If you’ve been going to Walt Disney World for a while you’ve no doubt seen DVC or Disney Vacation Club booths at the parks and resorts with a DVC component. It may surprise you to know that DVC is Disney’s version of a timeshare, gasp! But fear not, Disney hasn’t devolved into the sleazy hard sell tactics that you probably associate with the term timeshare. So if it’s a timeshare, but not that kind of timeshare, then what is it? Well I’ve been digging into DVC for years as I waffle back and forth between purchasing a contract or not and can help explain the program, the ins and outs, the costs, and the benefits of this members only club!
DVC Basics
At it’s core, Disney Vacation Club is a timeshare program in which you purchase a contract for a certain number of points to use each year and then use those points to book stays DVC resorts. There are DVC rooms at all Disney Deluxe resorts, yes including the crowd favorites like the Polynesian and Beach Club. Lately, Disney has been building DVC only resorts with the Riviera being the first and Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge – a new development project located between Wilderness Lodge and Fort Wilderness – being the next one up. We’ll get into the resorts later though, for now, it’s enough to understand that DVC points are used to book the premium Disney properties. You won’t find DVC rooms at any moderate or value resorts.
The number of points needed to book one night vary by resort, day of the week, room type, and time of year. Each resort will have a point chart that dictates how many points are needed for a one night stay. For example, here is the 2025 point chart for Bay Lake Tower – the DVC property located next to the Contemporary:
You can see that the number of points you need varies greatly depending on when you intend to travel and the type of room you need.
Speaking of rooms, DVC rooms are unique in that they additional amenities that normal Walt Disney World resort rooms do not. The DVC studios all have kitchenettes and 1 bedrooms and larger will have full kitchens complete with stove tops and ovens. I know what you’re thinking, who wants to cook on vacation? I’m with you. When I go to Disney World the last thing on my mind is cooking. But, I will also admit that having access to dishes, a sink and microwave when we rented DVC points (try before you buy!) was very handy. Being able to grab a quick bite to eat in the morning that was more than a pop tart before leaving the room was extremely convenient. It also opens the door to some big cost savings. Breakfast for a family of 4 is going to run at least $50, lunch and dinner even more. It’s hard to ignore that kind of savings if you’re on a budget.
Pretty straightforward so far, right? You buy a bucket of points, then allocate those points for stays according to the point chart for the resort you want to stay at. As you can probably imagine, it is a bit more complicated than that. Next we’ll jump into the anatomy of a contract. The contract is what grants you that bucket of points to use and there are some constraints on how they work.
Contracts
A DVC contract is actually a deeded real estate interest at a particular Disney Resort. While you can use points across all the DVC properties, DVC member get preferential treatment at the resort they own at via earlier booking windows. You can book 11 months out at your home resort, or the resort associated with your contract, and 7 months out at other properties. At many of the popular resorts, availability at 7 months and less is going to be limited for the most popular room types – generally studios. For example, you have very little chance of reserving a studio room at the Boardwalk or Beach Club 7 months out. Conversely, a resort like Saratoga Springs is going to have fairly open availability nearly all the time. There is a saying in the DVC community to buy where you like to stay for this reason.
Another feature of the DVC contract is that each contract has an expiration date. This is the year that the contract will expire and you’ll be left with nothing. This sounds pretty bleak, but in many cases these expiration dates are 30+ years out. There is a cohort of resorts that expire in 2042 – Boardwalk, Beach Club, Boulder Ridge, and some Old Key West. That’s still 17 years away! That is a very real downside though and frankly is has kept us from buying DVC thus far as Boardwalk is our favorite resort.
The final piece of the contract puzzle is what Disney calls use year, which is actually a month. Simply put, this means the month in which your points for that year become available. If you have a February use year, your points are deposited into your account each year on February 1st. You don’t have to wait for the points to hit your account to book though, as long as you will have the points in your account you can book a stay using them. Use year is also very important because of banking deadlines. With DVC you can bank points from one year to use the next. But you must do so within the first 8 months of your use year. In the February use year example you have until September 30th to decide if you’re going to bank them or not. If that deadline passes, you have to use them before February 1st of the following year or you’ll lose them. As you can imagine, losing points is quite literally setting money on fire.
Let’s recap. Disney Vacation Club, or DVC, is Disney’s version of a timeshare. To become a DVC member, you purchase a deeded real estate interest in one of the Disney DVC properties. That deeded interest allocates a certain number of points to the DVC member each year. Those points are used to book nights at the resort associated with the contract starting at 11 months out or another DVC resort start at 7 months out.
Got that? Good, because as you can probably imagine there is a lot more to unpack than just the basics. Instead of writing a 5,000 word dissertation on DVC we’ll break it up into more manageable chunks. In the next installment we’ll walk through the financial side of DVC and why it could be the program that saves you thousands each year.
