Renting points rather than using points for cruise...

[samIam]

Last Thanksgiving I was forced into the rental market when my accompanying friends bailed on their ressie at the last minute ... I was able to unload the ressie on the DIS boards and all ended very well as besides paying for my park tickets... it made for a great holiday surprise for the kids of an active service member on tour in Afghanistan... not as good as Dad coming home early, but still pretty good

Skip ahead to the planning of my super special 20th anniversary trip for July of 2013... at first I wanted to try Aulani Hawaii using three years of points, but the airfare costs from New England was intimidating. Next I was into an eclectic West Coast road trip from Seattle/Portland/San Fran/Disneyland, but that was a planning nightmare that was also climbing in costs. Then my roving eye turned to a Disney cruise. However using points for a cruise is astronomical...
...440-460 points for a inside cabin for two worth $2600 equals ~$5/point ... not the best use of my points by any means. SO I decided to take another stab at renting... much easier when you have points as opposed to iron clad reservation dates. Took about a week total from finding the buyer to getting the $$ into my bank... rented out half the amount of points it would have taken me to book the cruise for more $$ at 11.50/point

Now with my remaining points... I will stay AKV concierge for a couple of nights before my Caribbean cruise on the Fantasy for 7 nights ...just paid the deposit and picked the rooms... Deck 7 ocean view for the kids... navigator's veranda for my hubby and me... cuz we're not sharing a cabin with them on our anniversary cruise!!!!! Sooooo psyched.

[goindowntofla]

Wow, good thinking! Sounds like a great, great trip! Enjoy!!

[DisneyGeek]

Have an awesome trip!!! Glad renting worked out for ya'.

[scolling007]

I never thought about doing this before, although I have looked into renting some of our points I never though about doing that for our cruise. I recently just booked a 7-night Fantasy cruise as well and now I wish that I would have thought about using them this way and I could have saved a boatload of my points.

[samIam]

I never thought about doing this before, although I have looked into renting some of our points I never though about doing that for our cruise. I recently just booked a 7-night Fantasy cruise as well and now I wish that I would have thought about using them this way and I could have saved a boatload of my points.

I think it is funny how much of a learning process the DVC membership is... Disney is determined to get their $$ and members are just as determined to keep it. I admit... I was close to using my points to book and just ignore the loss cost per point... but I was intimidated by the process of booking with points AND cash... so I was hemming and hawing. Then I was looking at some of the boards and someone was talking about how they had rented and then booked with cash.. and it dawned on me as a option. So I decided to trial balloon it and list the points and see if there was any interest... and yup... there was interest. One thing for sure... It is kinda reassuring how much interest there is renting DVC points, especially AKV and BLT. Going rates seems to be $11-13 right now. And, now that the online reservation thing is up... checking availability is much easier than it used to be with calling Member services. But is a trust game and a gamble... However if you don't want to bother with doing it yourself... there is this company that does the majority of the work and "security" for you in renting out your points... they give you $10/pt and then they sell them for $13/pt.

http://www.dvcrequest.com/