Pros/Cons of purchasing points third party instead of direct

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Pros/Cons of purchasing points third party instead of direct

Postby OhanaMana » Thu Apr 01, 2021 7:19 am

My wife and I have been going back and forth on purchasing DVC points for about 3 years now. Her extended family has always had points, and they absolutely love using them. After doing all the analysis we could, it's clear that owning DVC for the LONG term that allows us to stay at a Deluxe resort every night we stay at Disney World would be significantly cheaper than staying at the same type of resorts and paying even the promotional rates. Again we did all the math we could - totaling the one time points purchase, adding the annual dues each year * however long the deed lasts vs spending ~$450 a night for the same amount of time each year for the length of the deed. It always comes out cheaper with DVC (obviously if we wanted to stay at All Star Sports each time, then that would be significantly cheaper than owning DVC ... but with a new baby coming this year, we feel an investment in these special trips might make sense so we can always stay at the best possible resort).

The question of getting third party or direct is now at the top of our list. We know the perks you get with direct include 10-20% off dining, some tickets, annual passes, merch. The problem comes in when we look at the current listings for third party points. I could get 150 points at Old Key West, Saratoga Springs, or AKL for roughly $14,280-16,250. That is at most 50% less than buying direct ~$12,000-14,552ish LESS (right now 150 points at Riviera is around $29,000 after a promotional rate applied). If the discounted dining, tickets and merch were ever going to add up to $14,000 over the 40-50 years of the direct DVC purchase, we would obviously do it. But I just don't see that happening. At most for a 5 night stay, we will spend $700. Not every place will have the discount available, but if we take 15% off that, we save $105. We would have to do that 93 times before we reach $14,000 in savings. That's an extreme example, but it's still valid. We don't buy a lot of merch - sure with the discount we would probably be more inclined too, but we still won't save enough over time to reach that $14,000.

So my question to any Hoppers out there that thought of this same thing, or purchased third party over direct, or the other way around - what was your thinking of all this and why did you make the decision you did?

Thanks!
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Re: Pros/Cons of purchasing points third party instead of direct

Postby Liquid Ice » Fri Apr 02, 2021 9:53 am

OhanaMana wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 7:19 am My wife and I have been going back and forth on purchasing DVC points for about 3 years now. Her extended family has always had points, and they absolutely love using them. After doing all the analysis we could, it's clear that owning DVC for the LONG term that allows us to stay at a Deluxe resort every night we stay at Disney World would be significantly cheaper than staying at the same type of resorts and paying even the promotional rates. Again we did all the math we could - totaling the one time points purchase, adding the annual dues each year * however long the deed lasts vs spending ~$450 a night for the same amount of time each year for the length of the deed. It always comes out cheaper with DVC (obviously if we wanted to stay at All Star Sports each time, then that would be significantly cheaper than owning DVC ... but with a new baby coming this year, we feel an investment in these special trips might make sense so we can always stay at the best possible resort).

The question of getting third party or direct is now at the top of our list. We know the perks you get with direct include 10-20% off dining, some tickets, annual passes, merch. The problem comes in when we look at the current listings for third party points. I could get 150 points at Old Key West, Saratoga Springs, or AKL for roughly $14,280-16,250. That is at most 50% less than buying direct ~$12,000-14,552ish LESS (right now 150 points at Riviera is around $29,000 after a promotional rate applied). If the discounted dining, tickets and merch were ever going to add up to $14,000 over the 40-50 years of the direct DVC purchase, we would obviously do it. But I just don't see that happening. At most for a 5 night stay, we will spend $700. Not every place will have the discount available, but if we take 15% off that, we save $105. We would have to do that 93 times before we reach $14,000 in savings. That's an extreme example, but it's still valid. We don't buy a lot of merch - sure with the discount we would probably be more inclined too, but we still won't save enough over time to reach that $14,000.

So my question to any Hoppers out there that thought of this same thing, or purchased third party over direct, or the other way around - what was your thinking of all this and why did you make the decision you did?

Thanks!
Congrats on the baby coming! :)

I started off buying direct (100 points which was the minimum for Blue Card benefits as a direct member) - this was Pre-COVID, so annual passes were still a thing and we also planned on at least 2 trips per year which means buying an Annual Pass made sense.

The way I did the math was:
(note these are my prices and the prices will of course vary depending on what resort you're buying at and what the prices are like for both direct and resale)

1. Difference between direct and resale for 100 points at Bay Lake Tower where we own ($235 per point minus $133 per point times 100) - $10,200
2. Cost of Platinum Annual Pass per person (no DVC discount) - $1012.82 (renewal price with tax) * 4 people in my family = $4051.28
3. Cost of Gold Annual Pass per person (with DVC discount) - $632.61 (renewal price with tax) * 4 people in my family = $2,494.44
4. Savings per year with DVC Direct Membership = $1,556.84
5. $10,200 divided by $1,556.84 = ~6.5 years, or 7 years of ownership to recoup the cost of buying direct versus buying resale.

A lot of people will tell you that you can't depend on Membership Perks being there, and they could go away at any time, not to mention right now you can't even buy a new Annual Pass from Disney - but we decided that we'd definitely hold the contract for at least 7 years and it was worth the gamble to get the Annual Pass discount.

That did not include any of the other perks of membership like access to the Epcot Lounge, Moonlight Magic events, etc. So we viewed those as all "extras" - (and Moonlight Magic is now temporarily unavailable).

After we got our Blue Card we bought additional points through resale. I think you could go either way and start with a resale contract and from there you could add on direct to get your Blue Card perks if you think it is worth it.

The minimum to get a Blue Card (and perks) is now 125 points, so the math is a little different - plus prices on the resale market have increased quite a bit, so you need to do the math for yourself.

This is just how we justified it.
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Re: Pros/Cons of purchasing points third party instead of direct

Postby DisneyNerd30 » Tue Jun 15, 2021 3:08 pm

When you purchased your resale contract did you look for one with the same use year month or just by best deal? Also did you look into the same resort or buy a different resort all together? I am working on trying to determine how i want to add to my points and these are my crazy questions as of now. Hoping you can shed some light on this for me!
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Re: Pros/Cons of purchasing points third party instead of direct

Postby Liquid Ice » Sat Aug 14, 2021 4:31 am

DisneyNerd30 wrote: Tue Jun 15, 2021 3:08 pm When you purchased your resale contract did you look for one with the same use year month or just by best deal? Also did you look into the same resort or buy a different resort all together? I am working on trying to determine how i want to add to my points and these are my crazy questions as of now. Hoping you can shed some light on this for me!
I bought same use year, as buying a different use year will cause you to have separate DVC accounts meaning to share points between them you need to transfer points using Member Services and I wanted to avoid that.

I own at 2 resorts (Bay Lake and Beach Club), the Bay Lake contracts act as 1 big contract when it is the same use year, so it is easy to use them. At the 7 month mark, the 3 contracts I own act like 1 big contract so it is easy to use them too - but at the 8 to 11 month mark, they can only be used for their respective home resort (so I can only book BLT with my BLT points and BCV with my BCV points).
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