Non-Disney Trips

[Gocubs]

Can someone explain the process of booking a trip to a non-Disney property? I know that it is not always the most efficient use of points, but we are still curious how the process works anyway.

For instance, if we wanted to explore a possible trip to NYC, how would we go about doing that?

[gwfx1031]

A few years ago we used points to stay in DC at the Oriental Mandarin. This is one of the concierge collection hotels. I believe there is an offering for a place in NYC. We made reservations through the normal member line. There is a $95 booking fee and once you switch your points over to this type of stay, you cannot cancel and use the points back at DVC. You must use them for a similar type of stay and be subject to the $95 fee again. It was worth it. The hotel was far better than anything we would have been able to afford in DC for its quality and location.

Go Sox!

[DVC2004]

We exchanged a few years ago in the World Passport Collection. Now it;s RCI but it used to be II. We wanted to use our points for a week at Atlantis (Harborside at Atlantis timeshare, no longer offered sadly) for a flat exchange of 160 points for a 1 BR and a $95 exchange fee. How it worked: we called MS and gave a very broad date range, we said any time in 2009 between Jan and June. There was nothing available so they put us on a wait list. I think it was only 6 weeks we waited and we were notified we got ou week at the end of Jan the following year. Now, if you cancel either any of the exchanges into the collections, the points remain in that collection and will expire at the end of the year they are booked in. If you re-book later in that collection you will pay another $95 booking fee.

Anyway, we had a blast and they actually ended up giving us a 2 BR at Atlantis still for only 160 points. It was a memorable vacation. I looked up the cost of the room, and if we had rented it for a week it would have been over $11,000! So yeah, DVC is the way to go if you travel enough to make it worth it.