My family started traveling to Walt Disney World when our children were 2.5 and 6. Since our first trip, we have gone to Disney yearly, prioritizing these trips over other travel. Disney has quickly become our happy place and where we feel most connected as a family, with each trip reinforcing to us that this is a place where we value spending our time and money.
Over our past trips, we have stayed at a variety of Disney-owned properties, but we have never stayed in a Deluxe resort. We have stayed in multiple moderate and value resorts but never decided to invest in a deluxe property because we felt we spent all our time in the parks and the extra money wasn’t “worth it.” So, what is someone like us, who has never even stayed at a deluxe resort, doing buying DVC? Well, the truth is, it’s an emotional investment.
We have always lived our Disney trips with an urgency, like a dehydrated man in the desert gulping down every last drip of water. This sounds dramatic, but if you saw the way we did our trips, you’d realize it’s a relatively accurate analogy. We would rope drop to park close it, no matter what. In the back of my mind, I always had this feeling haunting me, saying, “What if we can’t come back? What if we can’t financially swing it next year, or there’s another reason we can’t return? Get the most out of it!”
This urgency led to us running my daughter into the ground on one trip, resulting in us missing out on a day I was very excited for. It was around this time that I started to really consider Disney Vacation Club, realizing that if I made this investment, we could slow down. We could know that we would be back, and it could change the way we viewed the parks and our trips.
Financially, maybe it doesn’t make sense to purchase DVC if you are ok staying at POP or Art of Animation. It takes a lot more to make the numbers make sense when you aren’t comparing apples to apples when it comes to a resort stay. However, for us, knowing that Disney was part of our future for the next 30+ years and knowing we had committed to returning was what made us decide to take the plunge into DVC ownership.
You see, for us, Disney is where our family feels most connected. When I think of my happiest memories, so many of them occur on Disney property and knowing that we have bought “insurance” that we will return meant a lot to us. So, perhaps financially, it doesn’t make as much sense as a family who is already staying deluxe each year, but knowing we have invested in years of family memories DOES have value, and that is why we chose to take the plunge and purchase our first DVC contract. It’s an emotional investment and one I am so excited about!
We purchased when our kids were young (like 6 and 8). My wife wanted to do it to make sure we took vacations. (note we financed with 0% credit card and paid it off during the interest free period) We have loved it and just purchased GF in part because both my daughter and niece are now big fans as adults and we know enjoy kids free trips (last feb did treehouse with 8 family members) – we have had no trouble using the points. There are some savings – we usually eat breakfast in room and when the kids were smaller we ate lunch as well before going to pool. For our family it has been awesome!