Advantages to all points at one resort. . .

[ebenmax]

My DH and I had been planning to buy several small contracts at various DVC resorts, but then when we talked to our guide, he said he has never been one to suggest multiple home resorts. So it made us start to wonder... what are the advantages of having all or most of you point at one place, other than the obvious (larger accommodations for longer stays at 11 month mark)?

TIA

 

[jade1]

Depends, for example if you have enough points to travel twice a year, you may want to reserve at 11 months at a diffrent resort. We do BCV at 11 months for spring break and XMAS at 11 months at VWL. Could not do that if we only had one contract.

 

[wdw1972]

I would think about how you plan to vacation and how many points you intend to own. If you realistically will only make 1 trip per year, for a week or 2 at a time, I would buy at 1 resort (the one you most want to stay at). If you like 2-3 resorts, and plan to rotate through them on your once/year trip, consider smaller contracts at just those resorts, and plan to bank/borrow everything so you've got enough at the resort of the year to book your stay at 11 months. On the other hand, if you plan to make several short trips per year and plan to stay at different resorts for different trips, then it makes sense to own at multiple resorts as long as you have enough points at each one (using banking/borrowing if necessary) to book at the 11 month window for each one. There are certain resorts/times where it's very hard to book at 7 months!

As for # of points, the more points you have the more sense it makes to have multiple resorts - or put another way, the fewer points you own the less sense it makes to split them up.

Using myself as an example, I started with 190 points at one resort. I added at other resorts, but always in an amount I planned to use at that resort each year. I started with OKW and love that resort, but I knew during Food & Wine I would always want to be at BCV.....so I added 200 points there because that would get me a studio for 12 nights. I loved HH when I visited there, so I added points there to get me a 2-br villa for a week during the times of year I'd want to visit. I just added AKV, and added 150 so I could easily do a couple long weekends per year. Bottom line, I'm up over 1000 points so owning at 4 resorts makes sense to me. If I only had 200-300 points I probably would have stuck with just 1 resort to keep things simple. The more resorts and more contracts you have, the greater the chance member services will make an error. They have to book reservations contract by contract, and I can't tell you how many times they've made a mistake or done something differently from the way I intended (I have 15 or so contracts, so I know it's tough for them).

Good luck, whatever you decide. If you go the multiple contracts or resorts route, be sure to keep good records of all your reservation activity!

 

[mbhoxsie]

We have three different contracts across two different resorts...

We generally will alternate where we stay every other year... (We only make it down to FL once a year..)

We bought into BWV because we loved the resort... After staying at VB, we fell in love there too and decided to get a couple of add-ons....

Personally, I don't plan on buying any more points at onsite resorts... We have enough to stay two weeks if need be at WDW.. Any more there at SSR or AKW would be overkill.. (While I love all of the resorts we have stayed at, I just can't cost justify spending all that extra money to get a four month lead time booking VWL or BCV..) Now... If points open up at DL or another offsite location, I may have to consider those options...

Even if you are only planning on buying into one resort, you may still want to consider breaking your purchase into smaller contracts.. The reason being that if you ever want to sell part of it off or distribute your assets in a will, it is much easier to do with seperate contracts...

 

[jarestel]

what are the advantages of having all or most of you point at one place, other than the obvious (larger accommodations for longer stays at 11 month mark)?

Well, those are the main advantages. If you can't book during the owners' window you don't need to have multiple contracts at various resorts because at 7 months in, points are points and not tied to any specific resort. Additionally, there's nothing wrong with staying in studios to squeeze the most out of a small number of points, but the larger rooms can be quite nice too.

If you can plan in advance, want to be able to guarantee a stay at several resorts, and aren't concerned about the smaller rooms, multiple contracts will work well for you by utilizing the banking & borrowing features of DVC.

Good luck!

 

[Figment2]

I owned at two resorts (BWV & WLV) and went down to one (BWV). I got tired of thinking about 11 months vs 7 months and did I have enough BWV points to cover. Never did stay at WLV.

I like knowing that when I call at 11 months I have enough points.

Cyn