Whether to own, whether to buy resale or direct, and which contract — worked out from how your family actually travels.
1. How your family travels
Everything below is derived from this: how you travel, and what you would otherwise pay for the room.
Disney’s undiscounted weeknight price for this room in a normal fall week. Each trip’s season scales it, weekend nights add 15%, and your discount comes off after. The default is an estimate — look up your real dates.
Dollars per point to rent from an existing owner — the option that needs no purchase, no dues and no resale risk. Commonly $18–24. Estimate; verify current rates.
Set every trip’s discount to
Most visitors get no room discount at all, so this starts at none. Discounts are set per trip below because Disney tiers them by length of stay, and they largely disappear over Easter and Christmas weeks.
Season
Nights
Weekend
Discount %
2. Own, or just book a room?
The gate question, in today’s dollars. Owning only saves against what you would otherwise pay — and a Florida resident already books these villas at 30–40% off. If cash wins here, nothing further down matters.
3. Your trips at every resort
The same trips priced at every resort. Point charts, rack rates and dues all differ, so the same family gets a different answer at each one. Sorted by break-even year; click any heading to re-sort.
Resort ▾
Years left ▾
Pts/yr ▾
Upfront ▾
Own $/night ▾
Cash $/night ▾
Saves/yr ▾
Break-even ▾
At deed end ▾
4. Every resort side by side
Every contract reduced to one figure: what a point costs per year of deed, all in. Sorted cheapest first.
Resort ▾
Deed ends ▾
Years left ▾
Direct $/pt ▾
Resale $/pt ▾
2026 dues ▾
Direct $/pt-yr ▾
Resale $/pt-yr ▾
Resale, discounted ▾
Direct prices are list prices with no incentive applied — Disney runs volume incentives most of the year, so the real direct price is often lower and worth asking for in writing. Grand Floridian is confirmed at $275 from a current Disney sales sheet; the rest come from a July 2026 published list and may have moved the same way. Cost per point-year uses the contract size and assumptions set above. Old Key West trades in two flavors: original deeds ending 2042 and extended deeds ending 2057 — the extended ones sell at a premium, and the table shows the extended figure. The Cabins at Fort Wilderness have too little resale history to average.
5. Resale or direct?
Same rooms, same booking windows, same dues. Only the purchase price differs, spread here over the years left on the deed.
Disney quotes $845.08 on a 150-point cash contract
Percent. 2026 came in at 6.4%
Percent. The page is in today’s dollars, so only the gap between this and the dues rate matters: dues outrunning rooms makes owning dearer, equal rates keep every figure flat. Estimate.
Percent, above inflation. At 0 every future dollar counts equally; above 0 the figures switch to a levelized cost.
Direct from Disney
—all-in cost per point, per year, for the life of the contract
Price per point
Cash at closing
Amortized purchase
Average annual dues
Cost per year
Resale
—all-in cost per point, per year, for the life of the contract
Price per point
Cash at closing
Amortized purchase
Average annual dues
Cost per year
6. What the contract buys
The same contract is a fortnight in September or four nights at Christmas. Every room against every season, on the 2027 chart.
7. When to go, and what a stay costs
Trip length down the side, dates across the top. Pick a check-in date and the matching cell is outlined, with the night-by-night breakdown beneath — a stay’s cost turns on which weekday you arrive as much as on the date.
8. Score a listing
Two contracts at the same price per point are rarely worth the same. The points-available column — the 26 | 27 | 28 figures on a listing — decides it: banked points are nights you would otherwise buy, and a stripped contract quietly costs you a year.
9. Ranked inventory
Paste current listings from any DVC resale broker to score and rank them by all-in cost per point-year and value relative to recent sales.
Paste resale listings to get started
Open a broker’s listings page, select the table, copy it, and paste it below. The parser reads whatever shape it arrives in.
Left ranks purely on all-in cost per point-year, which favours the cheap resorts. Right ranks on how far under its own resort’s sold average a contract is priced, which surfaces bargains at expensive resorts. Filter to one resort and the two nearly converge — the slider matters most when you have not picked a resort yet. ROFR risk is a property of the resort rather than the listing, so it is shown as a column instead of folded into the score.
Score ▾
Resort ▾
Pts ▾
UY ▾
Ask $/pt ▾
Effective ▾
vs sold ▾
$/pt-yr ▾
Cash ▾
ROFR ▾
10. Resort reference
Rooms, transport, dining and amenities. Filter by how you would actually get to a park — day to day that matters more than the theming.
11. What this model leaves out
Each of these would move the numbers above, and none is in the model — listed rather than guessed at, so the figures do not look more complete than they are.
Costs that are missing
Financing. Every figure here assumes you pay cash. Disney’s in-house financing on direct contracts has historically run in the low-to-mid teens, and resale buyers who finance pay their own lender. Because direct buyers finance more often, leaving interest out flatters direct specifically.
Getting out. Selling means a broker commission, closing costs, and months of waiting, with no guarantee of today’s price and a right of first refusal that can pull the sale. The payback figure assumes you simply hold to expiry.
Special assessments. Roof, structural and storm-damage work can land on top of annual dues, outside the escalation rate entirely. Infrequent, but real, and unbudgeted here.
Everything that is not the room. Airfare, tickets, food and parking are identical whichever way you book, so they are excluded — but they mean three short trips cost meaningfully more than one long one, which this model treats as equivalent.
What owning takes away
The money stops working elsewhere. A five-figure sum in a contract is a five-figure sum not invested. The comparison here counts what you save on rooms, not what the capital might have earned instead.
Skipping a year is not free. A cash booker who does not travel pays nothing. An owner still owes dues, every year, whether or not they go.
You are committed to one resort family. A cash booker picks whatever is best value that year, moderate or deluxe, Disney or not. Points nudge you toward using points.
The asset expires. At the deed’s end date it is worth nothing. That is already priced into the cost-per-point-year figures, but it is worth saying plainly.
12. What resale actually costs you
The booking restriction
Resale points bought on or after 19 January 2019 at any of the original 14 resorts can book those 14 resorts, but never Riviera, the Villas at Disneyland Hotel, or the Cabins at Fort Wilderness — and almost certainly never Lakeshore Lodge.
Resale points bought at Riviera, Disneyland Hotel, or Fort Wilderness Cabins can only book that one resort. No 7-month trading at all.
That asymmetry is why Riviera resale trades near $124 against a $243 direct price. You are buying a contract that can only ever book one building.
Island Tower was folded into the existing Polynesian condominium rather than sold as a new association, so Polynesian resale points do reach it. Confirm this in writing with the broker before you sign.
The perks you give up
No blue card. That is the members-only annual pass, dining and merchandise discounts, Moonlight Magic events, and Top of the World Lounge at Bay Lake Tower.
Blue card requires 150 direct points minimum, so a small direct add-on does not restore it if your base contract is resale.
The discounts are worth real money if you visit often and buy passes; they are worth roughly nothing if you go once a year and stay in the room.
Everything structural is identical: same 11-month home resort window, same 7-month window across the original 14, same housekeeping, same banking and borrowing.
Friction on the resale side
Disney holds right of first refusal. It can take your contract at your agreed price, and you start over. Budget 2–4 months from offer to points in your account.
Closing costs run higher than direct: roughly $600–$1,000 plus a broker admin fee, and you usually pay the current year’s dues on any points that come with the contract.
Use year matters more than people expect. Pick one that sits a month or two before your usual travel, so a cancellation leaves you room to rebank.
Loaded contracts — ones carrying banked points — justify a higher price per point. Stripped ones should trade below the average.
Where direct genuinely wins
You specifically want Riviera or Lakeshore Lodge as a home resort and want to keep trading rights elsewhere.
You want a small contract. Disney will sell 25-point add-ons; the resale market prices small contracts at a steep premium per point.
You want the longest runway. Fort Wilderness runs to 2075 and Riviera to 2070, against 2042 for Beach Club, BoardWalk and Boulder Ridge.
You value the blue card discounts enough to price them. Put a dollar figure on them per year and compare it to the amortized gap above — usually it does not close.
Where these numbers come from
Sourced figures are transcribed from published Disney data. Estimated ones are a starting point — replace them with a real lookup before trusting a conclusion built on them.