Q re: using points for cruise...

[Dsnygirl]

We aren't DVC members yet, but I was looking into different aspects of it, and have a questin re: using your points to cruise.

I was able to access a member's points page for cruises/points in 2007 - and was at first thrilled to see that verandah stateroom was "only" 183 points for 4 days on the Wonder in October of that year! Then I read the fine print... and it said the points were per person, based on double occupancy, and that it was an additional 83 points for 3rd/4th child! That would add up to a grand total of 532 points, for one 4 night cruise! Am I correct with how I am interpreting the wording? (I hope not, but am afraid I am... :()

We are considering buying 220 pts at OKW sometime in the future, and that gets us over 10 nights at OKW in October... so the 4 night cruise is worth over 20 nights on land??? Somehow, that just doesn't seem right, even if the food is included at sea....

Can anybody help me with this? I see so many of you banking and borrowing for your cruises -- does that mean you go w/o a Disney trip for a few years to accomodate a cruise, or do you just have a lot more points than we're considering buying?

Thanks... :thanks: ... I appreciate the input!

[gmgdisneymom]

You read it correctly. The reason that the cruise is so many more points is that the cruise includes everything (housekeeping, food, entertainment etc) when you go to a resort it only includes the room.

If you bought 220 points one year and banked all of your points into the following year - then you would have a total of 660 points avail to you 220 from the previous year, 220 for the current year and 220 borrowed from the next year)

I am not sure where you are getting the points from but if you bought right from DVC they do offer incentives - we were able to get the previous years points plus since we were refered (sp) and bought 225 points we got a bonus 160 points, SO we had 610 points to use immediately.

Also you may want to look at the time you go on a cruise, if you go say in jan or Sept it is very little points compared to the prime season.

I love DVC and recommend it highly. Good luck

[Tinkermom]

As the previous poster stated, yes you are reading it correctly.

I just wanted to add that you can also do a part points/part cash cruise. We did a 7 night cruise and we used our points to pay for the first 2 people in the cabin and then used cash to pay for our 3 kids. We did have to borrow points from the following year to do this but it was totally worth it! The cruise was just amazing!

[Dsnygirl]

As the previous poster stated, yes you are reading it correctly.

I just wanted to add that you can also do a part points/part cash cruise. We did a 7 night cruise and we used our points to pay for the first 2 people in the cabin and then used cash to pay for our 3 kids. We did have to borrow points from the following year to do this but it was totally worth it! The cruise was just amazing!
Thanks for the note... you answered my next question w/o me even having to ask! :thumbsup:

Thanks to gmgdisneymom, too -- I really appreciate it!

Keep the input coming... it's why this place is so great! :thanks:

[goingbacktodisney]

This might be another solution..I recently learned from our rep that if one person in the cabin goes on points, you get 25% off cash payment of all others in cabin. It is cheaper to pay cash on the cruises than use points, when you consider points are rentable at appx. $10 per point. Doing this, you save even more $ dollar for dollar. Just something to take into consideration.

[DisneyWhirled]

We booked a 7 day Western Carribean cruise on the Magic for Oct 2009.

It took 660 points (just for the cruise) for the four of us, I believe. Most people equate 1 point to $10. So, 660x10=$6,660. Had we paid cash it would have cost us less, however, by doing it this way, all we will be left to pay cash for will equate to what we spend for a week at Disney World.

We will have to pay for:

-airfare
-passports
-transports
-spending
-excursions

By using our points, we don't have to directly come up with the cash for the cruise and the above.

We have 320 pts, and I will say that we are bummed that we will have a year with no WDW vacation and DVC stay (we used some '08, all of '09 and some of 2010), but, this will be another thing to do on our points that we haven't done before. My DH purchased DVC with the theory that we would do other adventures and non just WDW (which we have done 2x's per year since joining :))

I hope this helps! I know that some DVC members would not use the points in this fashion (some won't even use their points for weekend stays), but for us it works!

PM me if you have any other questions!

We love DVC and I know you will to!!