Originally Posted by
The Hitchhiking Ghost
Our last three visits, with kids, in 2010-12-15 were all stays at POR and two of the stays were with free dining and the other was the Stay-Play-Dine promotion. When people analyze the "is it worth it" from the financial perspective, I think some things get lost in translation, the biggest of which is that the DVC Savings is generally compared to otherwise paying rack rates. But in our last three stays, getting free dining and and reduced dining/rates, we've essentially never paid rack rates, and that really throws off the math.
For us, the two things that probably were the biggest road blocks were 1) transportation and 2) resort levels. The first, if we lived within reasonable driving distance of WDW, it would have a huge impact in our decision making process, but we don't, any trip there requires airfare for 5, and that puts the kabosh on annual visits. The second, we've traditionally stayed at moderate level resorts, ones that can accomodate 5. Granted I want nothing more than to stay at Deluxe level, but its never been an actual requirement when we've traveled to WDW. If you are purchasing DVC you are basically stating "we have to have Deluxe level".
The other detractor for us, again being a number cruncher, is that many if not most of the WDW resort promotions that I see, generally have some form of discount, usually 25-35% off select DVC Villas. Granted it doesn't cover all of them, but still, when I've looked at renting points and looking at the Disney discounts, fairly close in final prices, so it again acts as a discincentive for me to buy DVC.