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mermaidmarian
06-13-2007, 04:43 PM
Okay - I have been on the fence about DVC membership for several years and kick myself everytime I plan a trip back to WDW for not having bought in a long time ago. But....

Let's say I was to purchase 150 pts. at Beach Club. If at some point in time I wanted to purchase additional odd points (eg., 50 from a reseller), can I purchase points available at another home resort, ie, Hilton Head or OKW, and have them added to my existing 150? Do I pay fees based to both resorts?

TIA.

mprewitt
06-13-2007, 05:15 PM
Let's say I was to purchase 150 pts. at Beach Club. If at some point in time I wanted to purchase additional odd points (eg., 50 from a reseller), can I purchase points available at another home resort, ie, Hilton Head or OKW, and have them added to my existing 150? Do I pay fees based to both resorts?
TIA.

You pay maintenance fees for all the points you own. The rate will vary depending upon which resorts you own. So you'd pay the rate for BCV for your 150 and a different rate for your 50 at HHI or OKW.

CarolMN
06-14-2007, 08:17 AM
You can purchase a DVC contract from a reseller at any time. You do not have to be a member before you purchase from a reseller. If you can find a small contract you can buy it even if it is less than the minimum and you are not yet a member. (Keep in mind that Disney tends to exercise its ROFR more often if a non-member is buying a small contract - that's the main reason the small contracts go for more per point than the larger ones).

Once you ae a member (no matter how you first bought in), you can purchase add on contracts directly from Disney if that's how you want to go. If you buy from DIsney, you will get the same use year as you original contract (unless you insist on a different use year and buy at least 160 points. 160 points is the new minimum contract amount for new members to buy in directly from Disney).

Diseny will also sell the "sold out" resorts to you if they have your use year in stock. You can go on a waitlist if they don't. The wait just depends on when Disney acquires more points via exercising its ROFR.

mermaidmarian
06-14-2007, 04:23 PM
Thanks.

I did know that I could purchase increments in whatever might come up for sale. I wasn't sure how it worked in terms of maintenence fees.

I guess what I am somewhat confused about is, if I bought into BCV for 150 pts., but knew I was going to regularly want about 200 pts annually; it seems much cheaper to pick up the remaining 50 odd pts. at Hilton Head or Vero Beach (since the per point cost is so much less) - IF I actually have 200 pts to use at whatever DVC property I want to use them at.

What hidden drawback am I missing here?

Donald A
06-14-2007, 05:34 PM
I don't believe anyone mentioned that if you own at two places you will only get the 11 month booking window for points actually tied to a particular resort. For example, say you own 100 points at SSR and 100 points at BCV. Also say you want to book a vacation 11 months out at BCV. You can only use 100 points to book this, NOT 200. This is because you can't use those 100 points tied to SSR to book 11 months out a BCV. You will have to wait until 7 months out. Make sense?

mprewitt
06-14-2007, 08:05 PM
if I bought into BCV for 150 pts., but knew I was going to regularly want about 200 pts annually; it seems much cheaper to pick up the remaining 50 odd pts. at Hilton Head or Vero Beach (since the per point cost is so much less) - IF I actually have 200 pts to use at whatever DVC property I want to use them at.

What hidden drawback am I missing here?

The maintenance fees are higher at HHI ($4.98) and VB ($5.63) than at other resorts such as OKW ($4.40), BCV ($4.63), and SSR ($4.12).

Thus, the upfront cost may be less, but the ongoing maintenance over the life of your contract will eat up those savings.

The saying is that you should "buy where you want to stay". If you want to stay at HHI or VB, then buy there. Otherwise, I wouldn't.

CarolMN
06-15-2007, 08:31 AM
Thanks.

I did know that I could purchase increments in whatever might come up for sale. I wasn't sure how it worked in terms of maintenence fees.

I guess what I am somewhat confused about is, if I bought into BCV for 150 pts., but knew I was going to regularly want about 200 pts annually; it seems much cheaper to pick up the remaining 50 odd pts. at Hilton Head or Vero Beach (since the per point cost is so much less) - IF I actually have 200 pts to use at whatever DVC property I want to use them at.

What hidden drawback am I missing here?As Donald A posted, the main drawback is that you can't use the 50 HHI points at BCV until the 7 month window opens. BCV is one of the smaller DVC resorts and very popular. It is often difficult to get a reservation there once the 7 month window opens. There will be times when you will be unable to reserve the additonal days you need for your vacation at the 7 month mark. So you may end up moving between resorts for your vacation if your waitlist doesn't come through.

Again as mentioned (by mprewitt), HHI & VB have higher dues than BCV - the dollars you save by buying the less expensive contract wlll eventually be eaten up by the higher dues.

There is a possibility (remote, IMHO), that Disney will either sell the off site resorts or they will be destroyed by hurricanes and Disney will elect not to rebuild. In either case, the members at those resorts will be out of the DVC and unable to reserve the WDW DVC resorts. Unless you plan to stay at the beach resorts on a regular basis, you would be better off to buy at one of the WDW DVC resorts - perhaps OKW or SSR if your driver is mainly price and dues.

Since you seem set on staying at the BCV, you should seriously consider buying only BCV points. That said, if you cannot plan more than 7 months ahead, it does't matter where you own. At 7 months, all points are equal for making reservations. Just keep in mind that there are many times of the year that it is necesssary to call at the 11 month window to be sure of getting your first choice of dates and unit type without spending time on the waitlist.