×
One of my favorite aspects of the Disney Vacation Club program is that you can always find a price point that fits your family’s budget. As you’ll notice on the Listings page, DVC contracts start as low as 25 DVC Points but could include 500+ DVC Points.
With that much variation in ownership options, Disney has designed DVC to fit contracts of every size. We previously discussed the best strategies to maximize the value of a small contract. Now, we’ll evaluate a different level of ownership. Here’s how to best use a mid-sized DVC contract.
What’s a Mid-Sized Contract?
For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll go old school. You may not realize this, but the first members of the DVC program didn’t have a lot of wiggle room. Their only buying option was The Disney Vacation Club Resort, which we know as Disney’s Old Key West Resort.
Guests at the time purchased at least 230 DVC Points. At the time, DVC officials indicated that this amount entitled members to “reserve a two-bedroom villa for a week’s stay during peak seasons, a nine-day stay during a slow month such as September, or to reserve a villa for several weekend stays.”
Even now, more than 30 years later, 200 DVC Points remains a roughly average amount for program participants. So, we’ll use that as a baseline for a mid-sized contract. If you’ve got a few more/less points, that’s fine! It’s just an arbitrary number.
Broaden Your Horizons
Anyway, the first thing I’d invite you to do is read the DVC Points Charts. This time, you don’t need to cut corners as you did with the small contract discussion. As you’ll notice, you have enough points to book a week during most times on the annual calendar at Disney’s finest resorts.
With 200 DVC Points, The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa will provide you a week in a Studio 50 weeks out of 52. At The Villas at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa, you can spend a week in a Studio for less than 200 points during 46 of 52 weeks each year.
The DVC program proves so beneficial to small contracts that you can even spend a week in Hawaii! A Studio with a Poolside Gardens View maxes out at 203 points.
So, you can use the One-Time-Use Vacation Points option to purchase three points to add to your 200. Voila! You’re spending Christmas in Hawaii, sitting by the pool and sipping umbrella drinks for $60 out of pocket! It’s less if you don’t need to travel during peak season. In that scenario, you’ll have points left over to bank for the following year!
In short, you can pick the finest DVC resorts, the ones offering the utmost in luxury, with a mid-sized contract. You won’t need to worry about having enough points for a weeklong stay during all but the busiest tourism weeks.
Splurge a Little
The genius of the DVC program is that once you understand the fundamentals, they apply to everything. For example, the ideas I suggested for maximizing the value of a small contract work a mid-sized one as well! The only difference is the scale.
With this many points, you can upgrade to a One-Bedroom or even a Two-Bedroom Villa sometimes rather than staying in a Studio. So, your Disney vacation works the same while you’re outside your hotel room. However, you may never want to leave your Villa.
After all, these larger suites contain washer/dryer units, full-sized kitchens, and hangout areas for large groups. You can bring a larger number of friends and family members with you, or you can stretch your legs and feel like Disney royalty from the comfort of your own DVC room.
How you splurge is entirely up to you, but a mid-sized contract provides many exceptional options.
You can select a better hotel, a better room, a longer stay, and/or a larger traveling party. Once you understand the basics of DVC membership, everything scales upward from those precepts. So, let’s discuss a few specifics about maximizing a mid-sized contract.
The Better DVC Resorts
Picking your favorite DVC resort is like picking the best food. Everyone will disagree, and it’s a pointless exercise anyway. It’s an intellectual exercise rather than anything with permanence. When you get bored of a food, you eat something else. If you start to like a different DVC resort, you buy somewhere else.
In fact, you don’t even need to do that. You can just stay at most locations by using your current DVC contract. I mentioned a couple of exceptions like Disney’s Riviera Resort in the other article, but it’s the general rule. So, with a mid-sized contract, you can determine the best usage of your points.
Personally, I’m a monorail resort fan. So, my family’s top two choices are Disney’s Polynesian Villas & Bungalows and Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort. With 200 DVC Points, I can spend a week at either location almost all the time. But that’s not even the best part!
I also have enough points to purchase a better Room Type. Lake View at both resorts costs 204 points or less during 50 out of 52 weeks each year.
At Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas, I can spend a week with Savannah View, my favorite Room Type overall, for 193 points or less. For that matter, I could go mega-plush with my Studio by reserving a Kilimanjaro Club Concierge Room Type during 50 of the 52 weeks on the calendar.
In short, I pick the resort I want and the Room Type I want for a Studio!
The Better Rooms
I have a dear friend who joined the DVC program several years before me. We sometimes joke that I’ve stayed at a dozen resorts since the last time he spent the night at a different one. He’s an Old Key West (OKW) loyalist, and he has a good reason why.
During the earliest days of the program, he and his family discovered the value of Old Key West’s One-Bedroom Villas. I consider them one of the best value options in the DVC lineup due to their massive space.
If you’ve never been in this Room Type, it’s 942 square feet, which rivals the size of some Two-Bedroom Villas at other DVC resorts. You can book one of these One-Bedrooms at OKW for less than 200 DVC Points most of the time each year. As far as value goes, that option is tough to beat, which is why my friend is devoutly loyal to Old Key West.
The logic applies to some other options as well. I previously mentioned Aulani, where you can save your points when you plan to spend little time in the room. The standard view is nothing special…but still Hawaii. When you book the better Room Types, you can either watch people having a blast by the pool or sip your morning coffee while you stare at the ocean. It’s serene either way.
Similarly, you can book Preferred Rooms at various resorts like Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa. These accommodations offer superior logistics and are worth splashing around a few extra points per night.
In short, at its core, a mid-sized contract works similarly to a small one. However, the overall options are vastly superior. That’s why so many DVC members gradually scale up via Add-On-Itis. We add more points to improve our vacation options.
Posted By: