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.