Hi everyone, it's Jacqueline for Pixie Dust PhD. A great way to try out Disney
Vacation Club before purchasing a contract and becoming an owner is to rent points.
Or frankly, even if you have no interest in purchasing DVC, renting points can be
an excellent way to save a lot of money to stay at those deluxe villa resorts. Previously on the
channel we have gone over the general standard scheme of renting points. In this video we will
be covering renting points by purchasing a confirmed Disney Vacation Club reservation.
This is essentially still renting points, but there are some key differences, a big one is
that you can save a ton of money compared to the standard way of renting points. I've found a lot of
folks, even those familiar with Disney Vacation Club, don't necessarily know about renting out
confirmed reservations. I’ll have everything you need to know and some key examples--stay tuned!
I am working with slightly new technology today--I’m working on a blue background
instead of a green one in an attempt to wear a shirt with some green accents. If the video
looks a little wonky, thank you for your patience while I am constantly learning new things about
the tech side of video creation. On to today's topic. Typical DVC point rentals include you,
the renter, providing a specific range of dates you would like to vacation, and then selecting a
few of the resorts you're interested in. Then, if there's availability in the resorts you'd
like over those dates, a DVC member who wants to rent out their points will go ahead and make that
reservation in their account but under your name. The member will also forward along any
pertinent information such as your confirmation number. Cost for this varies depending on how far
in advance of your arrival date your renting points out, the resort you want to stay at,
and which third party company you're using--or if you're working directly with a DVC member. But
generally speaking you end up paying a flat rate per point. Again, this varies across companies,
but generally speaking renting is about $20 per point right now. Each DVC resort has its own
points chart and different nights cost different amount of points depending on the travel period
and weekdays versus weekend nights. Your trip will cost a certain amount of points for that room,
then multiply that number of points times this price per point for renting. Compared to the cash
rates that Disney advertises on their website, you’ll typically be saving a bundle by renting
instead of going directly through Disney. And yet, if you are flexible with your travel dates there's
an even cheaper way to go about this. Renting a confirmed Disney Vacation Club reservation does
require more flexibility than your typical method of renting. In the past when I’ve rented points,
I’ve done it the traditional way because I know exactly when I want to travel--I know what dates
I want to arrive and what dates I want to leave. But if you have flexibility in your schedule I
highly recommend you check out the confirmed reservations. These are more or less exactly
what they sound like. A DVC member already has a room booked, they have a confirmed reservation,
it's locked down, but they are not able to travel anymore. Rather than cancel the reservation and
rent out the points, they're actually renting out that reservation itself. Sometimes they have a
desirable room type or desirable dates--over the holidays for example--so it makes more
sense to rent out the reservation than to rent out points. Other times it may be short notice
until the points they use to book that reservation expire at the end of their use year. In this case,
again, it probably makes more sense to rent out the reservation itself rather than try
to rent points on such short notice. Booking a confirmed reservation is typically much faster
than the standard rental process. When you rent out points the traditional way there tends to be
a lot of back and forth about availability. For example, if I’m the renter I put in a request for
certain days and a couple of resorts. Someone checks availability and gets back to me with
some options. Then I pick my desired option and send that into the third-party company. Then they
have to work with a member that wants to rent out their points in order to book that reservation.
The member forwards along information to the company, the company forwards it along to me.
Most third party companies work super hard and go very fast to get this done quickly, but it's just
not the same as booking a confirmed reservation. With confirmed reservations you know exactly what
you're getting into. You don't need this back and forth. You claim it, you pay, it's yours.
All in all, if you're planning to head to a Disney destination soon and you have some flexibility
with your timing I would definitely encourage that you take a look at confirmed DVC reservations
and see if any pique your interest. You will usually see the most confirmed reservations
at DVC resorts at Walt Disney World; this simply is just because there are more of them. However,
you absolutely can still find confirmed DVC reservations for the other resorts;
so Aulani in Hawaii, Hilton Head, Vero Beach, and the Grand Californian out in Disneyland.
Let's go through some examples, and these are in no particular order. First is DVC Rental Store. To
find their confirmed reservations listings go to DVC guests and then browse confirmed reservations.
You can browse them all, or you can narrow your search by using the filter criteria on
the left bar. If you like planning ahead like I do, you may want to sort by date descending.
The reservations with the furthest away check-in date will populate first in the list.
That being said, you're usually only going to find great discounts on confirmed reservations that are
coming up pretty fast. These ones way out into the future don't tend to be heavily discounted.
For example this BoardWalk Villas reservation for April 2022 comes out to be over $500 a night,
which for a studio is not that great of a rate. It's not awful, but it's definitely not a deal.
If we instead sort by date ascending, so the nearest reservations populate first on the list,
now you can see those big discounts. Here we have rooms priced at $12 per point. If the standard
rental rate is around $20 per point, $12 per point really is a huge amount of savings. For reference,
I screenshotted this example on May 23rd, so this check-in date really was only a few nights away.
This clearly won't work for everybody, but if you live within driving distance or you can snag a
great last minute flight deal this may be a good option for you. One thing I don't like about this
website, and this is true of most of the websites I’ve browsed for DVC confirmed reservations,
is you can't sort by price per point. You can sort overall price lowest to highest,
but of course this just populates the list first with single night reservations because they will
have the smallest total being only one night. That really doesn't give you a good sense of
any potential discount. This website does allow you to set a minimum and maximum overall price,
so that can be helpful. For example, say I know I don't want to spend more than two grand overall on
hotels; so we will move the maximum to two grand, and now we will sort from high to low. At the top
we have these Bay Lake Tower reservations for three nights, so the nightly price is actually
kind of high still. But we do now see a Bay Lake Tower reservation for four nights, making the
price per night under $500. Again, that's not a steal, but that's not bad, and it's definitely
a little bit better than those three night reservations. If we keep scrolling you can see
this five night reservation at Saratoga Springs. This comes in under $350 per night. And this next
Saratoga Springs reservation is more expensive, but it also encapsulates Christmas. This time
of year falls into the single most expensive DVC travel period. Sometimes shopping for a confirmed
DVC reservation is a good way to grab dates that are otherwise pretty hard to book. Below this
listing we see an Old Key West listing for five nights that comes to about $350 per night. Then
there's these Grand Californian reservations, which in my opinion are outrageously priced.
But hey, being able to stay in a Grand Californian villa without being a DVC owner is actually very
difficult. So maybe this will be worth it to you. That's just a peek at some of the listings on
this website. Overall, I would say there were not a ton of steals here, but that literally can
change every day. David’s Vacation Club Rentals is one of the most trusted rental companies.
They too sell confirmed reservations. Under DVC guests you'll go to dedicated reservations for
rent. Here at the top of this table you can filter by room size, when you want to travel,
and resort. You can also sort by check-in date and total cost like the last website.
But here you do have this option of sorting by price per point. Let's try that out. First,
let's sort price per point lowest to highest. The two lowest are listed at $15 per point,
so that's a pretty good discount. On this website you can rent out Aulani the standard way for $19
per point, so you're saving $4 per point. This particular reservation is 388 points, so compared
to the usual rental process you end up saving over $1,500. Boulder Ridge rents out for $19 per point
within seven months of check-in, or $20 per point if you rent that out before seven months of your
arrival. For a 348 point reservation, that means you'd be saving between about $1,400 and $1,700.
Now, of course this confirmed reservation is still over $5,000, and that's a ton of money.
But if you've got a larger travel party, say four or five people, and you want to do a longer trip
like this--nine nights--five grand for a deluxe resort really isn't that bad. This next listing
is kind of outrageous at almost 10 grand, but it is a grand villa room with a theme park view at
Bay Lake Tower. This sleeps up to 12 people and is a short walk into the Magic Kingdom.
If you want to get a lot of folks together in one place and split the cost among parties it could
become more reasonable. It certainly would be an awesome experience you would never forget. And in
general on this website there's actually kind of a lot of grand villa reservations up for grabs,
which is a little bit surprising because there just aren't that many grand villas. Three bedroom
reservations can be difficult to snag even for owners. If you tried to rent a grand villa the
traditional way but ran into availability issues check confirmed reservations to see if any pop
up. Like I mentioned for the last website, dates too may be a factor. Here we have nine nights in
Saratoga Springs, that includes Christmas Eve and New Year's. This is a very valuable time to be in
Disney. Then we get to the normal listings at $19 per point, which doesn't reflect any discount for
doing the confirmed reservation. But again, if you want the process to move faster you could simply
book the confirmed reservation instead of doing the typical rental process. And if you are really
interested in any of these reservations but don't want to pay full price, I would encourage you just
to keep checking back. You never know when the owner will want to drop that pricing! Next let's
do DVC Store. Here you'll go to rent DVC then pre-booked reservations. This is one of my least
favorite interfaces, as I believe you can't sort by any metric. But there aren't a ton of listings,
so it's not a lot of work to take a look through them all. They do clearly label the price per
point, which I love. Most of these aren't a great deal at all--especially that $24 per point over at
the Riviera. I think it's kind of a rip off. But we do have this one listing at the BoardWalk for
$16 per point. This interface doesn't list the number of nights, so you'll have to do that math
yourself. Checking in on August 22nd and checking out on August 29th I believe is seven nights; this
brings your nightly cost to about $715 per night. Now, that is definitely a lot of money, but it
is a two-bedroom villa. This means if you've got eight folks you can all sleep together in the same
room instead of booking two separate hotel rooms. Do the price comparison and figure out if booking
two separate rooms would cost more than doing this single two-bedroom villa--in many instances
two standard hotel rooms in a deluxe resort will actually probably cost more than this reservation.
Moving on to the next, we have DVC Shop. Under DVC rentals you'll click shop confirmed reservations.
They have filters at the top for resorts, overall price, check in date, and number of nights you'd
like to stay. Then you can also sort the table down below by most of the columns as well. Again,
we don't see that price per point or nightly rate option unfortunately. Let's specifically just look
at Riviera Resort listings. This is a bit of a selfish pick of mine, as because I bought my DVC
contract recently on the resale market I cannot use my own points to stay at the Riviera Resort.
If I want to stay at the Riviera I need to pay the cash rate or rent points. Rather than rent
points the traditional way, let's take a look at these confirmed reservations. And here we see the
first listing actually looks pretty good. Six nights for just under $2,000 total comes out to
be about $325 dollars per night. For a brand new deluxe resort, if you ask me, $325 a night is a
pretty good price. And while you can't walk to any theme parks, the Riviera Resort does host a
Skyliner station. Back to the default page, we can see this Animal Kingdom Villas value accommodation
reservation that's coming up pretty quickly in early July. For this listed price, the nightly
rate again is around $325 a night. Standard Animal Kingdom Lodge hotel rooms in this time frame will
typically run you just shy of $500 per night, so $325 a night is some significant savings. Finally,
let's do one more website: DVC Rental. This one's a little hidden honestly. But you'll navigate to
deals on the top menu. You can filter results by resort, how many people you want to sleep,
if the price has been reduced, the price per point, and the check-in month. You can also sort
by the columns. Interestingly, they don't have a column for price per point, so you cannot sort by
that. But they do list the savings, which is kind of fun. Let's look at the price per point filter
and go with up to $16 per point. Unsurprisingly, all these listings are tagged as reduced. First,
there's a week at the BoardWalk Villas in a two bedroom that's $15 per point. This is a tad over
$650 per night, which again is maybe a little on the expensive side, but it is a two bedroom villa.
So if your travel party is eight or nine people, this still may be a cheaper option than booking
two separate standard hotel rooms. Skipping over the fairly similar Copper Creek listing, this Bay
Lake Tower one is interesting. Four nights in a deluxe lake view studio for under $1,400 total.
This is $15 per point and under $350 dollars per night. One last thing I wanna show you is
shopping confirmed reservations can be a great way to snag a difficult to book room type. We
talked about grand villas already, but I’d also like to point out club level rooms over at the
Animal Kingdom Villas. To quickly search for this I would just put Jambo House as your resort--there
are no club level rooms over on the Kidani Village side. You really aren't ever going to find a great
monetary deal on club level rooms, but if you do not own a DVC contract with an Animal Kingdom home
resort this may be your only way to reliably book a club level villa at the Animal Kingdom Villas.
These club level rooms are both super popular and extremely limited--that's a very challenging
reservation to book. This Christmas time club level listing actually looks like it's about
$18 to $19 per point, which is essentially face value. Even though you wouldn't be saving money
per point, it's definitely a special reservation and something to consider. I am not sponsored
by any of these websites; none of them endorsed this content. I just wanted to show you some real
life examples of confirmed reservations you can come across. Remember, you can't change anything
about confirmed reservations: the villa size, the resort, the nights, etc. You are locked into these
exact details, but if you have some flexibility with your travel plans confirmed reservations can
be a great way either to save quite a lot of money or to snag a room type that may be difficult to
get otherwise. You will also almost surely be saving time over the standard rental process.
If I had an annual pass and was able to just pop down to Disney World several times a year I would
be shopping confirmed reservations the most. If you're able to go down on short notice you
can get some really fantastic rooms at very low rates. Let me know what you think about confirmed
reservations, or if you have any questions. in the comments down below! Also if you've utilized
a certain rental company I would love to hear about your experience! Outside of YouTube we can
always chat over on Twitter and Instagram--you'll find me @PixieDustPhD. Thanks so much for everyone
who did leave a “like” on the video and who has subscribed to the channel. Sharing my videos
with your friends is also immensely helpful, and I truly appreciate all of your support.
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and we'll see you real soon at Pixie Dust PhD!