Is Disney Vacation Club Worth It? 2024 Update

In this week's episode, Jared revisits the Disney Vacation Club with updated numbers and asks whether or not its worth it?
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[@kurtsugg3455]

First thing that is wrong is you dont pay to book a room 2nd you took a room that was 583 a night said it was 3500 for 6 nights you forgot the tax of 12.5% add another $437. 3rd no Dvc member would use points for a cruise they would rent the points and pay cash for the cruise

[@jamesfraser6906]

He also only shows a 6 night cash hotel stay, vs a 7 night DVC stay. Let's make it apples to apples to do a fair comparison.

[@dirkvangorkum5376]

There is no $90 fee to book a room. I can book and cancel all I want as long as it's not too close to my reservation. And when I sale one of my resale contracts; chances are I get most of if not more of my original investment back so I stay basically for my maintenance fee only. I save about 60 to 70% off rack rate. And if I sale a direct contract; I could still maybe recoup my money if I keep it long enough. The advantage of having a direct contract is for the restrictions. And the rooms you showed did not match up.

[@nichollekoz3782]

Thank you for a true break down of DVC from your vantage point. Disclaimer: we are DVC members and love it for us. I really enjoyed how you stated it wasn't worth it for you but could be worth it under certain parameters. I 100% agree. DVC is NOT for everyone. The only thing I would like to add, at the 11 min mark you stated there was a 90-100 booking fee. There is no booking or change fee with for staying on property at any DVC resort. You can book and change a million times without any charges. Thanks again for some good content.

[@carrydonkey-gs5op]

I think he was most likely looking at the Disney Collection exchange which does cost 100 dollars but when booking DVC like you would normally there is no associated fee.

[@kurtsugg3455]

@@carrydonkey-gs5opthat’s not what he said he gives bad info

[@MegaBeaches]

In my experience using DVC points for Disney Collection is poor use of points. It'd be much smarter to rent out your points and then pay cash for that rather than get a poor return from Disney for your points. I personally have never traded my points in this way and I don't know anyone who has for this very reason. All of which tells me that this guy doesn't really know what he's talking about.

[@hm4704]

Worth it….? When I bought in 1997, YES Now, NO! With more DVC members in the pool it is much more difficult to get non-home resorts at the 7 month mark. My advice to everyone who is considering…. If you do buy, purchase a home resort that you LOVE!

[@carrydonkey-gs5op]

Regarding the cruise part when you went over the point chart, if you look at the top left it says PER PERSON based on double occupancy. So for a family of 4, that’s 240*2 + 120*2= 720. Again, DVC points are not a good value anywhere outside of the 16 DVC resorts like you said in the video. Sorry I keep commenting on this video but lol loved what you said at the end about how important is it to you to stay on property and agree wholeheartedly. Do you want to stay on property or not? How much is that worth to you? Value is FAR better off property. Obviously. There isn’t a Disney room you can get on property for as cheap as the Vrbo room you’re renting or for such a large space, but again do you care about being on property? Do you care about Moonlight Magic or being able to buy the Sorcerer pass and etc. Again, you were far more accurate on this video and I respect your opinion on this one. Good job.

[@carrydonkey-gs5op]

First off, thank you for re-uploading the video and fixing the figures. With regard to the Garden Wing resort view comparison to BLT that is not equivalent to a BLT theme park view. Garden Wing is kind of off to the side and closer to Copper Creek if you're familiar. What you should be comparing it to is the Main Tower- Theme Park View or simply the same room at Bay Lake Tower which is a Bay Lake Tower theme park view studio. Looking at the timeframe you selected since you were talking about September which is the cheapest time period for DVC, it is 830.99 before tax pulled straight from the website September 1st-8th.. After tax for a week is about 6538.51 (934/night with tax). So really that is closer to a 5,000 dollar savings. 32,000= 6 years and change to break even on the buy in price and then dues paid during that time/savings per year to reach the full break even which is likely another 1-2 years. Do I think that room is worth 6500 for a week? Definitely not but that's what Disney has it priced as. If you assume a 25% discount which is fairly standard with an annual pass that brings the price down to 4905 for the week or a savings of about 3400 and would make it take closer to 10-12 years for full breakeven. Out of curiosity, why did you compare the weekly rate for DVC (7 nights) to 6 nights at Aulani for cash? The reason why people don't really recommend using your points for cruises is because if you rent your points, you can get 20-22 dollars per point you sell on DVC rental store or David's DVC. If you use Disney directly, they value the points you give back to them at around 8-9 dollars and they make you pay a 100 dollar fee to convert the points which is why we harp against using your points directly for cruises although Disney Cruise Line is arguably the best value you can get for your money in general from Disney because of what you said that's included (food, entertainment, destinations). All that being said, I as a DVC member do NOT think DVC is a good idea for most people. It's a very niche set of people who it makes sense for and has a lot of qualifiers. 1. Must want to stay on property (preferably in moderate or deluxe resorts) 2. Must want to go to Disney at bare minimum every other year 3. Must be able to plan 7+ months out 4. Realize this is NOT an investment. This is pre-paying for a hotel room that you are paying dues for and locking into for decades. If you want to invest, buy property or put into a mutual index funds stock. As was said below, you will NOT save money overall with DVC. You will end up going on far more vacations which includes spending more on airfare, tickets (if going to WDW/DL), food, etc. One thing I didn't see you touch on or I'm not sure if I just missed you talk about it but I didn't see you mention DVC resale which for most people makes a lot more sense. You can buy a Saratoga Springs contract for 80 dollars per point and use it at everywhere built pre-2019 and make the numbers work even better. I never had a problem with people thinking DVC isn't worth it for them or wasn't a good investment for their value (which again it isn't an investment because it's value is guaranteed to decrease to 0 at expiration), it's when there's misinformation about the product or how it works that bothers me. Finally, we love being DVC members. I recognize the limitations it has but it works well for our family because we meet the above qualifiers and want to go to Disney for the foreseeable future. I realize most people should not buy it and we are spending more money as a result, but what can I say? We enjoy it. We love going to Disney World and went 8 times last year alone and each time required a plane ride to get there. We like being able to walk from our room to the parks. We like the Disney theming. We're young enough where it's not unreasonable that we will be able to see our contracts expire god willing. We like knowing that there will always be a trip coming up and we our kids and maybe even our kids' kids will be able to enjoy it as well.

[@ADryerDoseOfDisney]

Great points and we didn’t talk about resale because first, I don’t fully understand how it all works, second, there is no info on it from the DVC site and I was trying to stay as true to the DVC site as possible, and finally from what little research I have done on it, the values were all over the place so I didn’t know what to trust as an authority.

[@Lejolif]

Very informative

[@williammcgovern8745]

Yes

[@Molbyone]

In short...it's just not a good deal to buy DVC direct anymore unless you would feel the same about putting those dollars in a pile and setting them on fire. Constant price increases and questionable perk values and new resale restrictions just arent worth the huge price gap between direct and resale.

[@carrydonkey-gs5op]

It really just depends on what your goals are with the membership and if you care about staying at Riviera or any newer hotels. But yes, if you don't care about the new resorts and only care about the original 14 resorts, there's not a good reason to buy direct compared to resale.

[@MegaBeaches]

Look I appreciate all the work you put into this. I get that you don't like or appreciate this product. Fine its a free country. But you didn't cover all scenarios you didn't even cover half the resorts and realistically I understand that you can't without creating a 10 hour video. But you did at minimum neglect one huge scenario....buying resale. Many of us bought our contracts on the resale market and literally saved thousands. Do we get all the perks like 10% off merchandise, or the impossible to get into moonlight magic? No, but the savings for us far surpass those perks for those of us who buy resale. So the libertarian in me respects your right to have your opinions but the analyst in me just had to point out that you aren't presenting all the facts here instead you're cherry-picking facts that support your view.

[@ADryerDoseOfDisney]

We covered the program at face value which is where the large majority of purchasers will be looking. We specifically said we did not cover the resale because there isn’t a lot of information out there on it and Disney doesn’t officially have it on their site. Resale or not, the program isn’t worth it in our opinion.

[@justinbaker2883]

DVC is like a siren trying to pull you to financial rocks. It doesn't make sense on multiple levels. 1) This is a luxury purchase, you should be at a financial place where saving 50% on a hotel shouldn't matter. It isn't even a significant chunk when you add in the other costs of a Disney trip. So for those folk, the mental effort is not worth it, since the 'savings' is negligible in their overall financial picture. 2) Typically, by the time you are in a financial place to buy this, it is probably too late. Getting a 40-year contract when you are 40, is not as fun as in your 20's. 3) I've never liked that the risk isnt priced in, we just experienced a year you couldn't travel. Over 40 years you are gonna see 4 recessions and maybe a depression. You're locking in a hotel rate for 40 years at its high point. Disney cannot lose money on DVC with dues that increase more than inflation and likely your wage growth, you'd think with a guaranteed client for life they would take the hit and make it a 90% savings.

[@ADryerDoseOfDisney]

Great comment and analogy, and I agree with everything you said!