Fascinating thread.
I envy the DVC members, never met one that was snobbish about it but i suppose they are out there. I suspect they are just snobs whether it has to do with their clubs, cars, homes, schools.. etc.. just snobs...
We are NOT DVC members.. came awful darn close about 10 years ago.. had the deal ready so sign that my wife had negotiated so to speak. We were looking at a big (200 point) SSR contract and a smaller contract with some other resort... She was ready to sign.. she is an impulse buyer as am I on smaller ticket items but not on large ticket items.. I simply said, lets sleep on it.. which we did and the next morning she called the rep and said we would have to pass... A couple hang ups we had was we didn't require deluxe accommodations.. in fact, we spend 95% of our time at the parks, not the resort.. second, we wanted to visit WDW more than once a year..... the points we were getting was going to limit us to once a year maybe, at certain times of the year, again.. maybe. We certainly could not afford enough points to allow us to go any time of the year for 7 days much less, twice a year... so, in the end we passed... part of it was $ but at the time, the biggest part of it just didn't fit our vacation plans..
Ironically we went through the DVC presentation again this past trip just to see what might have changed... this time my wife didn't even give it a second thought.. no deal. We make at least 30% more $ now, maybe 50% more $ than we did some 10 years ago but the bottom line now was that we couldn't afford it... I consider us middle class, either right smack dab in the middle or upper middle but not scraping to get by by any means.. but DVC was too expensive for us.. WE looked at the numbers and was like, 'holy smokes' that is a lot.. not sure what we were looking at 10 years ago but we were ready to pounce then but not now.. perhaps DVC is becoming an upper echelon club... ??
Part of me wishes we had purchased some 10 years ago. It wont be long now before we are vacationing with our kids and grandkids.. A moderate aint gonna cut it anymore unless we get 2 or more rooms which kind of spoils the idea of vacationing with family, at least to me it does