Is Disney Vacation Club a good move for Disney fans?

I bought DVC points for the Grand Californian on the secondary market seven years ago and they have already paid for themselves. The purchase is harder to justify if you buy direct from Disney, especially if you finance the purchase.

I always advise friends to run the numbers and only purchase DVC if you are certain you are going to stay at a DVC resort for years to come. Buying DVC and using the points for non-DVC hotels or cruises doesn’t make financial sense.

I used to visit WDW at least annually, and I always thought I’d eventually end up buying into DVC. I’m now in the position to do so, but the decline in quality of the core theme park product combined with the endless price increases has put me off WDW entirely. I haven’t visited since 2019, despite visiting Orlando multiple times since. Blue sky means nothing to me as I have zero faith that they’ll actually deliver a fraction of what they’ve been discussing.

On the other hand, if Universal Orlando offered something similar to DVC I’d be very interested.

My family got into DVC when I was growing up in the 90s, back when Old Key West was the only DVC resort on WDW property - I know it was a fantastic deal since signing up in 1993/1994 came with free park passes until the year 2000.

Similar to Colin, my family bought into DVC with our home resort being Saratoga Springs. We loved it for nearly 2 decades, visiting WDW, DL and DLP resorts. Unfortunately life circumstances changing (all us kids had kids!) coincided with the decline in the Disney World product. All the perks were slowly removed. The annual fees grew high enough that we considered and then decided to sell up. We would have loved to taken our own kids to WDW with DVC but it is not good value for money anymore in our eyes.

On an related note: the DVC experience vastly differs depending on resort. DLP was almost non-existent, with DL similar.

2016 was the last time I visited Disney and I have no intention of returning. Universal offers much better choices at reasonable value.

There’s a reason that timeshares have one of the worst reputations of any business going.

It’s been repeatedly shown that they are one of the worst things you can do with your money, and are a borderline scam in many cases. I don’t care how much Disney gussies up the DVC to try and make it seem different, it’s still just a timeshare program and it’s to Disney’s everlasting shame that they got involved in such a shady industry.

A timeshare by any other name is still a timeshare. John Oliver did a fantastic piece earlier this year on why they should be avoided at all costs.

Do you wanna know a secret...

DVC is more work than people realize. Yes, you can get some decent value from the program - I have friends that are staunch supporters of DVC, but have been visiting the parks 2 times a year (or taking a DCL trip) for the past decade plus, but now that their daughters have gotten older, they aren't able to visit as much, and have been trying to sell points the past couple of year. I will say that if you really want to buy a timeshare, DVC is one of the better programs mostly because it's really easy to sell points dollar for dollar (and even sometime at a profit if you bought in more than a decade ago when Disney started jacking up prices and stripping away perks). However, I feel that there are so few people out there that SHOULD buy DVC, and Disney has got to be scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of potential customers for their product because of the dedication and planning needed to get any sort of value from the program.

Im from Chile, DVC member for 9 years now and i really enjoy it,
As a timeshare is fantastic but it used to be much better
When i bought it we had
- Extra Magic Hours in all parks
- Free Airport traansportation
- Free Fast Passes
- Better discount in restaurants (many 15%-20% are 10% now)

We have used our points every year except pandemic year

DVCs are great…for Disney and its shareholders. There is a reason Disney is only building DVC resorts now….huge up front payments to cover building costs, yearly fees to cover maintenance and property taxes, and then after x number of years all rights revert back to Disney. Not to mention the repeat customer base as discussed above. An interesting question: Is Disney still a theme park resort with hotels or has it evolved/devolved into a hotel resort with theme parks?

@TwoBits - That's an interesting take, and I kind of think that there are 2 different groups that tend to gravitate towards DVC. There are certainly a lot of rich people that use DVC to ensure high quality rooms at WDW, but I also think there are a lot of DVC owners who use the program to secure larger accommodations with kitchenettes that are typically available at standard WDW resorts, which allows them to save money on food.

However, I do agree that in general, DVC guests spend a smaller percentage of their WDW time in the parks than typical resort guests. Those guests are coming to WDW whether there is a new attraction every year or not, and most probably don't need a carrot of annual new attractions/entertainment for them to buy into DVC. Maybe I'm wrong, but most DVC owners bought into the system because they LOVE Disney and WDW, and any long term plans to continue to improve and expand the parks probably factored little into those purchases. It's possible that in trying to woo now DVC owners from a drying well of Disney fans may necessitate certain expectations of new attractions and park expansions on a semi-regular basis, but I just don't think that is a major consideration even for someone thinking about DVC right now. So I do think you're right that these long term, blue-sky announcements have more to do with encouraging future visits from less frequent visitors (or getting once-in-a-lifetime visitors to come every 5-7 years) than it is to encourage general Disney and WDW fans into buying DVC.