Why Disney Vacation Club and Annual Passes make sense for us
As many of you already know, we live in the suburbs of Chicago and go to Disney (or a Disney vacation) on average twice a year. We are current Disney Vacation Club members and Annual Pass holders for Walt Disney World in FL. Today I’m going to share why these two investments make sense for our household and maybe yours too!
DISNEY VACATION CLUB
Disney Vacation Club is Disney’s version of a timeshare. Ugh I know what you’re thinking- timeshares? Keep reading…
Disney Vacation Club, better known in the community as DVC, gives you the opportunity to purchase a real estate interest in a specific Disney resort (a “home resort”) that is represented in a “points” system. These points give you the flexibility to stay at multiple Disney resorts for years to come (up to 50 years to be exact). To move forward with a DVC purchase, you pick a home resort, purchase points directly through Disney (currently a 125 point minimum) and enjoy the feeling of staying at the most deluxe accommodations on property. There are currently 16 Disney Vacation Club resorts:
- Disney’s Aulani, located in Ko Olina, Ohau, Hawaii
- Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort
- Boulder Ridge Villas at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge
- Copper Creek Villas at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge (Our Home)
- Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas – Kidani Village
- Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas – Jambo House
- Disney’s Beach Club Villas
- Disney’s Boardwalk Villas
- Disney’s Hilton Head Resort, located in Hilton Head, SC
- Disney’s Old Key West Resort
- Disney’s Polynesian Villas and Bungalows
- Disney’s Riviera Resort
- Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort
- Disney’s Vero Beach Resort, located in Vero Beach, FL
- The Villa’s at Grand Californian Hotel, located in Anaheim, CA (Disneyland)
- The Villa’s at Grand Floridian Hotel
What is a home resort? Your home resort is the real estate that you contractually are part owner of. DVC is a deeded real estate investment so your home resort will be the specific property and address on your contract. Each resort has a different price per point, maintenance/annual dues cost and point charts for points per night when you stay. A home resort is also really important because you want to be sure your home resort is where you really want to stay. The booking window opens up at the 11 month mark for your home resort while other properties open up at the 7 month time frame where room availability may be limited.
What we did: We purchased 100 points (the minimum at time of purchase was 75) directly through Disney and our home resort is Copper Creek at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge. Here is a point chart that shows what 100 points will get you. Being we love to travel in the fall, we currently have a 6 night stay in October of 2021 booked for a studio at Copper Creek Villas. Full disclosure, we will be buying more points because 100 isn’t enough for 2 trips/year in 1 bedroom accommodations which is what we prefer.
What is a use year? A use year is another detail on your contract which is when your points reset and replenish. Since we like to travel in the fall, our use year is October. This means in October of 2021, we will get another 100 points loaded into our account to use. Here are a couple of nuances to be aware of when picking your use year:
- When buying direct from Disney, if your use year month hasn’t passed, you will get double points! Let me explain. We purchased our DVC contract in September of 2019 with a use year of October. Since October hadn’t started yet, we received 2018 use year points (100 points for October 2018-September 2019) and 2019 use year points (100 points for October 2019-September 2020) once it was October. In retrospect it makes sense, but at the time of purchase, I was not expecting this and it made for an amazing welcome home trip!
- Banking and borrowing timelines are really important to understand when picking your use year. With DVC you have the flexibility to bank unused points or borrow from future years to book the vacation accommodations you want. Banking deadlines are 6 months before your use year (for example mine is May 1 for an October use year) and at the time of this article is published, you can borrow only 50% of your future years points (it was 100% pre-pandemic)
How many points will I need? The answer to this question really depends on how you like to travel and which resort(s) you plan to stay at. If you are a family of four and only need studio accommodations and plan to travel to the world once a year, 125 points may be perfect for you. If you want to treat your extended family members to trips that require two bedroom villas, then you may want to double that. I highly recommend looking at the current point charts for the resorts and start to map out the time of year you like to travel and what room categories you envision needing. This will give you a good idea of how many points would be best for you.
How much does this really cost? Hate to give you a non-answer here, but again it really depends on what you decide for the previous question. The example breakdown currently on the DVC site is as follows for a direct purchase of 150 points with a home resort of Aulani or Riviera:
Please note that in addition to your monthly payment (if you are financing your loan of ~$30K) there are also monthly dues. Monthly dues differ from property to property but as you can see for these two examples, they around $104.
Is this a good investment? Depends on your idea of good. I can go to Disney every year until I’m 80? Sounds great to me! In all seriousness though, this is a significant amount of money (it’s like another car payment plus maintenance) so let’s break down the dollars and cents of the matter. On average, your investment pays for itself in 7 trips. Meaning, if you were to go to Disney and stay in the Deluxe Resort accommodations and pay cash for it, this would be your break even point. For the last 5 years, we have been to Disney 9 times. If we would have had DVC from the start, our investment would have already paid for itself in cash stays that we have purchased. Here is some food for thought though: Even if you think you will go to Disney once a year for let’s say, 10 years, I still think this is a great investment. Why? The resale market (this will have to be a whole new post in and of itself because there is a lot of detail that goes into this). The TL;DR of the life lesson is this. There is a huge resale market for Disney Vacation Club where you can sell your membership (fairly easily) when you don’t want it anymore. Let me give you an example. We own 100 points at Copper Creek. Today, Copper Creek is going for $160/point on the resale market ($16,000 value for our contract on the resale market). We paid $181/point at time of purchase ($18,100 cost). If we sold today, we would have only spent $2,100 ($18,100 – $16,000) plus interest and maintenance on 3 Disney Vacation Club stays in deluxe accommodations. For context, for a 5 night stay in a Copper Creek studio for October right now (Sunday – Friday for 2 adults and 2 children, hotel only) comes out to $2,669.43 if you are paying for a cash stay. And that is only for 1 trip! For us right now, it’s worth it!
If you find yourself in a position where you aren’t traveling to Disney but you don’t want to give up your DVC contract, there is also a huge rental market out there. Meaning, if you aren’t going to use your points for any given year, you can actually rent them out for cash. This can help subsidize maintenance costs or help pay down your loan if financing. Currently, DVC Rental companies are offering $15/point to rent. If we rented out our 100 points, we would get $1500 in cash from these companies which would pay for our maintenance dues for a year!
Are there any other perks? There are other perks for being a Disney Vacation Club member. The biggest ones include discounts on merchandise and dining. Most places give 10% discounts on dining and ,right now, DVC members are receiving 30% off merchandise in the parks. That is a HUGE savings when adding it up over the years. Another perk we utilize is the member only lounges. There is a DVC lounge in EPCOT where you can go, soak up some air conditioning, grab some complimentary beverages, and charge your phone. There is also a bar and lounge at the top of Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort where you can nosh on some small bites and beverages and watch the Magic Kingdom fireworks. There are other perks like special ticketed events for members only and early entry to holiday events like Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party or Very Merry Christmas parties in Magic Kingdom. These wouldn’t be make or break perks that would influence me to purchase a $30,000 vacation investment, but they are ‘nice to haves’ and make you feel really special when you are in the middle of the magic.
Why we love Disney Vacation club DVC’s tagline for its members is “Welcome Home”. When you enter the parks at the turnstiles, the Magic Band reader turns purple instead of green to let Cast Members know you are a DVC member and they usually say “Welcome Home” as you enter the parks. We love Disney and truly feel like it is a second home to us that we love coming back to year after year. DVC just really makes sense for us financially due to the number of vacations we take to Disney World. We have gone into it with the mindset of we will never get this time back with our kids and we all love it. We are painfully aware of the fact that our kids may grow out of Disney and not want to go as often as we do now. Given the resale/rental market, we are okay with that and know we can sell at any time. We are also comforted with the fact that if for some reason we can no longer afford to go visit the mouse annually, we can offload the expense pretty easily. As you may have read in my previous posts, we love amenities and we love staying in one bedroom suites. Disney Vacation Club gives us the ability to stay in the most beautiful resorts that Disney has to offer and makes us truly feel like we have our own condo/apartment in the middle of Walt Disney World.
We also love DVC because it has so much to offer. Disney fans often get criticized for always going to the same place over and over and over again. “There is a great big world out there, you should go explore it…” “OMG, you are going AGAIN? (<– I get that one a lot) The answer is yes. 1) because we love it. 2) because none ya business! DVC has so many resorts in Florida and beyond. It would take us over 15 trips to stay at every resort and well over that amount to stay in every room category. We have never done the same trip twice at Disney which is why we never get bored of it. Maybe one day we will, but today, that is not the case.
ANNUAL PASS
What is an annual pass? There are a couple of different categories of Annual Passes at Disney World, but the short answer is the Annual Pass gives you the ability to visit the world whenever you want! As a Disney Vacation Club member, we are eligible to purchase the Gold Annual Pass which is a discounted version of the AP that has blackout dates. There is also a platinum pass that has no blackout dates that we get a discount on as DVC Members. If water parks are your jam, there is also a very reasonable price point to visit those annually.
How much do APs cost? As a DVC Member, this is the AP price menu that is offered:
We have the Gold Pass which is offered to DVC Members. The cost per pass is $719.00. With one day ticket prices averaging $109/day, you only have to visit the parks 7 days in a year to have this be worth it for you. *It’s important to note that the Gold Pass does have blackout dates for Spring Break and Christmas holiday season.
If you are not a DVC member, but still considering if an AP is the right investment for you, the cost is $1195/per Platinum Pass. This means you would have to visit for 11 days to make sure this is a cost savings for you.
Why would I get an AP if I’m not DVC? If you just understood that headline, you are slowly starting to think like a member of the Disney community. Welcome Home. I know some families that still purchase Annual Passes and aren’t DVC members. The strategy is they purchase an Annual Pass for December to visit during the holiday season, and then do another trip in the fall 10 months later. If you do two 1-week vacations, the Annual Pass is the best value for your park tickets.
Are there any additional perks for APs? Yes! Similar to DVC Members, you get dining and merchandise discounts in the parks. For a family, this is significant savings over the course of your trip (hundred of dollars!). Another thing that is a huge value add is you get Memory Maker included in the fee for your Annual Pass. This means you can go to any of those Photo Pass photographers and take as many professional photos as your heart desires and you get them all! Pro Tip – Though I haven’t done this myself, I have read that some families actually designate one member of the family be an Annual Passholder. That way you can take advantage of all of the discounts and perks, but you aren’t paying the high price tag for every member of your family, especially the kids. Doing this accomplishes a couple of things. Let’s say Mom has the Annual Pass that books everything for the family. Mom’s Annual Pass can secure an AP discount on a hotel room, saving money for you to help subsidize her higher AP cost. Then she can use her AP discount to get dining discounts for all of your meals on you trip. She is also saving $140 on Memory maker for all of the photos you would have purchased anyway. This is a really good strategy if you were planning on purchasing those extras anyway. Heads up – you will need to be a little savvy with your booking so if you need help – just give me a shout!
If you are considering Disney Vacation Club or purchasing an Annual Pass, chances are you are going from Disney Vacationer to a Disney repeat offender and dare I say, fanatic. It’s okay! Welcome to the club. These two programs really do change the way you vacation to Disney and can be a good strategy to help save long term on your vacations. Let me know in the comments if you are an AP or DVC member and if you have questions, please reach out to me and I’m more than happy to help talk through if these options are right for you!
-Melinda
