In this post, we discuss the process of renting DVC points from David’s Vacation Club Rentals (affiliate link). We work off a sample booking that we made, explaining why we decided to rent DVC points (including pros and cons of renting DVC points), the rental process, and how everything worked out. Read on to learn more about this great cost-saving trick!
Affiliate Disclosure
This is an affiliate post, meaning if you click our links to David’s in the post and make a booking, we’ll earn a commission. This post basically details the entirety of our most recent / representative experience with David’s. I hope readers trust if we had a bad experience we’d either take this post down or leave it up detailing the bad experience. We continue to use David’s for renting DVC points when it makes sense for us, though.
What is “renting DVC points”?
It’s helpful to quickly understand how renting DVC points works in order to understand (1) why there’s such deep savings involved and (2) why this whole process is a little different than your usual hotel booking.
Disney Vacation Club (DVC) is a timeshare program run by Disney at their resorts. Disney Vacation Club members make an upfront purchase into the program and then pay annual dues for a set number of “points.” They can use these points to make bookings at the DVC resorts (as well as for a few other things we don’t care about here).
So, part of why renting DVC points is cheaper than booking directly is because a DVC member has made a longterm investment in the program. A DVC member is expected to save money in the long run versus if they booked rooms directly through Disney every year. Renting points from a member passes some of that savings onto you.
The Disney Vacation Club resorts at Walt Disney World are: Animal Kingdom Villas (at Kidani Village and Jambo House), Bay Lake Tower (at Contemporary), Beach Club Villas, Boardwalk Villas, Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian, Old Key West, Polynesian Villas, Saratoga Springs, Copper Creek Villas (at Wilderness Lodge), Boulder Ridge Villas (at Wilderness Lodge), and Riviera Resort. Some of these are entire resorts, some are just part of a larger resort.
As with any timeshare program, the DVC members are restricted in how long they have to use their points from each year of membership. If they can’t use them within the designated timeframe, they can opt to rent them out. This is the other reason renting DVC points saves you money, the member wants to get rid of the points, so they sell them at a value that will be appealing to a renter.
When you rent DVC points, you’re paying a DVC member to use their points to make a booking under your name—something they’re allowed to do as part of the DVC program. You can find a member for this independently—there are Facebook groups and forums that exist for this purpose. But you can also go through an intermediary, like David’s Vacation Club Rentals (affiliate link).
Instead of you trying to find a DVC member to rent from or a DVC member trying to find someone to buy their points, both parties can go to David’s, which then pairs up requests from both sides, taking a fee in the middle.
The best part of this is that you don’t have to be a DVC member to rent points. These are bookings made by a DVC member in your name, it doesn’t matter whether or not you are a DVC member.
Before we go on, let’s outline the example booking we’re going to go over later in this post:
I submit a request on David’s Vacation Club Rentals’ website
David’s finds a DVC member to book my request using their points
I give money to David’s, which takes a fee before passing on the rest to the member
The member makes a DVC booking under my name
For me, the end result is a booking on my Disney account that looks and works (almost) exactly like any other hotel booking I’ve ever made.
Pros and Cons to Renting DVC Points
Now that we’ve got a basic understanding of the system, let’s talk pros and cons.
Pros to Renting DVC Points
Basically, the reason to rent DVC points is you get a deluxe Disney stay at a great discount. We regularly see DVC rentals that save 50% or more versus Disney’s rack rates. In some circumstances, DVC rentals can be lower cost than even the moderate Disney resorts.
Along with a (deluxe) Disney stay come (deluxe) perks. Like all Disney hotel guests you’ll get Early Theme Park Entry and the ability to buy individual Lightning Lanes at 7AM. Like all deluxe Disney hotel guests, you’ll get access to Extended Evening Hours. You also get the other perks of a Disney stay, like transportation to/from the parks and free parking at the parks.
It’s long been the case that the least expensive way to get a deluxe stay is to rent DVC points. There are plenty of reasons you might not go this route.
Cons to Renting DVC Points
Most importantly, renting DVC points is very restrictive. For all intents and purposes, once you make the booking, you’re locked into it. David’s recommends getting travel insurance for this, though we’ve never done this. Other limited options might exist for cancellations—like finding someone to take over your reservation—but you really have to be careful going into one of these bookings.
Also, you have to stay at a DVC property. For the most part this isn’t a huge change from staying at the deluxe resorts. Each deluxe resort has (at least) one accompanying DVC property, so if it’s amenities / location you care about, this won’t be a problem.
It will be a problem if you want a specific room type. A good example would be the new Moana-themed rooms at Polynesian. While the hotel has these new rooms, the DVC property does not.
Another notable difference is that DVC rooms, when renting or using points, don’t get the same housekeeping treatment as a regular hotel room. Since 2020, everything has been in even more flux, but you shouldn’t expect your room to get a full cleaning most stays.
Booking a DVC Rental at David’s
In this section I’m going to walk through how we made our most recent booking. Your experience will vary to some degree, but this is a basic walkthrough that also notes why we did some things the way we did them.
I also recommend visiting David’s directly to see how they describe the process (affiliate link).
Picking My DVC Resort & Room Type
My goal for this booking was just the Extended Evening Hours, so I wasn’t picky about my hotel, except that I didn’t want to spend too much.
I was looking at a two-night stay, October 25-27. Here’s a look at what this stay at few deluxe hotels would cost booking directly through Disney (lowest cost room type):
Animal Kingdom Lodge – $958
Polynesian – $1390
Yacht Club – $1218
And at a few DVC properties (lowest cost room type):
Saratoga Springs – $1000
Beach Club Villas – $1218
Polynesian Villas – $1390
Of course if deals are available or you find a good price on Expedia etc. you might even find some of these rooms for 25-35% off.
The pricing for DVC rentals is incredibly transparent and predictable, but to fully understand how the numbers get there, you have to remember that you’re paying money to use someone else’s points to book the room. The number of points required for a room on a given date is published before the start of the year and doesn’t change once it’s set. David’s (and other brokers) occasionally change how much they charge per point, but they advertise the price up front.
So for example, on my dates, a standard studio at Saratoga Springs costs 13 points per night. That’s a total of 26 points for two nights. Currently, David’s rents points at $19 ($20 for select reservations made more than 7 months in advance), so the total cost is $19 x 26=$494.
So let’s bring back those DVC properties from above and show you how much they’d cost renting points:
Saratoga Springs – $1000 vs. $494 renting
Beach Club Villas – $1218 vs. $608 renting
Polynesian – $1390 vs. $722 renting
As you can see, huge savings are possible if you rent points instead of booking directly through Disney.
I talked about cons to booking DVC rentals earlier, but at this juncture the big challenge is limited availability. There are a few tools to help non-members see DVC availability (if you’re a member you can just log on and see it), but they’re imperfect. Availability will be better the earlier you book (affiliate link).
Typically if you’re just interested in cost, Saratoga Springs and Old Key West are going to be your best options. This is actually the case when booking a deluxe stay directly through Disney, too.
I decided to try Saratoga Springs, requesting a preferred studio for $570.
Submitting My Request
The booking process with David’s is straightforward. I’m not going to include screenshots (they aren’t interesting and the details change sometimes)—you can walk through the steps (without submitting an actual request) on the David’s website (affiliate link).
You select your dates, then your “first” resort and room choice. After this, you’re able to add backup options. I opted not to do this, figuring if my first choice wasn’t available I’d come up with a new plan.
Next up is personal information. This is standard hotel-booking stuff, but keep in mind as part of this process you’re entering a legal agreement with David’s and a DVC owner.
You’ll also add the names of all your guests. This information is most important because you’ll want to be able to link them to the hotel reservation on My Disney Experience. I’ve never had trouble linking a mismatched name, but why test things. And in any case, you must make sure your number of guests is correct.
At the end you’ll agree to terms and conditions and pay the $133 deposit. This deposit is refunded if your reservation cannot be secured. If the reservation can be secured, the deposit is non-refundable. The deposit is paid toward your reservation cost, so for my $570 booking the $133 deposit would leave me with $437 left to pay, if this reservation could be secured.
David’s advertises that most requests are responded to within 24 hours, some weekends and holidays excluded. I was booking on a Saturday for a Monday stay, so I was in a bit of a time crunch. I was impressed that they got back to me within an hour, albeit with semi-bad news—there was no availability at Saratoga Springs.
Picking An Alternative Booking
Happily, they provided an email that listed other DVC rooms available for my date. They gave me a total of nine options, ranging in price from $722 to $1292.
The $722 option was for a Lake View Studio at Bay Lake Tower. Bay Lake Tower has been on my bucket list for a while. I’m a big Contemporary fan because of the proximity to Magic Kingdom, and I’ve even considered buying DVC resale at Bay Lake Tower. With Zoe, the location near Magic Kingdom is even more valuable.
I went ahead and told them to book me at Bay Lake Tower. Because the booking was within 30 days, I paid the remaining $589 balance before they found a DVC member to make the booking (refundable if no booking was made, of course), but within a few hours that was taken care of.
An Alternative Option — Dedicated Reservations
Okay, at this point let’s step aside. So far we’ve planned our dates and hotel, submitted a request, gotten alternative options, and settled on a room type for our dates. There’s another way to complete those steps—dedicated reservations (affiliate link).
A dedicated reservation is a DVC reservation that has already been made at a specific hotel in a specific room type for specific dates. For whatever reason, the member can’t use it and is trying to sell it as-is—that is, you can’t change the resort, room, or dates.
A dedicated reservation can be a good option if it is for a hard-to-book resort / room type / date range, or if it is offered at a discount compared to how much a rental might otherwise cost. In our first experience with David’s, we booked a room at Aulani, Disneys resort in Hawaii, via a dedicated reservation.
If you want to browse the currently available dedicated reservations, click here (affiliate link).
Whether you submit your unique request or select a preset dedicated reservation, you’ll wind up with a Disney reservation in your name and a confirmation number to go with it. Once that happens, you should be done with David’s and the member who made the booking.
Linking to Disney Account and Online Check-In
Unfortunately I can’t immediately recall if the reservation appeared right away in my My Disney Experience account or if I linked it using the confirmation number they provided, but in either case this was totally smooth.
Other Questions?
If you’ve got anymore questions, consider paying a visit to the David’s Vacation Club Rentals FAQ (affiliate link).
At The Resort
I was able to complete online check-in and match Emily’s profile to the reservation (so she could use her Magic Band and get perks like Early Theme Park Entry and Extended Evening Hours). I was also able to go to Epcot for Early Theme Park Entry the morning of check-in, before I’d even visited the hotel.
Now, there is an awkwardness to renting DVC points, and it’s simply that there are DVC perks you don’t get. For example, at Bay Lake Tower you can’t visit the DVC members-only Top of the World Lounge—that’s for DVC members only. You also can’t access the DVC lounge at Epcot or get DVC discounts because, again, these are for members only.
All that said, I’m not aware of anything that people who book directly through the Disney website get that renters don’t, except for regular housekeeping.
A final nice surprise—our room was upgraded! We wound up in a 1-Bedroom Lake View Villa at Bay Lake Tower (link to review), an absolutely awesome room for the price we paid. Let’s quickly revisit how these Lake View rooms at Bay Lake Tower are priced for this stay:
Studio $1604 via Disney vs. $722 renting
1-Bedroom $2196 via Disney vs. $1330 renting
That means with renting and lucking into an upgrade, we paid $722 for a stay with a rack rate of $2196. You can’t ever count on an upgrade, of course, but even without it we would have been paying $722 for a stay that cost $1604 through Disney, savings of 55%!
Conclusions
We’ve rented from David’s before, and we’ll likely do it again. Renting DVC points is simply the best way to get a deluxe stay at a reasonable price. While the process is a bit strange and you have to be more certain about your plans (or book appropriate insurance), we’re happy with our experiences with David’s Vacation Club Rentals (affiliate link) and can’t wait for our next DVC stay!
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