“Should I buy Disney Vacation Club direct or buy a DVC contract on the resale market?”

This has got to be the most common question asked by people looking into Disney Vacation Club. Unsurprisingly, it depends on who you ask. Ask a Disney sales person this and you will hear all about the DVC member perks of buying direct. Ask a broker who sells resale contracts, and they’ll tell you all about the savings of buying resale.

As with most things in life, the truth is somewhere in between. Here’s an unbiased view of the benefits of each option.

I think it’s important to first call out what stays the same. Regardless of if you buy DVC resale or from Disney, once you are a member your experience booking your stay and your experience at the resorts are the same.

You will access everything from your online DVC account, everything will be in your name, you will be able to book your home resort 11 months in advance and you will be able to book non-home resorts 7 months in advance (barring resale restrictions. See below).

The number of points required for stays are the same whether you buy DVC resale or direct. Your annual dues are the same. Your check in experience is the same, and treatment by cast members is the same.

I’ve heard some prospective buyers speculate that as a resale buyer they might be treated as a “second class citizen” at the resort or in the parks and that’s just not the case.

Buying into Disney Vacation Club direct from Disney with a minimum of 150 points gives you access to “Membership Extras”, the most commonly referenced are:

• Access to DVC discounts in the resorts and parks
• Ability to purchase discounted Annual Passes
• Access to use your points for reservations in the “Disney Collection”
• Access to DVC member events

Let’s look at these in depth:

The specifics change year to year, but in most gift shops members who bought direct from Disney will receive a 20% discount on merchandise. Most table service restaurants also offer a 10% discount. With your kids (Or wife. Or husband.) begging for a new set of ears or a mystery pack of pins to try to complete their collection at every turn, this adds up, quick!

If you go every year and spend a few hundred bucks in souvenirs and restaurants, it isn’t unrealistic to think this would save you AT LEAST $100 per year. (What’s that you say? You don’t think you will buy souvenirs every year? Good luck with that 😂)

It is worth mentioning, though, that an almost identical discount is granted to annual pass holders and discounts can’t be stacked. So, if you plan on getting an annual pass regardless, you might not actually get much benefit from this perk.

My family five contracts between a few different resorts. We bought 2 contracts direct and 3 contracts resale. This perk is one of the things that sold us on going direct with our first contract (At that time, it was called the “Gold” annual pass).

Disney World has 4 tiers of annual passes. Here’s a quick summary:

Pass	$/yr (w/tax)	Max PPR*	Who can buy?	Blackout Dates
Incredi-Pass	$1,490	5	Anyone	None
Sorcerer Pass	$969	5	FL Residents or DVC Direct Owners	~20 Dates around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years
Pirate Pass	$749	4	FL Residents ONLY	~70 Dates: Days around most Holidays, Spring Break
Pixie Dust Pass	$425	3	FL Residents ONLY	~150 Dates: All Weekends, All Holidays

The Sorcerer Pass is available to Florida residents and DVC members who bought direct.

If you are already a Florida resident or want to travel during Christmas or Thanksgiving this Membership Extra won’t benefit you at all. However, if those DON’T apply, there can be substantial savings with this perk.

It’s worth bringing up that when COVID happened in 2020, Disney World stopped selling Annual Passes for about THREE YEARS. During that time, nobody could buy annual passes. They appear to be back “for good” now, but it’s a reminder that any of the “Membership Extras” can go away at any time and without notice.

As cool as this sounds, it just isn’t a good use of points from a value perspective. Booking a non-DVC room with points is substantially more points than a DVC room (Eg: A value resort standard room is about double the number of points as a DVC Deluxe studio).

Adventures by Disney are laughably expensive on DVC points (Minimum of ~900-1100 points PER PERSON) and the cruises aren’t much better. If you are interested in doing a different vacation like Adventures by Disney or a cruise, you are WAY better off renting out your points via a service for cash and just using that cash to pay for your vacation.

Renting out points is something that both direct and resale buyers can do, so there is no strong benefit to this “Membership Extra” in my opinion.

Occasionally during the year, Disney Vacation Club offers special events that allow DVC members access to the park outside of normal hours. This comes with promises of shorter lines and smaller crowds. However, in my experience, getting tickets for these events is quite difficult since they fill up almost instantly when they become available.

Also, while the idea is awesome, there are only a handful of events in any given year, and they aren’t usually announced far enough in advance to allow a non-local family to use DVC points to plan around the events.

For example, they usually announce an event 3-4 months in advance. By that time, your chance of using DVC points to get a room during the event are between slim and none, so if you wanted to go, you’d have to book a cash trip instead of using points.

With those items in mind, I’ll say that this is another perk that I just don’t see a lot of value in.

This depends greatly on your home resort. (Yes, home resort matters!)

Disney focuses on selling their two or three newest properties of which they have the most inventory. These are the properties where you will see incentives and discounts for buying direct, and the prices through Disney are generally fairly close to what you would pay on the resale market (If there are any Resale Contracts even available).

On the other hand, for resorts that Disney has already “sold out” of, Disney prices the contracts pretty steep. If you want one of these to be your home resort, you will pay quite a bit more to buy direct from Disney.

Check out the latest Pricing Table that shows DVC Direct prices alongside historical resale prices for you to compare.

To understand resale restrictions, you first need to be familiar with the 11 month and 7 month booking windows. In short: all members, whether they bought direct or resale, can begin booking at their home resort 11 months before check-in. Booking at a non-home resort opens up 7 months before check-in. This option is what allows you to “own” at one resort but stay at a different one. Read more about home resorts in our detailed guide.

Starting with Riviera, Disney added “resale restrictions” for all new resorts being built that impacts the 7 month booking window. So far, this restriction applies to Riviera and Villas at Disneyland Hotel, and we assume it will apply to any future resorts built. Here’s how it works:

If the “home resort” of a resale contract is one of the original 14 Resorts (Everything except Riviera and Villas at Disneyland Hotel), then at the 7 month booking window, you can ONLY book one of the original 14 resorts. In other words: a Resale owner of one of the original 14 resorts can NOT book Riviera or Villas at Disneyland Hotel, even at the 7 month window.

If the “home resort” of a resale contract is Riviera, Villas at Disneyland Hotel, or (we assume) any future built DVC resort, those points can ONLY be used at the home resort. Bookings still open 11 months in advance, but there is no 7 month window. In other words: If you buy a Riviera contract on the resale market, you can ONLY ever use those points at Riviera.

How much does this matter? It depends who you ask. In the past decade of owning, my family has only ever stayed at our home resorts. We bought where we wanted to stay, we love our home resorts, and it is easy to book at a home resort 11 months in advance. My experience is that availability at the 7 month window isn’t very good, so this change isn’t that significant, even on the Riviera resale contract we own. Other folks highly value the ability to try to find a different resort at the 7 month window.

There is one more variable that I think is worth mentioning that I don’t see discussed often, and that is simplicity. Brokers who resell Disney Vacation Club have done a good job of streamlining the process, but it just isn’t as easy as buying direct from Disney.

When you buy direct from Disney, you tell them exactly how many points you want at which resort, and for a specific Use Year. They give you a price or put you on a waiting list if it is a sold out resort. The price isn’t negotiable. You take it or leave it. Once you agree, they give you contracts to sign, you return the contract with payment and that’s it. It’s quick and easy, and your points are instantly ready to be used.

Buying resell has a few more bumps. First, you have to consider if the contract is “loaded” or not. “Loaded” means a contract has points available for use right now and these generally sell for more than “stripped” contracts where the seller has used all of the current year’s points and maybe even borrowed from next year’s points, too. If you buy a stripped contract, you may not be able to use the points for a year or more.

Next, you have to find a contract for your desired resort that has the number of points you are looking for, and the Use Year that you want (if you care about Use Year). Want something specific like 175 points at Bay Lake Tower on a February Use Year? Well, that narrows your options quite a bit.

DVC search can help with that by setting alerts for when new contracts appear and searching all available contracts in one spot, but you still have to wait for someone to be selling what you are looking to buy.

After you’ve found the right contract, you have to negotiate with the seller via the broker. How much are they asking? Do you offer asking price or come in lower? Who pays closing costs?

Great! The seller accepted your offer! Now you have to put down earnest money and sign the contract so it can be sent to Disney to approve. Disney has 30 days from receipt to step in and buy the contract themselves (Right of First Refusal). If they do, you get your earnest money back, but it is back to searching for the right contract and going through the above steps again.

Once it passes right of first refusal, the deal has to be closed with a title company and sent to Disney to update ownership and grant you access to the DVC portal. Your broker takes care of all this, but it takes more time, another 3-4 weeks typically.

All in, from the time you find the perfect resale contract to when it is actually yours to use, you should expect the process to take at least 50-80 days, and that assumes it gets past ROFR and wasn’t a stripped contract.

Some people don’t want to deal with the stress and time of this, and prefer to just buy direct even though it costs quite a bit more.

it depends on your situation. If you are buying at the resort Disney is actively selling, you live outside Florida and would take advantage of the Sorcerer Annual Pass option or you spend enough on merchandise/meals to make the discount worthwhile, it might makes sense to just buy direct.

If you’re buying at a sold out resort and have some patience, resale will save you quite a bit of money.