DVC Members Friends & Family Save 40% Off Deluxe Villas at Disney World

Walt Disney World has released a new-to-me discount offering DVC Members and their Friends & Family up to 40% off room-only rates on select resorts for stays between now and December 2024. This shares booking & travel dates for these special offers, plus commentary about the special offer.

This is one of many deals that Walt Disney World has released for 2024 vacations, with special offers for Annual Passholders, Floridians, and Disney Visa cardholders. For every other special offer that’s currently available, see All Current Walt Disney World Discounts for 2024.

The big discount right now is a ‘second wave’ of 2024 Free Dining at Walt Disney World as well as Stay Longer & Save Up to 30% Off Walt Disney World Resorts in Summer & Fall 2024. In addition to this, there’s the 4-Park Magic Discount Walt Disney World Ticket, which was a huge hit last year and–in our opinion–makes the room-only discounts much more attractive than Free Dining, which requires the purchase of Park Hopper tickets. Remember, there’s no such thing as a free lunch!

There are promos available for pretty much all dates between now and late Summer or December 2024, with even more targeted special offers available for select guests all the way through December 2025 if you count the newly-released bounceback discount.

Although some deals are now available through this December (…and next December), the full slate of special offers has not yet been released for late 2024. More room-only discounts (and perhaps other types of special offers–but definitely room-only rates) for travel dates beyond October 2024 will be released down the road. If past precedent is any indication, those are probably coming in mid to late June 2024.

With regard to the DVC Member Friends & Family Special, here’s the official announcement from Disney:

Be welcomed home to the incredible magic of a Walt Disney World vacation with this limited-time special offer. Starting April 30, 2024 you can book select villas, including ones at Disney’s Old Key West Resort or Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa—and save up to 40%!

You can book up to 3 additional rooms at this special rate so that friends and family members can join you when you visit. Enjoy new thrills in the parks and classic attractions. Plus, relax in Member Lounges—including the Member Lounge at EPCOT.

This special offer is for cash rentals only and is valid for stays most nights May 16 through October 3, 2024, and December 9 through December 21, 2024.

You can book this offer by calling Member Services at (800) 800-9800. Members can book for themselves and up to 3 rooms for their friends and family members. (Members must book on behalf of their friends and family.)

Current Disney Vacation Club Membership in good standing must be validated prior to booking. Discounted cash reservations are based upon availability.

Interested in other travel dates or a different Walt Disney World Resort? Ask Member Services about special Member Friends and Family rates that may be available.

Other Important Details:

• This cash rental offer is not valid for bookings with Vacation Points.
• Valid current Disney Vacation Club Members must book on behalf of their family and friends.
• Valid only on villas, excluding 3-Bedroom Grand Villas and 3-Bedroom Treehouse Villas.
• Savings based on the non-discounted price for the same room for stays from May 16 through October 3, 2024, and December 9 through December 21, 2024.
• Travel for stays from May 16 through October 3, 2024, must be completed by October 4, 2024. Travel for stays from December 9 through December 21, 2024, must be completed by December 22, 2024.
• Length of stay requirements apply, and cancellation of any nights of a stay will affect discount validity.
• Not valid on previously booked rooms. Advance reservations required.
• Subject to availability as the number of rooms allocated for this offer is limited.
• Excludes applicable fees and taxes.
• Occupancy restrictions apply per room.
• Not valid in combination with any other hotel discounts or offers.
• Subject to restrictions and change without notice.
• Select activities require additional fees.

If you’re a Disney Vacation Club member, you probably will not need this, but check out our Rankings of ALL Resort Hotels at Walt Disney World from Worst to Bestif you want help choosing where to stay. Fair warning: that’s written primarily for first-timers, and as a result, Old Key West and Saratoga Springs (along with other spread-out resorts) don’t perform particularly well.

For more on timing your trip to coincide with the lowest prices, see When’s Cheapest to Visit Walt Disney World in 2024? That covers price increases and other variables that impact the cost of a vacation beyond just room rates.

That post will probably be more useful–but if you’re familiar with DVC point charts and seasons, you probably have at least a rough idea of when is less and more expensive to travel. Cash rates largely track with point charts, with only a handful of exceptions.

Turning to commentary, there are a few things worth discussing here. The first is that this is not the same as the normal up to 25% off discount that Disney Vacation Club members can receive on cash rates. That has been sporadically available for as long as we can remember, and after disappearing post-closure, seems to have consistently returned again. (Honestly, I don’t know because we never use it–we can always do better with Annual Passholder or other targeted deals.)

There are a few differences that should be immediately apparent–this is up to 40% off versus 25% off, it’s also for DVC Member Friends & Family, and it’s available for multiple rooms. Those are some big differences, especially if availability is good and Disney Vacation Club Members can book friends and family without being part of the travel party.

Rather than being like the routine DVC Member room-only cash rate, this is much more like the Cast Member Friends & Family discounts, which sound very similar to this. It really comes down to availability and the resort-by-resort savings. Our guess is that Saratoga Springs and Old Key West will offer the biggest discounts, as that’s how this has worked in the past.

Expect inventory to be fairly limited for certain travel dates and resorts, as that’s always the case with cash rates at Deluxe Villas–especially via discounts. The cash rates do not pull from the same bucket of reservations as DVC points. It’s important to understand this so you don’t get frustrated as a DVC member seeing no availability with stays on points…and vice-versa.

The cash rate bucket is far smaller, as Walt Disney World retains only a small percentage of the room inventory (or reacquires it–but that’s a bit too inside baseball for this). That’s why it’s exceedingly difficult to book the higher-demand and lower-supply room types, as Walt Disney World may only have access to a couple of those room types.

Conversely, it can be easier to book higher-supply and lower-demand room types, especially ones that are particularly pricey via cash rates. It’s also not as challenging to book brand-new Disney Vacation Club resorts, as not as much of the inventory has been declared–meaning that there’s more in the cash rates bucket and less in the DVC points bucket. (Inventory is moved from bucket to bucket ahead of the points being sold.)

Members also may not bat an eye at dropping 10-15 points per night for some of the ‘value’ rooms, like the Riviera Tower Studios or the cheapest options at BoardWalk, Old Key West, Saratoga, etc. But those same rooms via full-price cash rates can be $600 per night. (We like the Riviera Tower Studio well enough and will book it when trying to conserve points, but there’s no way on earth I’d pay $576 to $864 per night for it, which is its actual price range for 2024.)

To that point, the rack rates on a lot of Deluxe Villas are exorbitant and can be more expensive even at 40% off than renting DVC points. As always, we recommend reading How to Save Money Renting Disney Vacation Club Points for the ins & outs, and pros & cons of that approach.

It might turn out that renting DVC points is the cheaper and better option for you than this or other room-only discounts. Or, this might offer superior savings, greater flexibility, peace of mind, etc. Like Walt Disney World discounts generally, there’s no across the board or one-size-fits-all answer, so price things out and weigh the upsides and downsides for your specific circumstances.

Ultimately, what I think is most interesting about this DVC Member Friends & Family special offer is that it’s happening at all. As we’ve noted, Walt Disney World has been pulling more and more from the “2019 discount playbook” in an effort to entice guests to book vacations and lure back fans who have grown disenchanted or have sticker shock from price increases. (As we’ve also pointed out repeatedly, Walt Disney World on-site vacations are often less expensive now than in 2022 due to greater discounting.)

This DVC Member Friends & Family special offer is not from the aforementioned 2019 discount playbook, though. I cannot say definitively that it’s entirely new (as there’s not great info about targeted DVC deals from 10+ years ago), but it’s new-to-me…as far as I can recall.

Even if you aren’t eligible for this particular special offer–or don’t end up booking because there’s nothing that works for you–this bodes well. It shows that Walt Disney World is trying new things with special offers, and we could see some unique and unprecedented savings in the months to come. Especially in 2025 if Epic Universe actually does cut into Walt Disney World’s on-site occupancy.

As for this DVC Member Friends & Family special offer, plan on being flexible with your hotel choice, room category, and even travel dates for the biggest savings. That’s doubly true here given the aforementioned inventory issues for Deluxe Villas on the cash reservations side of the ledger.

Walt Disney World offering more special offers to the general public is great news, and definitively demonstrates that travel trends are normalizing now after running hot for way too long. During that period of pent-up demand, Walt Disney World was able to ‘get away’ with pretty much anything and still see record guest spending and insatiable demand. Consumers now appear to once again have more leverage, and companies need to entice them to visit.

This should be an interesting saga to follow, and it’s almost certain that we haven’t seen the end of Walt Disney World’s efforts to woo back former fans and pull “levers” to incentivize more demand and guest spending. If bookings remain soft, it’ll be interesting to see what type of more unique promotions (beyond room discounts) are released for October through December 2024…it sure feels like things are trending in the right direction for even more aggressive offers! We will be closely monitoring what’s released and will notify subscribers of our free email newsletter when any Walt Disney World discounts are released or rumored!

Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!

YOUR THOUGHTS

What do you think of these Walt Disney World room-only discounts for DVC Member Friends & Family? If you book this, do you think you ended up with a good price or do you feel like you’re overpaying? What was available or unavailable for your dates? Is this deal enough to convince you to book a trip, or can you not justify these prices? If you call about this, please share the savings or prices you were quoted! Do you agree or disagree with our assessments? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!