
The Disney Vacation Club is a unique approach to timeshare. Rather than purchasing a fixed week where you must travel within that week every year, DVC allows you to purchase points. You can then use those points however you want throughout the year. Different resorts and different room types will have varying point values depending on the time of year.
You choose a “home resort” when you purchase into DVC. You can book into your home resort up to 11-months in advance. Your points can also be used at any of the other Disney Vacation Club properties but you only have a 7-month booking window on resorts other than your home resort. For busy times of the year, and for hard-to-get accommodations, that 11-month window is very important.
You can also bank and borrow points from one year to the next. Let’s say you have 150 points every year, but you don’t plan to use them. You can “bank” them into the following year. You can also borrow points from the upcoming year. Many people use this to plan big family vacations. Under this scenario, you could feasibly have up to 450 points available to use. Banked points must be used before the end of the following year, or they are lost.
You can also purchase up to 24 one-time use points from Disney. This is helpful when you’re just short of the points you need for your vacation. It is also possible to rent or buy points from other DVC members to be transferred into your account.