. We also had resort-hopped over to the Polynesian, which spoke to my tropics-loving side. Of course, we had also had a great time at AKL. But in the end, when puzzling out the value of the 11th month mark benefit, we decided on Beach Club. This has been a bit of a leap of faith, since we have never even stepped foot on the property even now, but being able to stay somewhere that has a reputation for being hard to book, paired with a legendary pool for our kids, made enough sense to us.
We spent what I remember as weeks looking for the right listing, but now that I look back on dates, was more like a few days. Using DVCforless, I combed over listings as they rolled out, and of course, with each new listing, second-guessed my commitment to BCV. I especially struggled with the benefits and drawbacks of contracts that were stripped or loaded. We had JUST had a major trip in August, so the idea of pushing things off a year didn't seem crazy, and the per-point prices were tempting, but why even buy a contract you can't use for so long?
There happened to be a lot of AKL listings posting, and I was tempted! But nothing for BVC was coming up with an offering price we liked. So I dug up a stale offering (I forget how stale exactly but it was several months old) and used the DVCforless tool to settle on an offer of $132/point for 210 points with just shy of 200 banked points with a February UY. We made an offer on January 3, and it was accepted the same day. It was submitted for ROFR on January 6, and passed ROFR on January 23, all smooth sailing. I immediately registered my contract with the Disney DVC website.
Now this next step is the only time I felt anxious in the whole process: waiting for my points to load. I'd seen plenty of anxiety around here about waiting to pass ROFR, but not for points to load. I got to thinking, what if the sellers went and used points while we were waiting around? Our contract had a term for what to do if that should happen, which essentially was the seller reimbursing us for the market point rental price, but that would be pain to enforce. I used the messaging feature to ask Disney if there was any way to at least confirm all my points were there, and they told me I'd have to call, which I never got around to doing (especially since I'd read on here that calling doesn't expedite loading points anymore). They also let me know I could expect to wait 6-8 WEEKS for my points, which is when I really started to get stressed. When you're living in the 11 month/7 month booking time universe, that sounded like an eternity. And I had 200 booked points to use before February, with hopes of traveling in August 2025 and January 2026, so I was really starting to worry about our ability to find reservations we would want in the travel windows we wanted.
Finally, right about 6 weeks after ROFR, on March 8, I saw my points had loaded, and none were missing (phew). The first thing I did was book our desired BCV trip for January 2026. Exactly the dates I wanted were available, but not a huge surprise, because this is a trip for a 2BR during our 11 month window, and I knew that would be easier to find.
Next came the hunt for two separate bookings in studios, both in August. Well after everyone else had a chance to grab at the 7 month mark, ugh. Nothing I liked popped up, so I tried setting some waitlists, and that didn't go great. I learned you can only have 2 waitlists at a time, and since I was somewhat flexible (more points for "preferred view," or save some for "resort view"? Not a big deal either way) it was annoying to be so limited in what I could waitlist.
But--and this is what I really wish I had known in advance--there seems to be a lot of churn in reservations. Right when I was on the phone with my mom, debating different subpar options, the perfect thing popped up--studio in the Polynesian. I reset my waitlists for our second planned trip, but once again, through the magic of neurotic checking and re-checking, the second perfect booking appeared--studio in the Grand Floridian. Altogether I'd say I spent about a week gnashing teeth and regularly checking, but in the end I got basically what I would have booked if I'd set an alarm to try for day 1 of the 7 month mark; never mind the benefit of the 11 month mark.
Now, circling back to the time-value of money question. We have now booked a total of 3 reservations for the next calendar year that I estimate would cost about $10k in cash, or about 1/3 the total cost of the contract including dues credits. Without firing up Microsoft Excel, safe to say market gains on the money we used to purchase was not going to spin off those kinds of gains that quickly.
So, if I could give counsel to my past self, it would be:
1) for people who prefer Disney trips that aren't in those hyper-competitive date ranges, the 11th month and 7th month opening date isn't so very important;
2) you really aren't "locked in" to your home resort; there are a lot of options out there even after the 7th month mark; and
3) the market is going to falter big time, you won't wish you'd put the cash in S&P instead (lol).
I sat on the fence for a LONG time about buying DVC, so I thought I would tell our story, because if I had known earlier what I know now, I would have felt a lot more confident about our purchase!
When I first learned about DVC, my experience with WDW was pretty limited. I'd grown up on the west coast, so for me Disneyland was the place to go. We had done a WDW Disney "adult" trip in 2012, staying at a timeshare that a friends' family had that wasn't a DVC property, then one trip to Swan & Dolphin with our firstborn (now 12) and an AirBnB trip after the next two were born (now 6 and 3). (We also had done day trips to Disneyland Paris when in France and Disneyland Tokyo in Japan, but in neither case were those truly "Disney" trips.) So the idea that I knew for sure we would always want to stay in a "deluxe" resort wasn't really obvious, which made me hesitate. Especially because I'm sort of cheap, and always looking for a deal.
But then, last August, we had booked an AirBnB that fell through at the last minute. My mom hopped on the Disney bookings site and saw AKL was running specials for under $400/room, and it felt like fate. Even better, we got some major pixie dust, upgrading us from the lowest tier view to Savannah, which was a dream come true. I've seen people describe the experience as "drinking coffee on the balcony with the giraffes," which is completely accurate, but somehow also downplays how magical it really is to share lodging with all the savannah creatures. I especially love tropical birds (and never miss the Tiki Room) so the loping crown cranes and iconic flamingos were also a joy. There was an incident involving a standoff between the wildebeests and an escaped giant beach ball that had my kids in stitches. Also, the cast members at AKL were all fantastic and so fun, and I really started to fall in love, and gotten over the idea of spending the rest of my kids' Disney trips at cheap AirBnBs.
On that AKL trip, we were enjoying a bit of resort-hopping, and made a stop at VGF for French onion soup. There was a DVC tours stand, and we were easily talked into a tour for gift cards, which frankly, we would have done for free, once I laid eyes on that Grand Floridian lobby. My mom and her husband were with me, and we went way over the allotted time with the sales rep going over all the pluses and minuses. My stepdad was especially concerned with the time-value of money aspects. I'm sensitive to that too, so I asked about financing, but the rate had my jaw on the floor, so I didn't give it another thought.
Unfortunately for her commission, I already knew about resale contracts, so by the time we got home, I was casually pricing out options. When December bonus season rolled around, I knew what I wanted for Christmas.
Now one concern I know many DVC-curious folks have is, how to pick a resort? Having so loved every little thing about VGF, that was appealing. We also had resort-hopped over to the Polynesian, which spoke to my tropics-loving side. Of course, we had also had a great time at AKL. But in the end, when puzzling out the value of the 11th month mark benefit, we decided on Beach Club. This has been a bit of a leap of faith, since we have never even stepped foot on the property even now, but being able to stay somewhere that has a reputation for being hard to book, paired with a legendary pool for our kids, made enough sense to us.
We spent what I remember as weeks looking for the right listing, but now that I look back on dates, was more like a few days. Using DVCforless, I combed over listings as they rolled out, and of course, with each new listing, second-guessed my commitment to BCV. I especially struggled with the benefits and drawbacks of contracts that were stripped or loaded. We had JUST had a major trip in August, so the idea of pushing things off a year didn't seem crazy, and the per-point prices were tempting, but why even buy a contract you can't use for so long?
There happened to be a lot of AKL listings posting, and I was tempted! But nothing for BVC was coming up with an offering price we liked. So I dug up a stale offering (I forget how stale exactly but it was several months old) and used the DVCforless tool to settle on an offer of $132/point for 210 points with just shy of 200 banked points with a February UY. We made an offer on January 3, and it was accepted the same day. It was submitted for ROFR on January 6, and passed ROFR on January 23, all smooth sailing. I immediately registered my contract with the Disney DVC website.
Now this next step is the only time I felt anxious in the whole process: waiting for my points to load. I'd seen plenty of anxiety around here about waiting to pass ROFR, but not for points to load. I got to thinking, what if the sellers went and used points while we were waiting around? Our contract had a term for what to do if that should happen, which essentially was the seller reimbursing us for the market point rental price, but that would be pain to enforce. I used the messaging feature to ask Disney if there was any way to at least confirm all my points were there, and they told me I'd have to call, which I never got around to doing (especially since I'd read on here that calling doesn't expedite loading points anymore). They also let me know I could expect to wait 6-8 WEEKS for my points, which is when I really started to get stressed. When you're living in the 11 month/7 month booking time universe, that sounded like an eternity. And I had 200 booked points to use before February, with hopes of traveling in August 2025 and January 2026, so I was really starting to worry about our ability to find reservations we would want in the travel windows we wanted.
Finally, right about 6 weeks after ROFR, on March 8, I saw my points had loaded, and none were missing (phew). The first thing I did was book our desired BCV trip for January 2026. Exactly the dates I wanted were available, but not a huge surprise, because this is a trip for a 2BR during our 11 month window, and I knew that would be easier to find.
Next came the hunt for two separate bookings in studios, both in August. Well after everyone else had a chance to grab at the 7 month mark, ugh. Nothing I liked popped up, so I tried setting some waitlists, and that didn't go great. I learned you can only have 2 waitlists at a time, and since I was somewhat flexible (more points for "preferred view," or save some for "resort view"? Not a big deal either way) it was annoying to be so limited in what I could waitlist.
But--and this is what I really wish I had known in advance--there seems to be a lot of churn in reservations. Right when I was on the phone with my mom, debating different subpar options, the perfect thing popped up--studio in the Polynesian. I reset my waitlists for our second planned trip, but once again, through the magic of neurotic checking and re-checking, the second perfect booking appeared--studio in the Grand Floridian. Altogether I'd say I spent about a week gnashing teeth and regularly checking, but in the end I got basically what I would have booked if I'd set an alarm to try for day 1 of the 7 month mark; never mind the benefit of the 11 month mark.
Now, circling back to the time-value of money question. We have now booked a total of 3 reservations for the next calendar year that I estimate would cost about $10k in cash, or about 1/3 the total cost of the contract including dues credits. Without firing up Microsoft Excel, safe to say market gains on the money we used to purchase was not going to spin off those kinds of gains that quickly.
So, if I could give counsel to my past self, it would be:
1) for people who prefer Disney trips that aren't in those hyper-competitive date ranges, the 11th month and 7th month opening date isn't so very important;
2) you really aren't "locked in" to your home resort; there are a lot of options out there even after the 7th month mark; and
3) the market is going to falter big time, you won't wish you'd put the cash in S&P instead (lol).
Last edited:
