Purchasing Disney Vacation Club Direct - Our Experience
Why buy DVC?
This past Summer we made the decision to buy Disney Vacation Club (DVC) directly from the Mouse. We were initially strong opposed to it, but once I learned you can get unlimited drink refills from a pair of Coke Freestyle machines in the DVC lounge I was sold.
Just a few more drinks to go and we will have recovered our initial investment¹ and then some!
In all seriousness, though, we decided to buy into it because we have a track record for going to Disney Parks at least once a year and don't anticipate that changing anytime soon now that we've got a kid. We saw that the Island Tower was being built and that provided an opportunity to buy into a monorail resort and we felt the time was right.
Anyways, this post isn't about justifying our purchase or persuading you to do the same. Instead, I want to share what we learned during the buying process and the credit card points strategy that helped us save a little bit of money on it.
¹ Purchasing Disney Vacation Club is not actually an investment. It's just pre-paying for some hotel rooms.
Best Credit Cards for Purchasing DVC
When you purchase a Disney Vacation Club membership directly from Disney you are able to pay for the entire purchase with one or more credit cards. When I learned this my eyes lit up – it's a big purchase so imagine the credit card points! So I did some research to figure out what credit cards are optimal for purchasing DVC and came to the following conclusion:
- Any card with a large sign-up bonus (SUB)
- Prioritize any credit card you have that has a sign-up bonus requiring a large amount of spend. It may be worth opening a premium travel card such as the American Express Platinum (frequently has spend $6k, get $1,500 worth of Amex points as a SUB), Chase Sapphire Reserve, or Capital One Venture X just for this purchase.
- Chase Sapphire Reserve
- The Chase Sapphire Reserve gets 3% back in Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) points on travel purchases – and unlike most other travel oriented cards, Chase categorizes timeshare purchases as travel. Chase UR points are worth 1 cent per point (cpp) at a minimum (when redeemed for cash back), 1.5 cpp when used in the Chase Travel Portal, and 2+ cpp when transferred to certain travel partners (e.g. Hyatt) so using the Chase Sapphire Reserve to make your DVC purchase can be quite rewarding.
- Chase Disney Visa
- I normally don't recommend the Chase Disney Visa for making Disney purchases since it only gets 1% cash back (there is an annual fee version that gets 2%, but this is still worse than other cards or discounted Disney Gift Cards). That said, it does have one perk that can be appealing when buying DVC – 6 months of zero percent interest financing. Since interest rates are still high (at the time of writing this post at least), you could set the money aside in a high-yield savings account (HYSA) or money-market account for 5 months and earn some interest on it before paying the purchase off.
I used a mix of 1. and 2. I opened a new American Express card and put enough of the DVC purchase on it to easily achieve the sign-up bonus and then put the rest on my Chase Sapphire Reserve which I upgraded from a Sapphire Preferred just for this purchase.
The DVC Purchasing Process
June
Our DVC purchasing experience was pretty drawn out. We initially decided to buy in June, with the expectation that the Polynesian Resort/Island Tower would be available soon. However, sales didn't actually open up until late October so we had a lot of time to think it over.
We reached out online via the Disney Vacation Club website in June and were paired with a "Guide" to sell us on it. We had already sold ourselves, so this was probably a pretty easy sale for the person who we were assigned to. We had a quick phone chat and went over the basics and then parted ways until mid-September when news finally dropped about Island Tower sales.
July/August
I lurked on some forum thread about the Island Tower and periodically checked for new information to be released. During this time we self-taught ourselves the ins-and-outs of DVC.
September
Shortly after the pricing and dates were made public, our guide called us to chat and schedule a time at the end of October to finalize the sale. During this call we went over the basics of how points worked, what we were buying, and general logistics.
October/November
We met with our guide and finalized the contract. We confirmed the amount of points we wanted to buy, use year we wanted, legal names, etc. She then sent over a bunch of DocuSign documents to sign and we set up an appointment with an online notary.
Since our credit card limits weren't high enough to comfortably complete the transaction in one go, we were able to extend the regular 30-day payment window to 60 days and split it across three payments. This was nice because it meant we got to hold on to our cash for just a little bit longer and continue earning interest on it.
We got access to the DVC Portal and our membership cards pretty much immediately after the initial down payment and were able to book a stay at the Polynesian Island Tower when booking for new members opened up on November 5th. We're very much looking forward to our stay next Spring! 🏝️😌
December
We completed the sale!
Using DVC
It still feels a little surreal – we haven't even stayed at our home resort yet! But we got a taste of DVC on our recent Disneyland trip and we did get to enjoy some initial perks. A discount on merchandise, 10% off at many of the restaurants (even when mobile ordering), and access to the Coke Freestyle machines in the Star View Station lounge all were nice.
If you're reading this, you're probably considering taking the DVC plunge yourself! And let's be real, it's a tough call. Maybe investing that money would have been the smart move, but where's the fun in that? We decided to go for it, and I can't wait to share all about our first DVC trip to the Polynesian next May! We're definitely looking forward to it (and the Dole Whips!). 🍍✨
If you enjoyed this post or otherwise found it helpful, check out our other posts on Disneyland!