Journey to becoming a Disney Vacation Club Member

During our last trip to Disney World, we stopped by the Disney Vacation Club booth.  It was our first time hearing about Disney Vacation Club.  Although we got some information at the booth, we didn't fully understand the concept of Disney Vacation Club at that time.  About 3 months after our trip, I finally got a chance to sit down and read all about Disney Vacation Club and decided to buy into it.  To simplify it, it is a timeshare with a lot of flexibility and benefits.

Here is a quick summary of the Disney Vacation Club membership:

• Instead of buying a fixed week at a certain location, you are buying points to use every year at any time and at any of the 13 Disney Vacation Club (DVC) Resorts, and if you buy direct from Disney, you can use the points for Disney Cruises, Disney Hotels that are not one of the DVC Resorts, Adventures by Disney, and the Concierge Collections.
• You can buy as low as 25 points contract.
• You have the flexibility to borrow points from next use year or bank points from this year to use next year if you don't have the time to travel.
• You can buy either directly from Disney Vacation Club or resale thru various agents on the market.
• A lot of perks and discount at Disney World and Disneyland.  (Here is the 2015 DVC member perks)
• After the initial cost on the contract, you will have to pay annual due which is calculated based on number of points on the contract and the home resort. (Here is the 2015 annual dues for the 12 DVC Resorts)
• Each DVC Resorts have different deed expiration dates.
• 2042 - Beach Club Villa, Boardwalk Villa, Hilton Head, Old Key West, Vero Beach, Wilderness Lodge
• 2054 - Saratoga Springs
• 2057 - Animal Kingdom and Old Key West (with Extension)
• 2060 - Bay Lake Tower, Grand Californian
• 2062 - Aulani
• 2064 - Grand Floridian
• 2066 - Polynesian villas and Bungalows

With all these information, where do you start if you decided that Disney Vacation Club is right for you?

1.  Make sure you understand the ins and outs of the DVC membership.  Read up on all the basic information before you start looking for a listings or call Disney Vacation Club.  There are many good websites to check.  My first step was to request a free Disney Vacation Club DVD and read up on Disney's own website for as much information as possible.  Also remember to check their current special offer on the Disney Vacation Club membership.  If you need more details, you can read DVCnews' guide on DVC for beginners and any DVC related news.  If you have additional questions, you can check up on the Disney Vacation Club forums and you can always ask questions on the forum, which will be answers by all the nice and experience members promptly.
2. Set a budget. I think this is an important step no matter what you are buying.  There are few financing options for timeshares.  With that being said, for me, it doesn't make sense to finance to buy Disney Vacation Club membership.  One being that the interest rate is usually high (10-12%).  The interest that you pay for the DVC membership might just offset the benefits and discounts that you get from it.  Another reason for me is that Disney vacation should be an enjoyment, not a financial burden.  Therefore, I set a budget where I am comfortable paying without having to finance.
3. Calculate your need. Depend on the size of your family, length of vacation you usually take, and how often you vacation, you will need different number of points.  For us (family of 2 adults only), we got a contract for 120 points.  We are planning to travel to Disney World every other year for a length of 4-5 days.  Depending on the season and the resort, we might be able to get one bedroom villa, but we also don't mind studio.  Typically, 1 night at the studio can range from 10 points to 37 points.  You can check for the both 2015 and 2016 point chart here.  If you are not sure, my advice is to buy a small contract first (100 points or less) to try out DVC, and you can always add more points later on.  If you buy a big contract,  you won't be able to break it or sell part of it.
4. Locations vs. Value.  After you determine approximately how many points your family need, you will have to pick out your home resort.  Home resort is important if you have a specific preference of resort and if you tend to book your trip early.  Your home resort will give you the booking advantage of 11 month, and you can book your non-home resort at 7 month booking window.  Generally, you would want to buy where you want to stay, but if you not an early planner that would take advantage of the 11-month booking window (like us), you would want to pick the home resort with the best value.  Here is a suggested ranking provided by DVC Resale market.  After doing many research, we decided that we don't really mind where we stay and we generally don't book/plan our trip more than 3 month ahead, so we decided on Saratoga Springs as our home resort.  With that being said, there are also a few post suggesting that the price are going up for Grand Floridian, Grand Californian, and Beach Club Villa with Disney not accepting any more wait list.  The resale price for majority of the DVC have been going up as well.  It would be all down to your personal preference in locations vs. number of points that you get within your budget.
5. Find the perfect listings.  If you decided to buy direct from Disney, you can call them to purchase over the phone.  If you have Disney Visa Card, make sure you take advantage of the 0% APR Disney Vacation Financing for 6 month.  If you want to buy resale, you can check out DVC finder which is a search engine for majority of the DVC resale listing on the market, and update pretty frequently.  Other major DVC resale company are Resale DVC, DVC Magic, The Timeshare Store, and DVC Resale Market. New listings are on the market everyday.  You can sign up for the mailing lists for these company to get e-mail alerts. You are welcome to make any offer that you feel fit for the listing.  The per point price can vary for the same home resort based on size of the contract and loaded or stripped.  The bigger the contract, the per point price is usually lower.  The per point price is also lower if the contract is stripped, meaning there are probably no points left for the current use year or the seller can have also already borrowed points from next use year.  

Here is my purchasing time line after finding the perfect listing.  All DVC resale has to go thru the ROFR (Right of First Refusal) process meaning Disney has the right to take the contract back if they want and they have 30 days to exercise the right from the time the agent submit all the documents.  If you buy DVC direct, you can usually get your membership information and make your reservation within a week.

Total - 95 days
1/3/15 - Offer made and accepted
1/6/15 - Documents and deposit received, ROFR sent to Disney
2/5/15 - Passed ROFR (exactly 30 days)
2/19/15 - Closing documents received by us
2/25/15 - Documents and fund received by title company
3/23/15 - Deed recorded on OCC website
4/8/15 - Called DVC and got membership ID, logged into the website to make first reservation!

Timeline will vary for everyone depend on the closing and title company you are using and how fast both buyer and seller respond.  Hopefully, all these information are helpful in your journey to becoming a Disney Vacation Club Member! Welcome home!

Received my DVC membership card and letter on 4/21/15

2014 Disney World Star Wars Weekend 4-day Trip (Part 3)

Welcome to part 3 of our Disney World Star Wars weekend trip report.  In this post, I will briefly talked about day 3 of our trip at Magic Kingdom and our half day trip at Epcot on our last day.

For Magic Kingdom, our first goal was to watch both the Fantasy Parade and the Electrical Parade and the second goal was the character dining.  We reserved our FastPass+ month before our vacation on the rides that we are most interested.  You can reserve the FastPass+ 30 days before you arrive or up to 60 days if you booked the Disney World Resort Vacation package thru Disney.  You can select up to 3 rides initially.   As soon as the park open, we took the train to Frontierland.  We didn't have any FastPass+ reserved there, so we wanted to start taking rides there before the line get too long.  As expected, there were less than 10minute wait on most of the rides, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and Pirates of the Caribbean at Adventureland.  We made our way down to Adventureland and then Liberty Square by 10:30am and the lines started to get longer.  We started to check on our Disney App for estimated wait time for all the rides in the park and just find one that we are interested at with a shorter wait time.  Around 11am, we head over to Cinderella's Royal Table.  We were not able to get a reservation at Cinderella's Royal Table for 2 online even 2 months before our vacation, but we wanted to give it a try.  We head over before the restaurant was open and talked to one of the cast member at the check-in counter.  In less than 10min, she found a table for us and told us to return in half an hour to check in.  After in line for 15-20min for check-in and taking photo with Cinderella, we were finally seated upstairs in the dining room.

Overall, it was a great character dining experience.  It was definitely on the pricey side.  If you want to use your dining plan, you would have to 2 of your table service dining.  We didn't think it was a good way to use our dining plan, we actually paid for our lunch.  We received 1 large copy and 4 small copies of our photo with Cinderella at the end of our lunch.  If your kids love the princesses, Cinderella's Royal Table is a great choice.

 After another ride or two, we walked to the Main Street to wait for the Fantasy Parade.

 

As always, we really enjoyed the parade and was happy to see that they incorporated Frozen into the parade.  We spent the afternoon taking photos, shopping, and took 2-3 more rides when we found the wait time was short. We had our last character dining reservation at Crystal Palace, which is not as fancy as Cinderella's Royal Table, but it only cost 1 table service dining from our dining plan.  It was an American style buffet dinner, and we got to take photos with Winnie the Pooh and Friends.

 

 As always, we ended our night at the Disney park with parade and firework!

On our last day, we checked out from our hotel in the morning and left our luggage with the bell desk.  We took advantage of the magic hour to get into Epcot early.  Using that extra hour, we were able to ride Spaceship Earth, Test Track, and The Seas with Nemo & Friends, which were the main rides that we were interested.  And fortunately, the EPCOT international flower & garden festival decorations and displays were still up even though the event ended a few days ago.  On the side note, I was actually very excited to use our dining plan to get Starbucks coffee and breakfast at Epcot to start our day.  Coffee was way better than the ones at our resort. We used our last quick service dining plan at Katsura Grill, a Japanese restaurant at the World Showcase.  We enjoyed Epcot as more of a relaxing end to our trip after 2 long days at Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studio.  We left the Epcot around 2:30pm to retrieve our luggage at the bell desk and ride the Disney's Magical Express to airport.  We will definitely be back for Animal Kingdom!

Thank you for visiting my blog!