An Overview Of The Disney Vacation Club Timeshare Points System

Disney Vacation Development, Inc. (DVD) operates and sells the Disney Vacation Club, a points-based vacation ownership and exchange system of timeshare resorts.

The first Disney Vacation Club (DVC) resort opened in late 1991 in Orlando, Florida. Disney Vacation Club has since grown into a respected leader in the timeshare industry- and now offers eleven DVC resorts throughout the United States and services more than 350,000 DVC timeshare owners!

Ownerships are a deeded interest in real estate, and each interest equates to a specific number of Disney Vacation Club points, which are awarded each year on the first day of the anniversary month. These points are used as your vacation currency to book reservations in any Disney Vacation Club resort. Each reservation will require a certain number of points as defined by the published point charts.

Disney Vacation Club Management Corp is the property management agent for all Disney Vacation Club resorts. At the date of publish, Disney Vacation Club resorts are located in Florida, South Carolina, California, and Hawaii and are marketed across the United States, in the United Kingdom, and also in parts of Asia. All DVC related companies are wholly owned by the Walt Disney Company (stock ticker DIS). Other well known brands owned by Disney include Miramax Films, ABC television group, ESPN, Pixar Animation Studios, Muppets Studios, Marvel Comics, and Hyperion Books.

Disney is perhaps the most well known brand in the world, and DVC has quickly become one of the fastest growing timeshare programs in the world!

Ownership Types: All DVC ownerships are a deeded interest in real estate, and each interest equates to a specific number of Disney Vacation Club points, which are awarded each year on the first day of the anniversary month . A percentage of ownerships at Disney's Aulani Resort are also being sold as a guaranteed fixed week and unit. For Aulani fixed weeks, interval owners have the exclusive right to use their deeded week and unit. They can also convert that usage into an equivalent allotment of DVC points to be used at other resorts instead of Hawaii.

All DVC resorts have been established as either a term for years or as a ground lease. This means that the timeshare ownerships have a specific expiration date, at which point the usage rights will revert back to Disney Vacation Development, Inc.

Seasons: Disney divides the calendar year into specific season categories: Adventure, Choice, Dream, Magic, and Premier. The specific dates for each season will vary by resort, and some resort calendars will not include all five seasons. Some locations will have only four season designations.

These DVC season designations should not be confused with other terminology used by external usage systems such as RCI to denote demand values. For example, RCI considers Beach Club Villas to be red season usage all year long because of the traditional high exchange demand for the property- regardless of the calendar date or the specific Disney season in which a reservation will fall.

Exchange Options: There are different ways to exchange your Home Resort for another resort stay.

Internal exchange for another Disney Vacation Club resort: The easiest way is simply using your DVC points to make a reservation at another DVC resort. If you own multiple DVC contracts at different home resorts, your points may be combined as DVC Vacation Points for reservations made less than seven months in advance.

Internal exchange for a non-DVC resort: To do this, your Home Resort Vacation Points are converted to Reservation Points, which are then used to reserve accommodations at non-DVC Resorts, except for accommodations available through the affiliated exchange company, which at this time is RCI.

Reservation Points cannot be used outside the Disney reservation system so they cannot be banked with a third-party exchange provider such as RCI. They also cannot be banked, borrowed, or transferred to another DVC member. Nor can they be used to reserve accommodations at DVC Resorts. Reservation Points must be used to reserve a non-DVC resort through the Central Reservations System. These converted points will expire at the end of the use year.

External exchange: Owners may also use a third party exchange system such as RCI, or a smaller system such as SFX Resorts.

Use Year: A Use Year is a 12-month period beginning on the first day of a month. This is also sometimes referred to as the anniversary date. Each unit in a resort has a specific use year assigned to it. All ownership interests deeded from that unit will be assigned the same use year, which is shown on the purchase agreement and on the DVC Member Card. Because the Use Year is tied to the individual ownership interest, it cannot be changed.


Copyright (c) 2010 Richard Marquette