When we visit Disney World, we usually stay at the Boardwalk because of its location + vibes. But this time was different: we really wanted a 1-bedroom over a studio, since we have TWO daughters now.

When I went to WDW’s website to book, the prices hurt my feelings. I immediately put in a request at David’s Vacation Club Rentals for the dates we wanted. Coming from a family of DVC members, I knew that renting points would be the cheapest option, but I never took the time to calculate it.

I realized I paid 33.4% less than if I had used Disney’s website. Let me show you how!

A Quick Explanation of Disney Vacation Club

DVC stands for “Disney Vacation Club”, which is essentially a timeshare in Disney World. Someone buys a set amount of points one time, and they replenish themselves each year – I think of these “points” as tokens, or some fictional currency, really – in exchange for dollars. Each point cost between $125-295/per point, depending on the resort you buy points for.

This is now called their “home resort”. DVC members can start booking at their home resort 11 months before they want to go. The advantage here is they have first dibs on the rooms since anyone using points at their NON-home resort has to wait until 7 months before.

Not every resort in Disney World is a DVC resort. They are only the deluxe resorts – which you should pay attention to. Why? Because they’re in great locations and have perks like Early Entry and Extended Evening Hours (but more on this later.)

List of DVC Resorts

Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas

Bay Lake Tower (this is connected to the Contemporary)

Beach Club Villas

Boardwalk Villas

Villas at Grand Floridian

Old Key West

Villas at Polynesian Village

Riviera Resort

Saratoga Springs

Boulder Ridge + Copper Creek Villas at Wilderness Lodge

This is a free tool to see what’s available before putting in a formal request on a DVC broker site.

How points work

Let’s say someone buys 200 points at Animal Kingdom Lodge. Each night ebbs and flows with the number of points it takes to stay there – just like dollars. Weekend nights and holidays cost more points.

They buy these points ONCE, and they’re replenished every year. They’re able to bank points if you don’t use them and roll them into the following year (so you’d have 400 in this example), or they can borrow points from the following year if they need a little more. Pretty cool huh?

Why RENTING DVC points can save you so much money

When a DVC member isn’t using their points that year – for a multitude of reasons – they can list them to rent! This is not an illegal cheat, and it’s becoming more common than not. It’s at a profit to the DVC member (since they’ve already purchased their automatically-renewing points) but still around a 30% discount than booking through Disney. Yes, really.

Plus, guests using DVC points at their resort also get free parking. If you’re driving to Orlando or renting a car, this can be a huge savings on top of the room, since parking is $25/night.

I WANT TO NOTE: This is not an inexpensive room. You are not spending an insignificant amount of money and this is by no means a Disney “hack”.

But the truth is this: you’re paying for a beer and someone is handing you champagne.

To put that more in perspective, 97% of guests said they would stay at Boardwalk Villas again, while only 87% of guests staying at Caribbean Beach (a moderate resort) said they would stay again according to TouringPlans.

Before I get you all excited, there are factors to renting DVC that could be deal-breakers for some. Click here to skip ahead and learn about them.

Here’s how much I saved on my recent trip

I know you want proof, so I’m going to be completely transparent to show you just how much I saved by renting DVC points instead of booking through Disney.

On Disney’s website, for 4 nights at a 1-bedroom villa, garden/pool view was $3,739.50 after tax.

When I put in a request through David’s, I paid $133 for them to find a corresponding room for us. After they found it, I paid the remainder which was $2,489, totaling $2622. There’s no tax or hidden fees.

$3,739.50 – $2,622 = $1,117.50 savings, or 33.4% less.

Since my budget for this trip was 3k, I would have ended up downgrading to a studio. That would have been fine, but if you have a toddler who naps every day, you know that having a separate room for sleep is HUGE. Like, huge huge huge.

Here’s the bad news

Just like with anything great, there’s always going to be the not-so-great. Here are the cons:

• You cannot – and I repeat – cannot cancel and get a refund when you rent DVC points. Which, in 2022, could be a deal-breaker for you. When you book through Disney, you get a lot of flexibility and forgiveness for rescheduling or just straight-up canceling.

• When you book through Disney, you only have to put $200 down as a deposit, with the full amount due 30 days before your trip. When you rent DVC points, you have to pay in full to make your reservation. An alternative is using this broker, where they have a little more spread out payment schedule.

• When you book through Disney, it includes a free travel agent. DVC rentals do not.

That being said, here are the PERKS

• The rooms feel more like “home”, ie: studio rooms have a kitchenette and 1+ bedrooms have full kitchens. There’s even a laundromat you can use for free.

• Deluxe resort guests exclusively get “Extended Evening Hours” in Magic Kingdom and EPCOT on select nights, where you can stay an extra 2 hours after park closing. This is on top of the extra 30 minutes all Disney resorts have access to before park opening.

• DVC reservations include free parking, so great if you have a car with you.

The booking process

1. Fill out the reservation form: your dates, where you want to stay, and party details.
2. Pay $133 partial payment for the team to see if they can fulfill your request. If they can’t, they’ll recommend other resorts that have availability. If you don’t want those options, you get the $133 back.
3. If your request is fulfilled (meaning you got the room you wanted, yay!) you’ll get an email confirmation and a link to pay the remaining balance.
4. Done! Now you have a Disney DVC reservation number that you can easily link to your My Disney Experience account. From now on, everything will look the same as if you booked through Disney’s website.

There are multiple ways to rent DVC points, but I just like David’s. They’re the oldest broker, I’m familiar with them and I trust them.

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