10 Years of Disney Vacation Club: Was DVC Worth It for Our Family?
Is Disney Vacation Club worth it? That’s a question I can answer from nearly 10 years of personal experience. We bought our first contract in 2016, eventually owned more than 500 points, and built years of family vacations around DVC.
Was it worth it? For our family, absolutely. Would I buy it again at today’s prices? No.
Here’s our story.
Why We Started Looking Into Disney Vacation Club
Back in 2016, I decided to take a deep dive into Disney Vacation Club.
I had friends and family members who were already DVC owners, and they always talked about how much they loved it.
At the time, we were a young family, and I knew I wanted us to take vacations regularly as our kids grew up.
But there’s always a reason to put a vacation off.
Work gets busy. Something comes up. The money could go toward something else. Before you know it, another year has passed.
One of the biggest reasons DVC appealed to me was that buying into it would almost force us to make family vacations a priority.
We’d have the points. We’d be paying the dues. We’d have a reason to put a trip on the calendar.
Looking back, that decision helped shape the way our family travels today.
Our First Purchase: 120 Points at Bay Lake Tower
After researching DVC, I discovered that you could purchase an existing contract on the resale market rather than buying directly from Disney.
In 2016, that was a significant part of our strategy.
We purchased our first contract for approximately $15,000, giving us 120 points at Bay Lake Tower.
And we didn’t choose Bay Lake Tower by accident.
Bay Lake Tower is connected to Disney’s Contemporary Resort, putting us within walking distance of Magic Kingdom. We could also use the monorail system to reach EPCOT, although that requires a transfer at the Transportation and Ticket Center.
We were thinking about transportation from the very beginning.
With young kids, strollers, and everything else that comes along with family travel, avoiding buses whenever possible was a big deal.
We could walk to Magic Kingdom, use the monorail for EPCOT, and generally only needed a bus for Hollywood Studios. We skipped Animal Kingdom on many of our trips.
That made Bay Lake Tower a fantastic home base for us.
At the time, our 120 points could stretch into roughly two weeklong trips per year, depending on when we traveled, the accommodations we booked, and how we used our points.
We also qualified for certain member benefits under the rules that applied to our resale purchase at the time.
Those benefits included discounts on dining, shopping, and annual passes.
That combination made DVC extremely appealing to us in 2016.
It’s important to understand that the resale rules have changed since then. Someone buying a resale contract today should not assume they’ll receive the same benefits we received.
For current membership benefits and eligibility requirements, check the official Disney Vacation Club website
The Planning Was Half the Fun
Something I rarely see mentioned in DVC discussions is how much fun the ownership itself can be.
For me, the vacation started long before we arrived at Disney World.
I had spreadsheets.
I knew when our 11-month home-resort booking window opened.
I’d calculate how many points we needed, figure out our dates, compare different stays, and plan how to get the most out of our membership.
Then I’d be ready when our booking window opened.
And once one vacation was booked, I was usually already thinking about the next one.
It felt like we were planning family trips all year long.
There was always something to look forward to.
That was a huge part of why we loved DVC. It wasn’t simply a way to book a Disney hotel.
It became a hobby, a planning project, and a way to make sure family vacations stayed on our calendar.
We had originally purchased DVC because we wanted to prioritize traveling together.
It worked.
Why We Bought a Second Contract at BoardWalk
We quickly fell in love with not just Disney, but Disney Vacation Club itself.
Eventually, we purchased another resale contract at Disney’s BoardWalk Villas.
This wasn’t simply about having more points.
It was another transportation decision.
Bay Lake Tower was ideal for Magic Kingdom.
BoardWalk gave us walking access to EPCOT and Hollywood Studios.
Instead of spending an entire week at one resort, we started splitting some of our trips between the two.
We might spend three nights at BoardWalk and three nights at Bay Lake Tower.
During our BoardWalk stay, we’d focus on EPCOT and Hollywood Studios.
During our Bay Lake Tower stay, we’d focus on Magic Kingdom.
We could walk to the parks we planned to visit instead of constantly dealing with buses.
For our family, that was a major improvement.
It made our Disney trips feel easier, especially with young children.
And it reinforced something I’ve carried into our travel planning ever since:
Where you stay can completely change how you experience a destination.
Today, when I’m researching an Airbnb in Rome or London, I’m still thinking about many of the same things.
Can we walk to the places we want to visit? How much transportation will we need? What will be easiest with four kids?
That approach started with our Disney resort choices.
We Eventually Owned More Than 500 DVC Points
As our family grew and we continued enjoying Disney, so did our DVC ownership.
We bought additional resale contracts over the years and eventually owned more than 500 points.
At our busiest, we were visiting Disney two or three times per year.
We also made extensive use of the discounted annual passes available to us through our grandfathered membership benefits.
That was a big part of our strategy.
When you’re visiting multiple times in a year, annual passes can change the economics of those trips.
Combined with our DVC accommodations and other member discounts, Disney became much more affordable for us than it otherwise would have been.
But I want to be clear about what I mean by affordable.
We had already committed money to buying the contracts, and we were paying annual dues.
DVC wasn’t making Disney free.
It was helping us manage the cost of a type of vacation we knew we wanted to take frequently.
For our family, during those years, the numbers and the experience made sense.
We Bought and Sold Contracts Along the Way
Our DVC ownership didn’t stay the same for ten years.
We purchased additional contracts, sold some, and adjusted our points as our needs changed.
In our experience, we never lost money on the purchase-and-sale price of any contract we sold. We actually made money on a few.
However, that’s not the same thing as saying we made an overall profit on DVC ownership.
Annual dues, transaction costs, financing costs if applicable, and the time value of money all matter when calculating a true financial return.
I wouldn’t suggest buying DVC as an investment or assume that another owner could repeat our experience.
I’m simply sharing what happened with our contracts.
The resale market gave us flexibility to increase or decrease our ownership as our family changed.
And eventually, we needed less DVC than we once had.
What Changed When Our Kids Started School
For years, we could travel to Disney fairly frequently.
But as our oldest daughters started school, our schedule became more restrictive.
We also don’t particularly enjoy visiting Disney World during the summer months.
The heat, humidity, and crowds aren’t our preferred way to experience the parks.
That meant we couldn’t simply move our trips into summer vacation whenever we wanted.
Suddenly, taking two or three Disney trips per year wasn’t nearly as practical.
Our family was changing, and our travel interests were changing too.
We still loved Disney.
But we were also starting to explore other places.
We visited the Bahamas, took trips around the United States, and eventually spent two summers living in Hawaii for about a month at a time.
Now we’re preparing for an even bigger adventure: taking our four daughters to Europe for three months.
DVC helped establish our family’s travel habit, but Disney was no longer the only place we wanted to go.
We adjusted our ownership accordingly.
Today, we own two Bay Lake Tower contracts totaling approximately 325 points.
That’s considerably less than our peak of more than 500 points, but it’s a better fit for how we currently travel.
Is Disney Vacation Club Worth It in 2026?
This is where my answer might surprise people.
If I were starting from scratch today, I would not buy DVC.
That doesn’t mean I regret buying it in 2016.
It means the decision looks different to me now.
Purchase prices have increased substantially compared with what we paid for our first resale contract.
Annual dues are also a much bigger consideration.
And the membership perks that made DVC so attractive to us aren’t as compelling as they once were.
Our original resale contracts were grandfathered into certain benefits under the rules in effect when we purchased.
A new resale buyer today shouldn’t expect the same arrangement.
The discounted annual passes were also an enormous part of our original strategy.
For our family today, annual passes no longer make nearly as much financial sense, particularly because we’re visiting less frequently.
When I combine all of those factors, I can’t justify making the same purchase today that I made ten years ago.
Someone who visits Disney frequently, has different travel dates, or places a high value on staying in DVC villas might reach a different conclusion.
But for our family, the circumstances that made DVC such a good fit in 2016 no longer exist in quite the same way.
So, Was DVC Worth It?
For us, yes.
Absolutely.
Not because we necessarily found some magical financial loophole.
And not because DVC is always cheaper than booking a hotel.
It was worth it because of what it did for our family during that stage of our lives.
We bought our first contract when our kids were young because we wanted to make family vacations a priority.
Over the following decade, we took trip after trip.
We watched our daughters grow up at Disney.
We learned how to plan vacations around their ages, schedules, and interests.
We discovered how much the right accommodations and transportation arrangements could improve a trip.
And I spent countless hours having fun planning it all—spreadsheets, booking windows, resort strategies, and everything else.
Those years gave us a foundation for the way we travel now.
Eventually, our Disney trips became trips to other destinations.
Then those trips became longer stays.
And now we’re preparing to live in Tuscany with our four girls.
We didn’t know any of that was coming when we purchased 120 Bay Lake Tower points in 2016.
We just knew we wanted to take more family vacations.
DVC gave us a reason to start.
And for that, I’m glad we bought it when we did.
This article reflects our family’s personal experience with Disney Vacation Club. Membership rules, resale restrictions, pricing, annual dues, and benefits can change. Our experience with contract resale prices is not a guarantee of future resale value or financial returns.