OK - dear Wife and I have 270 "direct from disney" points.
Now - for the benefit of NEW buyers..... would someone list these wonderful "extras", so that people can compare Direct from Disney, vs resale?
What, exactly, does that 2x cost GET you?
In the past 1.5 yrs
2 years of APs x4 (last ones upgraded for free from Gold to PAP)
Dec 2016 EPCOT DVC Christmas Party
May 2017 Pandora Sneak Preview.
Sept 2017 AK Moonlight Magic.
2017 TiW card.
EPCOT lounge.
I think it’s very worth it.
In May, my DD and I took a 3 night trip and on successive days : Last Wishes at MK, first HEA at MK, DVC preview at AK.
It was an amazing trip.
I think it’s worth the 25 points to hedge against future perks.
Let me give you two possible examples:
1. Allowing DVC members (with qualifying points) an extra FP per person per day.
2. Allowing DVC members to book their FPs at 90 days (just like the paid concierge users can now do).
It seems that DVC is going to continue to use perks to drive sales. I would hedge 25 points that one of those future perks might be something you’d really want to have.
In 2015-2016, we took 3 trips to WDW in 11 months, spending a total of 23-24 days at WDW. 2/3 of those trips were subsidized due to work conferences for me and DH, DD1 was not in school yet, and DD2 was either in utero or little baby, so free and easy. We contemplated buying DVC "at some point" in the future but knew almost nothing about resale or the points system, though I grew up with my parents owning different timeshares (RCI, etc) since the 80s so knew generally how they worked. Since we knew we were taking at least 2 trips in less than a year, we got APs - and this was back before the different tiered APs and its concomitant price increase. We got TiW through the APs as well as the 10% AP discounts in the stores etc.
A lot of us are getting all worked up about the perks but ... with a PAP you could get access to the discounts and TiW at a far smaller annual outlay. If you go yearly but plan the trips to be 11 months and then 13 months out from each other, you can spread the cost out pretty well without having the big buy in to DVC. Moonlight Magic and other special events are not in our future for a while - now that DD1 is in school, we a) are unlikely to be going on a planned trip unless maybe a late August/early Sept trip happens to coincide with those events, and b) can't plan a last minute, short trip if we see these offered. And again, just because they're offering more this year doesn't mean they'll do the same next year. So (shrug) can't count on those even if you love them.
Even access to the member cruise, which I cited earlier as one of the perks I value, I wouldn't really value except that we went on our first
Disney cruise last summer. And again, it would be a nice thing to try at least once, but if I got blocked, ... oh well.
Extra FP or early FP? I don't know ... it seems somewhat speculative, but already we are approaching the parks in a different way - more relaxed and if we miss something on this trip, we'll get to it another time. Also, Disney will continue to sell those VIP and private tours where you get whisked into the FP line, etc. Again, even if it's a few thousand $, that's still less of an outlay than buying 75 or more points direct.
Sure, the perks are nice and knowing I'd have access to them is nice, but it's like the PAP+ deal for the price of gold - I was all like, "it includes water parks!" We were there for 6 days in August and never even contemplated going to the water parks.
