Before joining the DVC, it’s important that you understand all the fees, benefits, pros, and cons. It can be a very complicated purchase so it’s essential that you do your research before you make the final decision to buy!
If you are a casual Disney fan and only plan to go to the parks every few years and prefer other types of vacations (overseas, mountains, cruises, etc) then it’s very possible that the DVC isn’t for you. However, if you love Disney and plan to go at least every other year then it is definitely worth looking into!
One thing you really need to keep in mind is the buy-in fee and the yearly maintenance fees. The cost to purchase your first contract can be significant and you’ll then be responsible for paying the maintenance fees every year, which also increase every year. It's important to remember that you are buying an actual deeded and transferable real estate interest, and it shouldn’t be looked at as an investment. While it is true that the value of the contracts have continued to rise over the years, the most realistic way to think about the DVC is a pre-paid vacation plan.
Another important thing to remember is that your DVC contract does NOT last forever, and each resort has a different expiration date. And just because you now own a DVC contract and can stay at your resort for “free”, you still will be spending a lot of money on park tickets, food, souvenirs, airfare, etc. You need to really think about your current and future vacation plans to decide if the upfront and recurring costs are worth it for your individual situation.
Every DVC member is responsible for paying yearly dues called “maintenance fees”, and these fees depend on the exact resort you bought into. These fees tend to rise every year and are collected to pay for maintenance for the resorts and other things of that nature. These fees can add to thousands of dollars per year so it is important that you don’t forget about them when deciding whether the DVC is right for you.
Now even though you will need to pay these fees every year, a lot of members consider their DVC contract a “hedge against inflation”, because Disney cannot add more points to a resort to “increase the cost” of the rooms. Because each resort has a fixed amount of points when it is created, all Disney can do is shuffle the point cost around between the different types of room (i.e. make the studios more expensive and the 2-beds cheaper). Disney cannot increase the number of points needed for every type of room at the same time, it just isn’t possible. This is one reason members like the DVC – even though the cash prices for the Disney resorts go up in price every year, it isn’t possible for the DVC to increase the “cost” of the resort you already own if you own a contract. Disney and re-sale contracts themselves can increase in price, but the DVC resorts cannot become more expensive.
Ex: Say the Grand Floridian has only 100 points available, and they have two room types: studio and 2-bed. One year Disney could price the studio at 50 and the 2-bed at 50, and the next year they could price the studio at 40 and the 2-bed at 60. Disney CANNOT all of a sudden charge 80 for the studio and 80 for the 2-bed, as there are only 100 points possible. However, Disney can charge whatever they want to cash buyers, and I promise you that the cost of paying cash will continue to go up and up for every year until the end of time.
diney vacation club memebers take a contract with disney that give them an allotment of points every year untill that contract expires. the points are redeemed to stay at a dvc hotel, a diney cruise experience, or an adventure by disney holday.
none memebers can also benifit from the dvc magic through third party sites offering the opportunity to points. this websites are
Suppose you purchase 160 focuses at Saratoga Springs Resort. For reasons for this model, 160 focuses would cover 11 evenings of excursion in a Saratoga Springs Studio unit: a 6-night stay (counting one end of the week night) in Magic Season and a 5-night stay (counting one end of the week night) in Choice season. These generally compare with "customary" season for cash estimating of resort rooms.
Your levy for 160 Saratoga Springs Resort focuses are $1,083 in 2020, which pays ahead of time for focuses that ride 2020 and 2021. (This overlooks the up front investment cost and the related open door cost.) Assuming that you leased focuses from a proprietor to remain in a Saratoga Springs studio for similar dates at $19 a point, it would cost you $3,040. Perhaps you'd be similarly as blissful remaining at all costly Disney Deluxe lodging, and you're ready to get an unobtrusive markdown on the lodging. In the event that you remained at Wilderness Lodge in Regular Season with a 25% markdown, 11 evenings (5 work day/2 Thursday/4 end of the week) would cost you $4,592 with charge in 2021. Assuming you paid the full "rack rate" charged by Disney to remain in a Saratoga Springs studio for 11 evenings in Regular season(7 work day/4 end of the week), it would cost you $5,687 with charge in 2021. By and large, the $1,083 in duty analyzes pretty well to the a lot greater expense of $4,500+ to remain in a limited money room, or even the $3,000+ it would cost to lease the focuses from a proprietor.
Profound hotel rate limits (25% off or more, for example, Annual Passholder rates and room limits, are some of the time accessible at Walt Disney World. In any case, the quantity of limited rooms has gone during each time of late, and in 2015 Disney disposed of their AAA markdown, which was the main rebate that was accessible practically the entirety of the year. Assuming that your dates are adaptable and you can go in the slow time of year you can likely get a rebate of some sort, however assuming that you want to go during school get-aways room limits will be more diligently to get. There are no comparable "limits" on the quantity of focuses expected for a DVC stay.
My fiancé and I recently bought into the DVC and the best way to illustrate the DVC price vs paying cash is with an example:
We bought a225 point contract at the Animal Kingdom Villas for around $30,000, and the contract came “front loaded”, meaning the first year had double points (450) as the previous owner had banked them already. We decided we wanted to take advantage of having all these points, so we looked to do a split stay between the Cabins at Copper Creek and the Villas at the Grand Floridian.
Our trip is planned for the end of September when points tend to go further, and we were able to get 3 nights at a Copper Creek Cabin and then 4 nights at a 1-bedroom Lake-View villa at the Grand Floridian.
For fun, I went onto a website that priced out all the different room types at Disney World and found the following information:
Total Cost: $13,999.00 for 7 nights
My fiancé and I paid $30,000 total for our Animal Kingdom contract and we are getting a $13,999 trip in our very first year, and we have until 2057 (35 more years!) to keep using our points! Now of course you need to keep in mind that we have to pay around $2,000 a year (right now) in maintenance fees, and it’s always true that we would never have paid almost $14,000 for one trip to Disney World. So even though we got a “$14,000” trip covered, you can’t exactly say “Okay we paid $30k up front minus $14k so we’ll have broken even in only a few years!”.
Yes DVC can be an amazing value, but you need to really understand all the fees you will have to pay over the years. A lot of people say that you need to do 6 months of research before you by into the DVC, and even though I thought that was ridiculous at first, it took us around a year before we felt comfortable buying in!
One more thing to consider prior to joining the DVC is the "opportunity cost" - what you are losing by tying up your cash with Disney, rather than having it saved for whatever else you’d like to spend it on.
Basically what this point comes down to is this: Do you love Disney and are you going to be happy going to Disneyworld/Disneyland/Aulani etc. at least every other year for the next 20-30 years. For my fiancé and I, the answer was “YES!”. And if we decided that we did not want to take a trip one year, then we could bank our points to the next year or even rent out our points and use the proceeds to pay our maintenance fees and fund a different vacation!
Buying into the DVC is a huge upfront cost, but it can be extremely valuable to those who really understand how to use it. I listen to a lot of DVC podcasts, and whenever they ask members what their biggest DVC regret is, almost every time the answer is “I wish I would have bought in sooner!”.
The DVC can be a very complicated and expensive proposition, but now you are on your way to having a better understanding of the system! Keep doing your research!