Hey everyone, it's Jacqueline for Pixie Dust PhD.
If you already own a Disney Vacation Club Contract and are thinking about
buying more points, or if you're contemplating buying a
Disney Vacation Club contract but are worried that you won't buy
enough points, today's video is for you. In this video we'll discuss all the need
to know information about point add-ons for Disney Vacation Club.
Before we get started, if you are new to exploring Disney Vacation Club this is
not the video to start at. Add-ons are more of an intermediate
level understanding of Disney Vacation Club whereas you will want to start at
the beginning. I'll leave a link in the description
below, or you can click the card in this corner, in order to check out my DVC
playlist. This playlist contains videos going over
all the need to know information for DVC jargon and concepts--
things like what is a use year, why should you care about your home resort,
how many points should you buy, is DVC even right for you.
But if you're up to date on all the DVC basics and those videos let's go ahead
and move on to today's topic: add-ons. There are a variety of reasons why you
might find yourself wanting more Disney Vacation Club points.
Perhaps being a DVC owner has changed the way you vacation and you find
yourself going down to Walt Disney World more frequently.
Or maybe you thought your family of four would fit comfortably in a studio, but it
turns out that you would much rather be in a one bedroom and it is worth the
extra points to you. Whatever your reason for wanting more
points may be, you have assessed your financial situation and you are ready
for more points. In DVC jargon when you obtain more points
it's often referred to as an add-on. Officially you are purchasing
additional ownership interest and adding on more points.
Let me repeat this for emphasis, it is again a real estate transaction so you
are purchasing additional ownership interest. In this
way it's not a difficult process by any means but it's perhaps not as
straightforward as you would imagine. Let's say you currently have a 100 point
contract at the Riviera Resort, but ultimately you've decided you really
want 150 points. If you decide to purchase additional
ownership interest to the tune of 50 points
those points aren't just simply added and now you own one single 150 point
contract. Instead you have your 100 point contract
originally and then your new add-on contract a separate
50-point contract. Effectively you are purchasing a new contract.
That's what it means to purchase additional ownership interest in this
case. You can have as many or as few variables
match your original contract as you want, and you can buy add-ons directly through
Disney or on the resale market, just like you would for an initial contract.
And like purchasing an initial contract because it is a new contract you will
owe closing costs. So all that said it's really not that
different from purchasing your initial contract.
Of course there are some things to consider. You will of course need to
decide how many points you want to purchase for your add-on.
Currently if you're purchasing an add-on directly through Disney the minimum
amount of points you can buy is 25 and that's if you're paying for it in cash.
If you'll be financing that purchase the minimum amount of points you can buy
directly through Disney as an add-on right now is 50.
However, do note that newer resorts will often have different--meaning
higher--minimum purchases for the number of add-on points.
A perk of purchasing directly through Disney just like with your initial
contract is you can pick the exact amount of points you want.
If you want 33 points they can give you 33 points; if you want 36 points you can
get that. That's pretty hard to find on the resale
market for the most part. Also you can choose your resort; although if the
resort is currently sold out you may be put on a waitlist.
If you're purchasing a small add-on directly through Disney it does appear
that the guides, who are the salespeople, will try to match your current existing
use year though. if you're purchasing an add-on contract
through the resale market it's very similar to that of an initial contract
in that you cannot change the number of points, the home resort, or the use year.
Whatever contract you end up purchasing you're purchasing on those exact
terms. This lack of flexibility does mean it can take much longer
for you to come across a resale contract with the exact terms that you wish for.
Many resale websites do allow you to set up alerts though for exactly what you
want. Some also have alerts or a general part
of their website for small contracts such as 50 points and under if you're
looking for a small add-on. Other than the number of points, with two
or more DVC contracts there are of course
additional decisions to make. Primarily that will be your use year and your home
resort. If you want to simply be able to stay in
your current home resort but in larger accommodations or for longer periods of
time or more frequently throughout the year
then you'll probably just end up matching your home resort and your use
year. In this case keeping these variables the
same is nice because then your 11 month booking window is the same for both
contracts, and your banking deadline is also the same for both contracts.
Basically you just have less to keep track of.
In this case, with the same home resort and use year across your multiple
contracts, they technically are separate contracts but you can conceptualize them
as one contract. Alternatively you may be purchasing an
add-on, either small or large, at a different home resort.
Maybe you want to be able to do split stays consistently between your two
favorite home resorts at Walt Disney World.
Or maybe every other year you want to be able to stay at one one year and then
the next year stay at a separate home resort. This is achievable through
banking and borrowing of course. Maybe your current home resort is great
for your entire family vacation, but you want to head down on select
weekends with just you and your partner at a different resort.
Or maybe you want that second home resort specifically for its location.
For example BoardWalk and Beach Club are pretty popular for this for access to
EPCOT during festival season. If you're choosing a different home
resort you absolutely can keep your multiple use years the same.
This will certainly make it easier for you to remember your banking deadline as
there will just be one banking deadline instead of multiple.
However, even if your use year is the same if your home resorts are different
you cannot treat these as one single pot of points. They are
separate pots of points. That 11-month home priority booking window is assigned
to points, not you as an owner. So let's say
your original contract is 100 points at the Riviera and you buy an add-on for 50
points at the Polynesian. Now you have 150 points you can access,
but they're not treated exactly the same. 11 months in advance of your desired
trip you cannot combine this pot of points to have
150 points from your current use year to spend. You could use
100 of those at Riviera and then 50 of those at the Poly,
but you can't just combine them and say, "well I as an owner have 150 points this
year and I want to use all 150 over at Riviera."
50 of those points are assigned to the Polynesian as their home resort, and so
they don't open up to be able to book the Riviera until the seven month mark.
For this exact example we're also assuming that your points obtained at
the Polynesian you bought directly through Disney or you were grandfathered
into the old rules where you weren't restricted in not being able to use them
at newly built resorts. To avoid this you can of course bank and
borrow points within that one contract. So if you needed 150 points at the
Riviera you could use your 100 points from this
use year and borrow 50 points from the next use year.
In that case though you are leaving your 50 point contract for the Poly aside.
Now, once you hit the seven month mark and you don't need to worry about the
home resort 11 month priority booking window
then you can treat them all as one pot. But if you're a planner, which many DVC
owners are, at 11 months they are totally separate.
Just remember that your home resort booking advantage is assigned to the
points, not to you. That other variable you can
toggle is of course your use year. They don't necessarily have to match between
your contracts. I personally would only suggest having
different use years if you are intending on going to an event
at the same time every year that doesn't work with your current use year.
For example, if you always want to attend a specific Run Disney marathon weekend,
if there's a specific EPCOT festival you always want to go to,
or if there's a specific holiday you think you'll always want to be in Walt
Disney World for; these things tend to fall
around the same time every year, so you would be
traveling to Disney World around the same time every year. If you're
purchasing your second contract specifically for something like this,
in that case you would want your use year to make sense with that time period
you'd be traveling. Long story short, I would suggest you get
a contract with a use year that's within a few months before
when you would expect to be traveling for that event every year. Note that if
your multiple contracts have different use years, or if they're deeded
differently--so to different names, including even changes in including or
not including middle names-- then you will actually have separate DVC
membership IDs. If you are mentally prepared and willing
to handle different use years really having multiple DVC membership IDs won't have
very many practical implications for you, but it is something interesting to note.
On the flip side if you keep the deeding the same and the use years the same--
even if you have separate home resorts-- you will just have that single DVC
membership ID. So in summary, add-on points are really
an add-on contract. You will be paying additional closing
cost fees, and even if you're use year and home resort match
at least initially they will be separate contracts. You can work to pull as many
different levers as you want in terms of variables. You can have matching home
resorts or different home resorts; you can have matching use years or different
use years; and of course you decide the number of points.
You may want to change these things if you want to be able to enjoy multiple
home resorts, or if you're planning on traveling at
different times of the year. Buying an add-on contract directly through Disney
or via the resale market is largely the same as when you think about your
initial contract. You can dictate the variables far more
easily when buying directly through Disney and the process will go much
faster, but you of course are paying that increased price.
If you're looking to purchase an add-on and planning ahead there is a nice perk
when purchasing directly through Disney: newly purchased add-ons will be allowed
to bank those vacation points in full regardless of the relationship of the
time you purchased the contract to your banking deadline.
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Have you thought about getting more than one DVC contract? If so let me know what
you're considering! A really cool strategy I've dreamt about
is being able to buy three separate contracts for around
50 points or so at different home resorts. Then with a combination of
banking and borrowing you could access up to 150 points at each home resort.
So if you travel to Walt Disney World annually that would mean for year one
you could access home resort one with your 150 points between banking and
borrowing, and then year two you're at your second
home resort in the same way, and at year three again a third home resort. If you
travel annually and don't have a super large party about 150 points would be
enough to get you around a week at a lot of home resorts.
And being able to cycle through three different home resorts just sounds like
a lot of fun to me! If you didn't want to deal with all that
banking and borrowing either you could of course just have split stays where
over the course of the week you're staying at each of your three home
resorts every year. The use years could match for ease, or you
could tailor the use years based on Disney World events that you're interested in
attending. I personally don't travel to Walt Disney
World annually so this strategy would not be wise for me,
but it's definitely a great way to increase the variety of your home
resorts while still making really good use of all your points. Who
knows--that's a Disney Vacation Club dream maybe I'll keep in my back pocket
for the future. I hope the rest of your day is
absolutely wonderful, and we'll see you real soon at Pixie Dust PhD!