We had a
Disney cruise planned for the summer of 2012. I had somehow come to know about the
DVC resale market around the same time that we booked the cruise. It may have been through this site, but I don't remember exactly. But in any case, Disney was on our mind.
My wife and I both love Disney. I stayed at the Contemporary as a young kid when my aunt brought me and my sister for the first time. As a teen, my grandparents purchased DVC and I was able to take a couple of trips to Old Key West, which I loved. My wife and I traveled to Orlando and stayed offsite with friends in the early aughts (pre-kids) and I realized during that trip that I really really preferred staying on site.
So in 2012 with three young kids and no plans for any more, we knew what our vacation lodging requirements for vacations were going to be. At the time, I looked into planning various kinds of vacations and things looked like a pain. Most cruise ships only house four in a room, which means the extra expense of a second room. Many hotels also only sleep 4 in a regular room unless you start moving up to suites and so forth.
I did a bunch of research on the DVC resorts that would allow us to sleep 5 in a 1BR and we settled on AKV. The resale market was pretty favorable to buyers and prices were pretty low because the economy was still recovering from the recession at the time. I knew that using points on a cruise or non-DVC vacation was a crummy value, so we didn't care a bit about not buying direct.
So long story short, we like Disney. We like the deluxe resorts. Our family size was set and we knew exactly what we needed. We had the cash on hand. I looked at the math of lodging 5 people in cash deluxe rooms over time vs. our DVC costs. We decided that buying was right for us.
Another added benefit is our ability to bring other family with us. We're skipping WDW this year (it's our first year "taking off" from Disney since 2012), so we'll have 500 points next year. Since we'll be able to get a 2BR for about a week and a half, I can ask my parents or my nieces to come with us. We're a family that likes to vacation together so being able to bring other people along on occasion is nice.