Riviera is nice. I bought it as a graduation present for my son, and now everyone in the family loves it, so I have to buy more.
Ha!
Everyone in our family of 4 (2 tween-ish girls) loves Riviera. We are skiers, so we all enjoy the gondola is its own "ride" as well. And their favorite rides are starting to trend to EP and HS.
Valid points. I was envisioning a split stay in this scenario, though it may get old having to do a split stay every trip.
We've been doing split stays since the girls were in strollers. It's a bit of a hassle with a stroller, but it's outweighed by being non-bus to every park except AK. We love the change of pace/location with a split stay because it makes the trip feel even longer.
If you do a rest day that can be the day you switch with the split stay. You can even do it on a park day if you want. Just "check out" of the first one, let them know you need your luggage moved to your next reservation, go to the park, then go to the second resort after the park day. Should have your luggage there and would be as seamless as a split stay can be.
Alternatively you can bank points from one contract to next year, and on the other contract borrow next years into this year. Then you can do a full stay at one resort. Then switch to the other resort the next year. Can do splits sometimes or full stays sometimes. Best of both worlds.
One last tip we have heard of and plan to use is to buy our direct add on contract just before our use year. They usually give you the current years points at the time of purchase which they let you bank, then in the next month or two you get the next year's points added. It's like double points the first year. Or if you do magical beginnings (where they buy the first year of points back from you) its ends up being a discount on the points price as Disney buys back the first year points but then you get a new set right after
I could go on and on about split stays - i keep thinking that one year we will do a longer stay at a single resort but we really like all of our home resorts so much that we miss them if we haven't visited in a while.
Do buy same use year (as a teacher I’d guess March, April or maybe June?)
We have 3 resorts split across 2 UYs - Feb (1 resort) and Aug (2 resorts). It's worked well for us. All our points are still in the banking window in August, so we can put together some pretty sweet, long stays.
I didn’t even consider that I could bank/borrow alternately between two home resorts instead of doing a split stay every year. Geez I’m shot lol
as above - this was another option we'd considered (especially since we have 2 UYs, we can use them "separately") but we seem to not ever do that ... because we like split stays so much. Can give you tons of split stay advice if you ever get there. When the kids were in strollers, we did it to minimize our bus use. Now that the kids are so mobile, we are fine with buses and it's opened up a lot of flexibility for us, but we still like the split stays to be closer to different pools, restaurants and parks.
I'm very much a fan of trying to commit and building up big piles of points at specific resorts but I'm also a fan of SAP.
LOL. We now have a big pile of points at VGF thanks to the summer incentives (we have a mix of resale and direct there). We'll most likely use them for trips during Christmas because VGF at Christmas time is magical and it's not *too* crazy if you're in the OG DVC building. Now my favorite trip (which I never expected when we first bought in) is Christmas at VGF followed by New Year's at Riviera.
That said, our BLT resale points are our least expensive points, so we do use them as SAP from time to time.
We are flyers l. I don’t see us driving down from NY for another 6-7 years if ever. Stocking up on SSR points is something I’ve considered though.
Greetings from NYC! Don't know if you are NYC or NYS, but one winter we rented a car and drove home over 2 days because 3/4 of us got COVID. (Do not recommend!)
I had a friend here on DIS who hasn't posted in ages - we bought resale points around the same time, when 25 direct points got you all the benefits. He bought SSR, I got BLT back when BLT was really undervalued - I may have paid $1000-2000 more, in total. We used to go back and forth with FOMO for not buying the other resort. I always wondered if I "overpaid" for SAP but then he always wondered what it would be like to book BLT at 11 months and be done with it.
It's like why did I buy the somewhat nicer "dad car" when buying another used Camry/Accord would have been the better economical way to go? Well I can't take it with me and those don't give me the same smile when I put the right foot to the floor...
We just got a Sienna AWD hybrid. I never thought I'd be fist pumping over securing *a minivan* but here we are...
I get to have my tween daughter, who’s so aloof and cool these days, break down in happy tears because she wasn’t expecting to watch the fireworks from Ohana and we can cry those happy tears together and nobody around us bats an eye because they get it. Who cares if it makes sense?
(And for posterity, the aforementioned Ohana cry-fest)
Your picture and video made *me* cry. My tweenish daughters are the same - the let down a lot of their external "coolness" (and compared to their friends, they are quite open!)when we are at Disney and we laugh a lot.
Idk why but reading everyone’s posts here has been really fun. I like hearing the different ways and reasons for why members have purchased DVC. I feel like I’ve gotten something out of this thread even if it wasn’t originally intended for someone like me- it’s made me more sure of my own purchase.
same here, and we've owned for several years now! I get the warm fuzzies because I recall all the core memories we've built, and I see them in everyone's posts here as well. I guess that's the "vibe" part...
I don’t think there’s been any official news about what the refurb will entail but I think most assume they’ll be replacing the sofa bed with a Murphy bed like they’ve done with all the recent refurbs. I’d love it if they added a 5th pull down but I doubt it.
I think the CCV living rooms are a little narrow for the 5th bed in the LR is the problem. Similar to the BLT studio which has a full size sofa bed instead of a queen and the room is too narrow to accommodate a 5th person murphy.
I wish we were into Disney World at that time.. and no worries! I legitimately just forgot to specify that lol
