Disney Vacation Club: Two Vacation Examples
In the last post I did a general outline of how points work for DVC, but now I will show you an actual breakdown of how points work and how that 11 or 7 month deadline can sometimes make you scramble.
We have 170 points at the Grand Floridian Villas. The first year we bought in we did so in April and decided to use the points that year to try out the brand new Grand Floridian Villas–which were actually still being built at the time. We scheduled the trip for December and made sure to try to book it the very first day that 11 month window opened up. Here’s the tricky part:
You can only book 7 days out from the first day of your trip, so if you want to stay longer you then need to wait to try to book the rest of your vacation. I imagine this is probably not a problem for regular people, but we’re Disney freaks who like to stay as long as we possibly can.
It turned out the first night we wanted to stay at the Grand Floridian Villas (GFV) was unavailable, so we booked into an open studio room at Saratoga Springs (SS) for the first night, then booked a GFV studio room for the next 7. We had planned on doing just a standard view, but only lake-view was available at GFV. Here was the points breakdown:
SS: 15
GFV: 153
Total points: 168
This meant we had 2 points that ended up going to waste for that year, but we really didn’t lose a lot of sleep over it. The lake-view at GFV was AMAZING, but I think we would have been just as happy looking out at the Grand Floridian hotel as we didn’t really spend all that much time on the balcony (I HATE spiders and Florida seems to be a place where if there’s a corner, there’s SPIDERS). Saratoga Springs was the real surprise, we LOVED the room we had. Even though it was a standard view, you went outside and looked across the river at Downtown Disney and the big balloon ride! It was beautiful, especially at night. We had been pretty bummed that we had to stay there a night (all the other places we checked were booked), but we actually would consider staying there for a vacation now–although we’d want to bring or rent a car because the bus situation is insane with all the stops.
Now this latest vacation, the one we’ll take this December, was way, way more complicated–we knew we wanted to go with some friends and family members, which would require a two bedroom, and we knew we wanted to stay at the Grand Floridian. Here’s how we worked it:
We banked our points for 2014. That means 170 points rolled over to 2015, which added to the 2015 points meant we had 340 total. Still not enough to do what we wanted (because as I said above, we’re Disney freaks). So then we BORROWED points from 2016. Still with me? I’ll do a complete breakdown for you in a minute!
Traveling with other people meant coordinating dates. The other family we were traveling with wanted to do a week at GFV with us, so we booked a two bedroom, standard view for seven nights. That was the easy part since we could do that 11 months out. The harder part was that we wanted to get there early with my mom so that we could both enjoy some time alone there before other people arrived and we wanted to test out another resort. What could possibly go wrong with this plan?!
Lots, it turned out. Since we were trying to book other resorts (our own fault) we were at a disadvantage. People who had those resorts as their home resorts could book them up 4 months before we could. We settled on a plan where we ranked what we wanted to try: Bay Lake Tower (BLT), the Polynesian (Poly), and Animal Kingdom Lodge (AKLV). We figured with that many options it wouldn’t be a big deal, especially since the days we were trying to get were going to just be a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
It turns out that it was really hard. None of the resorts had studios available for those three days in a row. Crazy, right? Some had Wednesday and Friday, but not Thursday. Some had Thursday but not Wednesday or Friday. None of them had studios available for all three days. I went nuts trying to make it all work. I obsessively checked to see availability even before we could book.
We definitely wanted to try Bay Lake Tower, but it was pretty much out of studios for all the days we wanted. One bedroom and two bedrooms were available, but we weren’t sure we wanted to spend that many points. The 7 month window opened up, but we did not book Wednesday because we weren’t sure.
The next day we went to book the Poly for Thursday and Friday. The day before it had showed a studio was open for both days. Now? Nothing. Panicked, I went to our third option, Animal Kingdom Lodge, which had ALWAYS had open rooms every time I checked. No studios. Only one bedrooms were open. But.
It had one for Friday, but not Thursday.
At this point I was basically freaking out. Where were we going to stay? This was madness!
The next day, kind of desperate, I decided that we’d stay in a two bedroom at Bay Lake Tower with a Magic Kingdom view because why not, right? And we’d book the Friday at Animal Kingdom Lodge in a one bedroom because I was a crazy points spender at this point.
That just left Thursday. God damn Thursday. Which, for some weird reason was booked at almost every. single. resort. My only theory is that people that rent their points book Thursdays and hope that no one else books the days on either ends. Because I cannot understand it otherwise! I was utterly against us having to change resorts EVERY DAY for the first four days. It would be bad enough changing three times, but at least we’d get to see if we liked these other places.
Again, I obsessively checked every day to see if either the Poly had opened up for Thursday and Friday, or if Animal Kingdom Lodge opened up on Thursday. Finally, FINALLY, after a week and a half of checking, there was a one bedroom available at AKLV for Thursday. I booked it so fast I think I set my keyboard on fire.
There was just one problem. Our itinerary now read like this:
1 night at Bay Lake Tower
1 night at Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas
1 night at Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas
7 nights at Grand Floridian Villas
Were…were they going to make us change rooms at AKLV? It sure looked like it, since the system didn’t join the reservations together (seriously why would it not do this?) and listed them separately. Thankfully my husband stepped in at that point and offered to call DVC.
It turned out that yes, if we hadn’t called they would have probably not caught it and assigned us two different rooms for our two night stay. Since we called, they were able to manually combine the two reservations (I actually think the lady placed a hold on the days, cancelled what we had, then rebooked it as one) and we were set.
We are really grateful DVC was able to help us out with that, but let this be a warning to people wanting to book something other than their home resort. It was hard. If we had been trying for Saratoga Springs I think it would have been a different story, but we wanted to try a couple of the other newer places, and people are definitely booking them as their home resorts before you get a chance.
Final breakdown of points:
1 night BLT, 2 bedroom, Magic Kingdom view: 50 points
2 nights AKLV, 1 bedroom, savannah view: 61 points
7 nights GFV, 2 bedroom, standard view: 340 points
Of those points, the 340 are a combination of the banked 2014 points (170) and the points for this year, 2015 (170). We then borrowed only what we needed from the 2016 points (111), which will leave us with a total of 59 points next year.
Since we’re having another baby next March (!!!) we’re definitely not traveling in 2016 (or ever again because holy crap daycare costs!), so those points will be banked and if we feel like traveling in 2017 we’ll have 229 total points to work with. Or I guess we could try renting them. Oh boy, if we ever do that I will be sure to write a post!
And that’s how you do complicated points math and put yourself through lots of frustration booking a non-home resort in order to make your daughter’s first trip to Disney World magical.
We have 170 points at the Grand Floridian Villas. The first year we bought in we did so in April and decided to use the points that year to try out the brand new Grand Floridian Villas–which were actually still being built at the time. We scheduled the trip for December and made sure to try to book it the very first day that 11 month window opened up. Here’s the tricky part:
You can only book 7 days out from the first day of your trip, so if you want to stay longer you then need to wait to try to book the rest of your vacation. I imagine this is probably not a problem for regular people, but we’re Disney freaks who like to stay as long as we possibly can.
It turned out the first night we wanted to stay at the Grand Floridian Villas (GFV) was unavailable, so we booked into an open studio room at Saratoga Springs (SS) for the first night, then booked a GFV studio room for the next 7. We had planned on doing just a standard view, but only lake-view was available at GFV. Here was the points breakdown:
SS: 15
GFV: 153
Total points: 168
This meant we had 2 points that ended up going to waste for that year, but we really didn’t lose a lot of sleep over it. The lake-view at GFV was AMAZING, but I think we would have been just as happy looking out at the Grand Floridian hotel as we didn’t really spend all that much time on the balcony (I HATE spiders and Florida seems to be a place where if there’s a corner, there’s SPIDERS). Saratoga Springs was the real surprise, we LOVED the room we had. Even though it was a standard view, you went outside and looked across the river at Downtown Disney and the big balloon ride! It was beautiful, especially at night. We had been pretty bummed that we had to stay there a night (all the other places we checked were booked), but we actually would consider staying there for a vacation now–although we’d want to bring or rent a car because the bus situation is insane with all the stops.
Now this latest vacation, the one we’ll take this December, was way, way more complicated–we knew we wanted to go with some friends and family members, which would require a two bedroom, and we knew we wanted to stay at the Grand Floridian. Here’s how we worked it:
We banked our points for 2014. That means 170 points rolled over to 2015, which added to the 2015 points meant we had 340 total. Still not enough to do what we wanted (because as I said above, we’re Disney freaks). So then we BORROWED points from 2016. Still with me? I’ll do a complete breakdown for you in a minute!
Traveling with other people meant coordinating dates. The other family we were traveling with wanted to do a week at GFV with us, so we booked a two bedroom, standard view for seven nights. That was the easy part since we could do that 11 months out. The harder part was that we wanted to get there early with my mom so that we could both enjoy some time alone there before other people arrived and we wanted to test out another resort. What could possibly go wrong with this plan?!
Lots, it turned out. Since we were trying to book other resorts (our own fault) we were at a disadvantage. People who had those resorts as their home resorts could book them up 4 months before we could. We settled on a plan where we ranked what we wanted to try: Bay Lake Tower (BLT), the Polynesian (Poly), and Animal Kingdom Lodge (AKLV). We figured with that many options it wouldn’t be a big deal, especially since the days we were trying to get were going to just be a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
It turns out that it was really hard. None of the resorts had studios available for those three days in a row. Crazy, right? Some had Wednesday and Friday, but not Thursday. Some had Thursday but not Wednesday or Friday. None of them had studios available for all three days. I went nuts trying to make it all work. I obsessively checked to see availability even before we could book.
We definitely wanted to try Bay Lake Tower, but it was pretty much out of studios for all the days we wanted. One bedroom and two bedrooms were available, but we weren’t sure we wanted to spend that many points. The 7 month window opened up, but we did not book Wednesday because we weren’t sure.
The next day we went to book the Poly for Thursday and Friday. The day before it had showed a studio was open for both days. Now? Nothing. Panicked, I went to our third option, Animal Kingdom Lodge, which had ALWAYS had open rooms every time I checked. No studios. Only one bedrooms were open. But.
It had one for Friday, but not Thursday.
At this point I was basically freaking out. Where were we going to stay? This was madness!
The next day, kind of desperate, I decided that we’d stay in a two bedroom at Bay Lake Tower with a Magic Kingdom view because why not, right? And we’d book the Friday at Animal Kingdom Lodge in a one bedroom because I was a crazy points spender at this point.
That just left Thursday. God damn Thursday. Which, for some weird reason was booked at almost every. single. resort. My only theory is that people that rent their points book Thursdays and hope that no one else books the days on either ends. Because I cannot understand it otherwise! I was utterly against us having to change resorts EVERY DAY for the first four days. It would be bad enough changing three times, but at least we’d get to see if we liked these other places.
Again, I obsessively checked every day to see if either the Poly had opened up for Thursday and Friday, or if Animal Kingdom Lodge opened up on Thursday. Finally, FINALLY, after a week and a half of checking, there was a one bedroom available at AKLV for Thursday. I booked it so fast I think I set my keyboard on fire.
There was just one problem. Our itinerary now read like this:
1 night at Bay Lake Tower
1 night at Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas
1 night at Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas
7 nights at Grand Floridian Villas
Were…were they going to make us change rooms at AKLV? It sure looked like it, since the system didn’t join the reservations together (seriously why would it not do this?) and listed them separately. Thankfully my husband stepped in at that point and offered to call DVC.
It turned out that yes, if we hadn’t called they would have probably not caught it and assigned us two different rooms for our two night stay. Since we called, they were able to manually combine the two reservations (I actually think the lady placed a hold on the days, cancelled what we had, then rebooked it as one) and we were set.
We are really grateful DVC was able to help us out with that, but let this be a warning to people wanting to book something other than their home resort. It was hard. If we had been trying for Saratoga Springs I think it would have been a different story, but we wanted to try a couple of the other newer places, and people are definitely booking them as their home resorts before you get a chance.
Final breakdown of points:
1 night BLT, 2 bedroom, Magic Kingdom view: 50 points
2 nights AKLV, 1 bedroom, savannah view: 61 points
7 nights GFV, 2 bedroom, standard view: 340 points
Of those points, the 340 are a combination of the banked 2014 points (170) and the points for this year, 2015 (170). We then borrowed only what we needed from the 2016 points (111), which will leave us with a total of 59 points next year.
Since we’re having another baby next March (!!!) we’re definitely not traveling in 2016 (or ever again because holy crap daycare costs!), so those points will be banked and if we feel like traveling in 2017 we’ll have 229 total points to work with. Or I guess we could try renting them. Oh boy, if we ever do that I will be sure to write a post!
And that’s how you do complicated points math and put yourself through lots of frustration booking a non-home resort in order to make your daughter’s first trip to Disney World magical.
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