Another Change Of Plans

So we thought that we would be heading to Disney in the summer of 2015, well that plan has changed.  Due to life getting in the way, our plans have been put off for about 2.5 years.  It has most to do with the fact that we wont be living in North America at that time, and the commute isn't possible.  I'm not sure what's going to happen to this blog for the next little while, but I don't think I'll be posting weekly.  I'm certainly not finished with this blog since I want to wrap it up with our visit.  I'm going to think about it and wait till the new year to make any final decisions.

Chris

Disney Vacation Club Point Buying, is It a Sham?

As you would expect, there's been a change of plans with our hotel yet again. Since the price of the hotel is the biggest expense of a Disney trip, you can imagine that a lot of thought has to go into it.  This change however is less about which resort we want to stay at and more to do with how we want to stay at it.  I read an interesting article about buying points to use in Disney Vacation Club (DVC) properties.  In other words, for a lot less money, we can stay at a DVC room in the same resort.

I should mention that this isn't as simple as it sounds.  There are a few differences between a regular room at Disney and a DVC room.  The difficult part of this deal is setting up the room.  To do this we have to arrange the purchase of DVC points from a DVC member.  Fortunately there are travel agents who specialize in this and can arrange it for us, but it involves going through third parties.  The other disadvantage I can see is that you will get fewer visits from housekeeping (or as they call it “mousekeeping”).  Frankly we're not dirty people, and I think we'll be fine with just one or two visits throughout our stay.

The advantages of using the Disney villas are pretty good.  The rooms are a little bigger, and include a small kitchenette in the studio suits as well.  The rooms are located within the Disney resorts and seem to include all of the perks that come with staying in a regular room.  Finally, the price is much lower than the standard rooms, we stand to save about 100 bucks a night.

I imagine that most people don't go with this plan because of the inconvenience that comes with setting things up through a third party.  I'm just hoping that there isn't some detail that we've missed that's going to mess up our plans.  It's a bit of a risk, but if it works out we'll save a few bucks.

Travel Agents

I've been reading several websites that claim booking directly through the Disney website is the most expensive way to go.  It's a strange world we live in when buying something straight from the source is in fact the most expensive way to go.  The reasoning behind this, from what I can tell, is that Disney is setting the basic price and if they sold it at the cheapest price, no one else would want to sell their tickets.  So that means that Allison and I are going to have to search for a travel agent.

One of the options that seems to come up now and then is that of discount tickets for sale through third parties.  I've been warned by many websites that they are many of these third parities that sell tickets that are not legitimate.  In other words they either sell fake, or used tickets, instead of real discount tickets.  I'm having a really hard time figuring out which dealers are legitimate and which are not.  It would really help if Disney produced an official list somewhere that I could reference.

The other option is to find us a travel agent.  We actually already have a travel agent that we know and really like, the problem is that she's not really a Disney expert.  It's not to say that she doesn't know anything about Disney, it just seems like there are other agents that specialize almost exclusively on Disney.  I've decided that I'm going to send out a few e-mails this week and ask what kind of deals we can get.  Hopefully I'll soon be able to announce that we have a travel agent that can get us a great price, book all the restaurants we want, and make sure our tickets are all in order.