Mine are a bit more than his but a similar ball-park.
In what way did you mean you’re doing something wrong?
Yes one year’s points it was $1,069.38 for 150 SSR points.
Edit: that was 2022. 2023 was $1,173.02. That’s about $1K to me. 
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I mean 9 days in a 2 bedroom for 150 points.
For example I stayed 3 days at the Grand Cal in a studio at spring break for 90 points.
And I curently have a 4 night studio club level AKL over spring break that is 132 points. I know traveling at high season at high points rooms doesn’t go as far, but this is a huge difference.
Edit: Okay, I see there is an implication of banking or barrowing for this stay so it is many more than 150 points, but that cost has already been paid. 
psychological effect.
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Oh no it is two years of points. But I only paid one year’s dues this year. 
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Precisely. 
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We’ve been resale DVC members since 2016. Our home resort is Hilton Head and we usually have good success with booking most Walt Disney World resorts at 7 months out, but we normally don’t travel at Christmas. We just bought a new contract with Animal Kingdom as our WDW home resort. Generally if we do a shorter notice trip, Saratoga Springs or Old Key West have rooms available. We travel at different times throughout the year to maximize our points and work in extra trips.
I’ve used my 7 month window to book Jan 1 2020 (who knew ?) and for this upcoming year, I booked a Dec 16 - Dec 20 trip at 7 months, (this is the closest to Christmas we’ve been and I’m very excited). We’re at OKW for this Dec 2023 trip, since there was limited availability at the 7 month mark. If the AKL contract had closed earlier (resale) I could have booked it at AKL. If you’re buying from Disney direct, I think the closing process goes much faster.
We’ve done a cruise out of Port Canaveral the past two years for our spring break (mid - late March) and we’ve used our DVC points at the 7 month window to stay at a resort for 1 or 2 nights before the cruise. In Jan we did a one night at AKL. In March 2023 and March 2022, we did 2 nights at SSR.
So far with the 7 month booking we’ve been able to stay at:
Poly
Riviera
Copper Creek
Bay Lake Tower
SSR
OKW
AKL - Kidani
A’ulani - summer 2023
I almost booked a studio at Grand Cal for this summer, but I needed two rooms for our entire group and I couldn’t get the 2nd room.
I did get Beach Club in July 2020, but the pool wasn’t going to be open and it was a split stay, so we just moved our reservation to the Poly.
I haven’t tried for Boardwalk, but as my kids get older (11 and 7) that may be another option we consider and I haven’t actively tried again fro Beach Club.
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I’ve been following this thread and love the comments. I have a couple of tools that might help you.
-
DVC purchase model that compares your Disney Vacation to a DVC purchase, it has cash flow analysis and a break even point.
DVC Purchase Model — DVC Field Guide -
DVC availability over the last 4 1/2 years for all 144 accommodations. The availability is tracked from 11 months down to 1 month to your reservation.
DVC Availability Tables — DVC Field Guide
These tools are free. Good luck in your decision.
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The problem with any availability tool that includes 2020 through to early 2023 is that it will be skewed by the pandemic. No matter how you look at it, that had a huge impact on travel plans and completely changed the usual booking patterns.
I would be very wary of using those years in any charts of availability. If you can find tools that show availability pre 2020, those are likely to be more accurate as to usual booking patterns.
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I agree, the dvchelp tool has been constantly updated but I think we still don’t know when everything will settle.
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Hello, this availability tool has been adjusted to exclude the timeframe most impacted by the pandemic. the tables are noted: “* During the COVID pandemic, some reservations’ booking patterns were distorted as DVC relaxed its cancelation policy. The 5-month, 3-month, and 1-month bookings were impacted most by this temporary policy change. Data collected for the following weeks were not used in the above availability tables: 5-months- August 16, 2020-August 29, 2021; 3-months-June 14, 2020-July 4, 2021; and 1-month- April 12, 2020-May 2, 2021.”
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Which is great, up to a point. But the reality is that there were thousands of members unable or unwilling to travel not for a few weeks but for 2 years or more. Some had points effectively “extended”, others had little choice but to let them expire.
Personally I don’t think the booking pattern returned to anything approaching normal until summer 2022.
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Just curious - do you think the skew is towards more availability or less?
My impression is that 2020 was more availability but then sometime in 2021 travel surged so availability was less than usual. Maybe now it has stabilized. So I guess the charts are probably completely screwed up both ways.
That said, I was able to get my 2BR villas that I needed for my upcoming trip, but they were gone pretty quick after 7 months, so availability has tracked with what I was pretty close to what I was expecting when I purchased points in 2021.
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Initially there seemed to be a lot of availability because relatively few people felt confident enough to travel, or couldn’t.
I think that once people felt OK about coming back they booked bigger rooms than they would normally do, to use up a surfeit of points.
The surge in confirmed rentals seems to suggest that people still have points they need to rent out or lose. Possibly that’s more to do with the economic factors now though.
But my opinion is based on what I read, not on crunching data etc. I just don’t think we can rely on any data from March 2020 until Fall 2022 at the earliest. I still look at charts that tracked availability up until March 2020.
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I mean, we went into 2020 with almost all of our 2019 points banked, and just a 3 night 2br at Boardwalk in January (using some 2018 points, even) and another 3 nights in a studio there in July booked. When September came and we had to bank all of the 2020 points, we realized we still had like 137 2019 points that were going to expire, and we really didn’t know for sure whether we’d be able to use the 2020 points in 2021.
We ended up booking 3 nights in a grand villa at Jambo for October 2020 with no intention of going to any parks. We just figured we’d just use the mostly empty pool and watch the animals. We still banked some 2020 points anyway, and between having had banked points and only needing studios until the last trip it’s not until just this year in November that we’re going to be using 100% current points.
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I think it is more stabilized now than in a long time, and that booking patterns (and availability) more closely remember The Before Times than The Times We Want To Forget
2BR have always been easier than almost anything to get because they are so costly points-wise, and it seems that if people are going to go big, they go very big (GV) but if they can they will squeeze into a 1Br
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But I don’t want to forget! That’s when I met all of you!! 
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Really?!
Ok let’s never forget
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Yes this definitely contributed to my decision to purchase resale. I can get a 2BR at most resorts at 7 months without too much difficulty, though a couple (like BCV) run out really quick thereafter at many times of year.
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I feel like this is putting a lot of new pressure in getting studios at the 7 month mark.
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Ya’ll had me watching videos of 1 bedrooms yesterday. That is a whole lot of extra points when there is just three of us, but they are soooo nice.
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