Can someone explain time shares?

True.

This leads me to DVC. I looked into it. And while there may be SOME folks who ultimately find it advantageous, in almost all circumstances, it is NOT a financial benefit to you to buy in. Part of this is, unlike other Time-share purchases, you never actually OWN the DVC. You only own it for a TIME. Once that time is up, you are out. This means you can’t buy a time-share and pass it on to your kids, etc. (Well, I guess you can if you die before that time period is up.)

I played around with the math, and in order for DVC to be worth it for us, we would have to go on far MORE vacations than we otherwise would for far longer time periods. While that may be appealing, it ultimately means we are paying far MORE than we otherwise would because under any other circumstance, we just wouldn’t go to Disney that much.

That isn’t to say that for SOME people they can make it worthwhile, because, as you said:

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We have a time share in the Shenandoah mountains in Virginia that we got a long time ago. That resort does it’s trades through RCI, so we are able to trade for Disney DVC resorts. We’ve been able to stay in one-bedroom DVC units at Boardwalk twice, Old Key West, and Saratoga Springs a few times. The cost of our annual maintenance fees and the fee to make the trade (swapping our home resort for DVC) has always been significantly cheaper than just booking a room at Disney. So that’s how we use our time share to visit the World often. So, that’s my long-winded guess as to what your friends meant when they say they go often via time share.

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I can’t answer the question because I’ve never priced out renting someone else’s timeshare. We “bought” ours from my mom for practically nothing so we never actually paid for the timeshare. We just pay the fees and whatever fees there are to use an exchange house. Right now we pay around $1000 for a week (or sometimes 2 weeks, depending on if we go somewhere in off season and it’s “cheaper”) anywhere in the world, including a 3-bedroom place we’ll have in December when we do WDW. For a family of 5, $140 a night for lots of space is a great deal.

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Do you use weeks or points with RCI? We’re on the weeks system and I’ve never seen the DVC resorts as an option for us to use.

@jragnich very good explanation, THANK YOU.

@bkehs ~ i think you’re probably right; this is what my friends are doing … thank you!
PS ~ Shenandoah Mountains is a BEAUTIFUL area … my husband and i spent a week in a cabin (with a visiting bear) two years ago. such a beautiful place.

@disneygirlmama - We are on the weeks system. Our week at our resort carries a lot of trading power (at least they say it does). We pay our dues in advance, which lets us start and run ongoing searches sooner and longer. And we are flexible about when we go.

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We’ll thats good to know! We won’t be looking at another WDW vacation for about three more years, but it’s nice to know I can look on property! I’ve always thought there was no point in paying for the timeshare and also paying to stay on property! We own week 52 (so Christmas to New Years) at the Sheraton Vistana right outside the WDW gate…we also have a lot of trading power!

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