For many of us, choosing a home resort for a DVC purchase is a painstaking process. We compare resale vs direct, annual dues, price per point, number of points, use year, and more to determine which contract might be right for us. This is the same comparison that many other DVC buyers go through to determine what fits their family the best, and you can find plenty of resources weighing pros and cons of each resort. However, I have noticed that one large piece of the puzzle is missing in most of these discussions: the point charts.
The Issue with DVC Point Charts
The point charts are extremely important, as they dictate what a room will actually cost! Why then do people fail to factor these into DVC purchasing decisions? The simple reason is that the point charts contain so much data that it is very difficult to compare them to each other. It is easy enough to compare a given week in a given accommodation across different resorts. However, this doesn’t give the whole picture of how “pointy” each resort is. More on what I mean by pointy below…
To solve this problem, I have developed a new method for comparing point charts across resorts. The goal: to reduce each point chart down to a single number that can be compared with others when making a DVC purchase decision. Similar to comparing annual dues to one another, comparing point charts will be as easy as looking at a single value for each resort.
Defining Pointy
Pointy is a word that I have repurposed to refer to the relative point cost of different resorts. Simply put, if resort A is more pointy then resort B, then resort A will cost more points if you compare similar accommodations.
I like this word for two reasons. Firstly, the word provides an unambiguous way to refer to point costs at a resort. If one says: “Riviera is expensive”, is that referencing the cost per point to purchase a Riviera contract, the annual dues at Riviera, or the point costs of rooms? Heck, they might even be referring to the restaurants and shopping being expensive. If instead one says: “Riviera is pointy!”, it is clear that they are referring to the point cost of rooms at Riviera, relative to similar rooms at other DVC resorts.
The second reason I like using the word pointy for this purpose is the actual meaning of the word. If something is pointy, it is potentially dangerous or painful. It might be difficult to approach. In our day-to-day lives, pointiness is generally bad. The same is certainly true for the pointiness of DVC resorts!
Why You Should Focus on DVC Point Chart Differences
I believe that the point charts are the single most important factor to consider when looking into DVC. After all, points are the currency used for booking DVC rooms. Picking a resort that costs less points means that the points that you do have will go further. This means that you can own fewer points while staying in the same room types.
Let’s take an example and compare Animal Kingdom to Grand Floridian. Consider a one week stay in a standard view studio room in early December. You’d need 95 points at Animal Kingdom and 132 points at Grand Floridian. That’s about a 40% higher cost to get into Grand Floridian. One potential advantage of buying at Grand Floridian is much lower annual dues. The problem with that thinking is that you need more points on your contract to stay at Grand Floridian. So you would be paying lower dues on a per point basis, but higher dues total.
Now that we have established the importance of point charts, let’s take a look at my new method for comparing them.
The Pointy Score
To gauge how pointy each resort is, I have given each one a pointy score. Lower is better, much like annual dues or price per point. The scores range from 27 to 47 and are summarized below (lowest to highest):
- Old Key West: 27
- Boardwalk: 30
- Saratoga Springs: 30
- Animal Kingdom: 32
- Copper Creek: 33
- Boulder Ridge: 33
- Beach Club: 33
- Bay Lake Tower: 38
- Riviera: 42
- Grand Floridian: 46
- Polynesian: 47
These essentially represent points needed 1 typical night in a typical room during a typical time of year for each point chart. It is a better basis for comparison than any specific point cost across different resorts. The main reason for this is that the pointy score takes into account all travel periods, all room types, and all view types to output a single number.
Methodology
I started by inputting raw 2024 point chart data into excel. The next step was to determine the number of days in each travel period so that the scores could be weighted properly. For each travel period, I averaged the cost of each room type across each view type. For example, there are 30 days in the first travel period (September 1-30). At Animal Kingdom Lodge, there are 4 view options (Value, Standard, Savanna, and Concierge). The average across those view types in September is 27 points for a One Bedroom Villa.
Once I had the average nightly cost for each room type at each resort for each travel season (273 total combinations), I wanted to find the average cost across all travel seasons. This was done by multiplying each cost by the number of days in its season, summing all seasons, and dividing by 366 days in the year. What that gave me is the average cost for each room type during the entire year. For example, a two bedroom at Grand Floridian averages 66 points – although the room ranges from 44 to 122 throughout the year.
The last step in condensing these point costs into one final pointy score was to average across the room types. With some quick research, I determined that there are roughly the same number of studios, one bedrooms, and two bedrooms at each resort. This means that the point costs of each room type are roughly equal in weight. So I took a simple average of the three to determine a final pointy score.
Grand Villas were excluded from the calculation because there are so few of them at each resort. Also, if you are booking grand villas, you’ve got plenty of points and probably aren’t concerned about maximizing value. The Polynesian pointy score was pro-rated based on the cost of their studios (Poly doesn’t have 1-2 bedrooms).
Summary
If you have a specific room type, time of year, and duration in mind, you can easily compare point costs for your potential vacation. If, however, you aren’t sure exactly how you’ll use your points each year, this new concept of “pointiness” can help make an informed DVC purchasing decision.
