If you’re a member of any Disney groups online, you may have heard of the concept of “renting DVC points”. DVC is Disney Vacation Club, Disney’s timeshare program. DVC owners are allocated a certain number of points per year. They have a home resort that they can book 11-months out, and all other DVC resorts at 7 months. Sometimes they aren’t planning to use their points that year and can push them back into the next year (aka, “banking”). But they can only do that once per set of points. So if they don’t think they’ll be going for another year or two, or they just want to spend that vacation money elsewhere, they will rent out these points to others.
When that happens, the owner makes a reservation for the resort and date the guest wants. The reservation will be under the guests’ name, with the guests’ contact information. The guest can add this reservation to their My Disney Experience and order MagicBand+ just like any other reservation.
But if a guest wants to stay at one of these resorts, why would they not book directly with Disney? The answer is cost. One way of looking at it is that DVC owners essentially bought their vacations ahead of time. Plus yearly dues. They can rent out their points to break even (and maybe a bit of profit) FAR cheaper than Disney will sell those rooms at “rack rate” that year.
How much you rent them for varies on a few factors. If you know a DVC member personally, then that person can set the rate. If you rent through a broker, such as David’s Vacation Rentals (which your friendly neighborhood travel agent can book for you!), then they set the price. At the time of this writing, the cost to rent points through David’s is $21 per point. $23 if it’s a “premium” rental, which just means depending on resort and how far out it was booked. But David’s takes $5/point as a fee, so an owner will only receive $16 – $18/point. If you personally know a DVC member, right now they will probably charge you somewhere around that lower price point of $16 – $18.
David’s has a wonderful cost calculator on their website. For this example, let’s look at Animal Kingdom Lodge for December 9 – 13.
For a Savanna View Studio, renting DVC points would cost a guest $1,472. And that’s regardless of how many people are staying in the room. But paying rack rate through Disney is…
Three-thousand seven-hundred and seventy-five dollars and fifty-two cents. I included the entire screenshot to show that this is with NO park tickets, no memory maker, no transportation. This is JUST lodging.
Now of course, no one is claiming that Animal Kingdom Lodge is the cheapest way to experience Walt Disney World if you want to stay on property. Disney has excellent value resorts, which are not part of DVC. You can buy vacation packages, which will bring the cost down a little if you are also purchasing tickets. Disney will run offers like the recent Up To 35% off or free dining for Disney+ Subscribers. But those aren’t a given. As in my above example, there were no eligible offers. They aren’t running all the time, they’re only valid for certain travel dates, they only have a certain number of rooms allocated for the offer, etc. But DVC is ALWAYS available as long as the DVC inventory at that resort isn’t sold out for your travel dates.
And if it’s your DREAM to travel to Africa and stay at a real savanna lodge, but it’s out of reach for many reasons, so the next best thing is staying at Animal Kingdom Lodge, but you can’t afford the nearly $1,000/night price tag, DVC is an excellent way to make that attainable.
Contact me for a quote or more information about Disney Vacation Club Rentals! I have both rented points as a guest and rented out points as an owner, so I have experience on both sides of the fence.