How to Rent Disney Vacation Club Points
These money-saving tips for renting Disney Vacation Club points will get you Deluxe hotel rooms at Walt Disney World for much cheaper prices. DVC rental is convenient, and less expensive than standard resort reservations. It’s also a great way to test drive DVC before buying. (Updated January 27, 2021.)
Disney Vacation Club (DVC) point rental is the one-time use of a set number of a points to book a Deluxe Villa room at a Disney Vacation Club Resort. It’s a fairly easy process, and you can do this on a person-to-person basis via forums, or via one of the established point rental companies that we recommend.
This post offers our info and tips for the best ways to rent DVC points, including what to know if you’re planning on renting Disney Vacation Club points next year. If you’re thinking of doing a Halloween, Food & Wine, or Christmas 2021 trip to Walt Disney World, now is the time you need to book…
Let’s start with the basics of DVC rental. Here’s how it works: the owner of the points agrees to “rent” the points out to a rentee, and in exchange for payment to the owner of the points, the owner makes a room reservation for the rentee in the rentee’s name. The amount of the payment is determined by the number of points needed for the booking, with a per-point cost being agreed upon by the parties.
For example, if the agreed upon price is $18 per point, and the rentee wants to stay book Animal Kingdom Lodge for December 1-7, 2021, that will require 60 points, for a total cost of $1,080. Contrast that with booking directly from DisneyWorld.com, which would cost $2,451.38. That’s over half off by renting DVC points for that December 2021 stay! As you can see, the big advantage of Disney Vacation Club point rental is saving money over booking directly with Walt Disney World.
In addition to saving money on hotel rates, another benefit of renting Disney Vacation Club points is free parking. Walt Disney World is now charging for parking at its hotels, but this does not apply to guests staying on DVC points. There is no charge regardless of whether the person using the points is a member or not–it’s based upon the use of the points (parking is not a “perk” since lot maintenance is paid for via annual dues).
Meaning, if you were otherwise going to drive or rent a car at Walt Disney World, point rental now saves you another $24/night in that you won’t pay for parking. It’s not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, but definitely something to consider.
Finally, there’s another big temporary benefit of renting Disney Vacation Club points. If you’re planning on visiting Walt Disney World in 2021, there are several Deluxe Resorts that have not yet reopened. Many of these have both standard hotel room wings and Disney Vacation Club villa wings. In many cases, only the DVC wings of the properties are open, with the hotel side yet to open.
This includes Animal Kingdom Lodge, Disney’s BoardWalk Inn, Disney’s Beach Club Resort, Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort, and Disney’s Wilderness Lodge. The first two of those do not have reopening dates yet; the latter three will reopen for Summer 2021. In the meantime, the DVC wings of all 5 have been open since last summer and can be booked right now.
Okay, now on with the normal DVC point rental tips…
In recent years, renting points has gone from relatively uncommon to a bit more mainstream practice. There are individual owners who rent points because they either aren’t going to be able to use their points or need a way to offset some of the considerable cost of membership, and there are companies that exist solely for the purpose of renting Disney Vacation Club points to savvy Walt Disney World and Disneyland guests.
The two main places to rent Disney Vacation Club points are DVC Rental Store or David’s Vacation Club Rentals. The two are pretty comparable–both are reputable businesses that can be trusted. DVC Rental Store has two big advantages. First, as of January 2021, all reservations include their “Stress-Free Cancellation Policy” to give you added peace of mind, which is a policy change due to issues from last year’s closure of Walt Disney World (discussed in greater detail below in the pros & cons section).
Second, at the time of reservation only 25% of the payment is due, as opposed to the full amount, and the remaining 75% is not due until 75 days prior to check in. The obvious advantage here is that you’re not paying in full up front. The indirect advantage is that it provides some flexibility when canceling reservation if you’d prefer to just walk away and not deal with credits.
Note that you can also use this free tool for non-DVC members to search for resort availability so you can see which resorts are sold out and which are not before even hassling with contacting DVC Rental Store or David’s. We compared the results in that search to our DVC Member search feature, and the results are accurate (the display of that tool is actually better than DVC’s own search function!).
Although we are Disney Vacation Club owners, we have a relatively low number of points, so we’ve actually rented points ourselves a couple of times in the last few years. In attempting to rent points, we’ve contacted both the point rental businesses and individuals on forums about rental, and have opted to go with the point rental businesses (despite paying a bit more) for simplicity and peace of mind.
How you go about renting Disney Vacation Club points, and whether it’s safe, is probably the most common reader question we’ve received in response to our Disney Vacation Club Buying Guide, so I figured I’d put together this guide based on our experiences and research, along with my thoughts about the pros and cons of each method of renting points.
Let’s start with the pros and cons of renting DVC points in general to determine whether it’s right for you…
Pros & Cons of DVC Point Rental
The biggest benefit of renting Disney Vacation Club points is saving money. The example of Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas above is a good one. If you wanted to book a stay August 19-23, 2021 in a value view studio, that’s exactly how many points you’d need, and how much it would cost if you rented points through one of the point renters.
For a stay December 2-6, 2021 it would be even cheaper! Other nights throughout the year would cost more, but you get the idea. You couldn’t even stay in a Moderate Resort for the rates you can get by renting Disney Vacation Club points, let alone a Deluxe.
Another benefit of renting Disney Vacation Club points, for some people, is getting the Disney Dining Plan without purchasing park tickets. This means that you can save money by purchasing tickets from an authorized ticket broker rather than buying directly from Disney, thereby saving even more money. These savings can be small or huge, depending upon the size of your party and the tickets you get, this could amount to another $800 or more in savings!
The biggest downside to renting Disney Vacation Club points is that you don’t have total control over the reservation. Someone else books the reservation for you, and someone else has to make any changes to the reservation for you (such as adding Disney’s Magical Express or the Disney Dining Plan). Disney Vacation Club won’t discuss the reservation with non-members, so even if your name is on it, you’re at the mercy of the person who booked it if you need changes.
Another downside for some guests is that, since the unit rented is a villa and not a hotel room, housekeeping service is not daily. Most stays will only have one visit by Mousekeeping. This isn’t a problem for us (we always have the “do not disturb” sign up), but for some people, not having the full hotel experience might be a fatal blow to renting DVC points. On the plus side, the villa room means a kitchenette and greater ability to prepare food and do laundry!
The final downside is cancellation and refund policies. While it’s possible to purchase travel insurance for DVC point rentals, the cancellation policies are not nearly as forgiving as booking directly via Disney. This is because of the strict policies surrounding DVC point usage. In the event of hurricane or some other ‘Act of God’ scenario, the member who is renting out the points may not be able to reuse them if the guest cancels.
You’ll find no shortage of negative reviews online about the major rental companies following last year’s closure of Walt Disney World for this very reason. While some guests were accommodated with future bookings or travel credits, a lot of people who wanted cash refunds were denied. We’ve explained the why of this in DVC’s Point Pool Problem; the short version is the supply of unused outstanding points exceeds room availability by several millions of points. Someone is going to be left holding the bag, and it’s not going to be Disney.
The good news on this front is that it has resulted in some policy reforms by the rental companies. DVC Rental Store now offers a stress-free cancellation policy that issues you a credit you can use toward a future DVC rental in the event of cancellation. You can utilize these credits up to two years from your original travel dates.
We recommend paying close attention to contract when renting, and making sure you’re not agreeing to terms that would not create an undue burden if you need to cancel, because there are no cash refunds. Part of the reason DVC renting saves so much money is that it comes with compromise–there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Whether DVC rental is right for you comes down to your personal risk v. reward assessment.
To that point, our advice to those renting Disney Vacation Club points in the first half of 2021 is doing so at the last minute. The first big advantage to this is you’ll be doing so at a time when you (hopefully) know you won’t need to cancel. Second, both major rental sites have “Dedicated Reservation” pages with deep discounts, resulting from the deluge of cancellations last year. The closer to your travel dates, the more you can save. It’s not for the faint of heart, but then again, DVC rental is not for the totally risk-averse.
How To Rent?
If you’re convinced that renting Disney Vacation Club points is right for you, the next question is who to use. There are a couple popular choices here, including the DVC Rental Store and David’s Vacation Club Rentals. The advantages to renting through them are that both are accredited by the Better Business Bureau, both have a team that does this as its full-time business, and both have a sterling reputation. The other upside to renting from the DVC Rental Store or David’s is convenience.
They have “home resort” inventory for every Disney Vacation Club resort. This means that if you want a popular resort, you can book with him at the 11 month mark. If you want a hard-to-book resort and plan on booking through an individual, you need to do so 11 months out and find an owner who has the resort you want as a home resort. That can make the whole process of booking through an individual more time consuming and tedious.
The alternative to renting points from DVC Rental Store or David’s is renting from individuals. The two main places to do this are Disboards DVC-Rent/Trade Board and MouseOwners’ Rent/Trade/Transfer Board. Of course, if you have friends who are DVC members that are willing to rent out their points to you, that’s another route, too.
The advantages to renting from individuals is that you save money. The average per point price on these boards is ~$16 to $20, with the lower end of that spectrum being if the owner is desperate or the points are about to expire. These prices have steadily increased in the past couple of years, and now some rentals on these forums are as high as $22/point for popular resorts.
The downside to renting from individuals is that you have no guarantee that you aren’t going to be ripped off, or that the owner will be available to assist you if something goes wrong with the reservation. You’ll have a bit of uneasiness until the moment at the check-in desk that your reservation pulls up.
Basically, it comes down to how risk averse you are and how much more you can save by going through an individual. Last minute rentals can be as low as $12 per point on the forums with normal rentals being around $18, which amount to a few dollars in savings over the DVC Rental Store.
Unfortunately, each of the owners who have responded to my postings was a “New Member” on the forum, with only a handful of posts, which made me uneasy. Anyone can rip you off, but my thinking was that someone with an established reputation on the forum would be less likely to do so. We ultimately ended up not needing to rent because we bought into Disney Vacation Club ourselves.
For what it’s worth, in my time researching rentals, I heard of very few instances of people being ripped off by individuals on the forums. It does happen, but it seems to be very, very infrequent. When we rent in the future, I’m not sure how we’ll do it. It largely depends upon prices.
If it’s a short weekend trip and the DVC Rental Store is charging ~$18/point versus $16/point on the forums, I can’t see using the forums to say what will amount to $30 or less. The possibility that we could be scrambling at the last minute to find an alternate hotel room for such a short trip wouldn’t be worth it. Given how significantly Disney has increased their prices in the last few years, these rentals are still a good deal.
I’d prefer to just pay the bit extra for the peace of mind. If it were a 10-day trip in a Grand Villa, I’d probably be more likely to go through an individual because the savings are greater, but then I’d be concerned that such a big purchase were risky. I really don’t know what I’d do, it’s a tough call.
If we did end up going through an individual, I would do a few things to protect myself as best I could. First, I wouldn’t rent from any new members or individuals with only a handful of posts. I’d want someone with an established reputation on the forums. Second, I’d ask for references. Third, I’d pay with an American Express credit card rather than any other form of payment.
Which DVC Resort?
Finally, you need to figure out which Disney Vacation Club Resort is right for you. We’ve stayed at every single DVC resort at Walt Disney World, most several times. It’s tough to declare a definitive “best” Disney Vacation Club resort, as each has its pros & cons, and is a good option depending upon your priorities.
We have a post that Ranks the Disney Vacation Club Resorts at Walt Disney World and shares the strengths and weaknesses of each. To be honest, though, we love just about all of them. That list does give you a good basis in terms of theme, location, amenities, and other things to consider that will help you make an informed decision, though!
Ultimately, Disney Vacation Club point rentals is a great way to save tons of money without making the long term commitment to joining. If you’re currently booking Moderate or Deluxe Resorts directly from Disney, it’s definitely something to consider. Most of the time, renting Disney Vacation Club points will be cheaper than booking a Moderate, and it will ALWAYS be cheaper than booking a Deluxe (even with the best discounts!).
Renting from individuals is the best way to maximize your savings, and renting from the DVC Rental Store or David’s Vacation Club Rentals is the safest way to rent–plus they’re full service companies with great customer service that can help you through the process and answer all of your questions!
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know. If you’re considering joining DVC, first be sure to read our Ultimate Guide to Disney Vacation Club. If you still can’t decide whether membership is right for you, “try before you buy” and rent points from DVC Rental Store. If you are convinced a membership is for you, check out the discounted options at DVC Resale Market.
YOUR THOUGHTS
Do you agree or disagree with our recommendations for renting DVC points? Any firsthand experiences you care to share? Which DVC resorts do you recommend for a first-timer renter? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
I’m not particularly comfortable with the comments section here hosting an unregulated DVC point trade. If you want to buy/sell points and not use the businesses mentioned here, I’d HIGHLY recommend using the Mouseowners or Disboards trading forums (links in the post). Those vet buyers and sellers, which is something I cannot do here. Some people want to rent directly from an owner, and I totally understand that desire. Those are the safest conduits for doing so–safer than the comments section of a blog post can be.
I’m not going to delete any past comments regarding this as I didn’t make this clear previously, but will delete new ones going forward. Thanks for understanding! 🙂
Just figured I would make it easy for people
Any one interested in going to Disney and Staying at DVC
I currently have 98 point for BLT and 155 SSR, these are June 21 use year points.
They can be used at there home resort 11 months out and any resort 7 months out.
You can book now for food and wine, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years
I have been renting points for almost 10 years.
Contact me and ill be happy to explain anything and everthing
Robbie
Do not book with DVC Rental Store. They have robbed so many Americans from their money and I am currently working on complaint with the BBB on them. Davids seems to be a much better option and is basically the same business. I do not think DVC rental store will survive treating customers the way they have.
One thing you don’t want to do is respond to uninitiated offers of points or reservations. Some might be good hearted individuals trying to rent out their points, but some of them will be the scammers out to get your money. When they offer you a reservation for less than most, or the resort you haven’t been able to get from anyone else, that’s a big red flag. When they ask for payment by postal money order, that’s a red flag. And some are just offering the same as everyone else, but they will run off with your money. It’s happened many times that I am aware of. Plus scammers now days are much more sophisticated. They will give you the name of a real DVC owner that they found on the Orange County comptroller’s website or change their email address to something just a letter or two off from a respected owner. RCI trades are not permitted to be sold, only gifted. So if you see a reservation (especially on ebay or other sites that sell stuff) that is a Fri to Fri, Sat to Sat or Sun to Sun reservation with a fixed price, not per point, plus a payment due when you check in, that is usually an RCI trade. If RCI or Disney finds out, the reservation can be cancelled and you are out the money you paid. Finally, you have to remember that you are renting a timeshare reservation. If you try to modify it at check in, you mess with the owner’s points and they could request you pay them for the extra points you used. There have been times when owners I know have had a renter request for a better view, got an upgrade for extra points (that the renter did not pay for) and the owner was out of those extra points.
Tom’s example of 60 points for Dec 1-7, 2021 at AKV is just an example since there isn’t any category that gets you six nights (or seven nights) for 60 points. You can log onto the DVC member website, select “Plan a Vacation” and choose “Points Charts” to see the points charts for 2021 and 2022. Remember that the villas that require fewer points for your stay may get booked up at 11 months out by members.
The biggest problem with DVC in my opinion is that it’s not very conducive for a family of five. Both the studio and 1 bedroom come with a bed and pull out sleeper sofa vs a regular room that has two beds and a Murphy style bed. My older kids are not comfortable in a sleeper sofa so it makes more sense to us to just go with a regular room. A two bedroom unit is way too expensive even renting the points from what I see.
I completely agree. Even with my family of 4 with two growing teens. Plus, the full kitchen is nice, but who wants to cook and clean on vacation?! A 2BR is simply too expensive. I’m better off getting a regular room (or 2!)
Exactly Scott S. We definitely don’t need a kitchen. And we have also gone with 2 rooms before. That way it’s 4 beds and plenty of room since we mainly only use the room for sleeping only.
Tom, this post covers all the pros and cons beautifully.
We have rented DVC for all three of our Disney vacations through David’s, including our most recent trip in December 2020. We have always been really happy with it, including our most recent trip. David’s would have given us a credit because of the land border closure between Canada and the US but we decided to use our rental because we didn’t want a credit hanging over our head given all of the future uncertainty with DVC. Who knows what availability will be like in a year or two – there could be a ton of owners scrambling to use up their points after a year of cancelled trips.
We want to plan another trip for May 2022 but are hesitant to rent another DVC through David’s because of lack of a cancellation policy. It’s an intriguing development that DVC rental store is offering this stress-free cancellation policy. We had been considering the Swolphin because we are concerned there are no more to staying at a Disney Resort for the time being. I would say that the DVC Rental Store cancellation policy puts DVC rental back on the table. (maybe). 120 days out for 100% credit towards a future reservation is very reasonable.
My partner would be happy anywhere but I just can’t stand the Moderates and I can’t abide the costs of the regular hotel rooms. I have been ruined by the three Deluxe resort stays, I’m afraid. Overall, I think there are more pros than cons to renting DVC. (The parking! the pools! the balconies! and hopefully soon to be returned Fastpasses). We would also not be likely to return to a Disney resort without some sort of restoration of the fast pass.
In any event, your posts are so helpful with wading through the quagmire of Disney planning before COVID and now.
Hi Amanda,
I currently have points available for rent at SSR…. if you are interested please contact me cptrobbie@aol.com
We are a family of five (kids 21, 11 & 9) who live in Canada and travel to Disney World about twice a year for stays typically between seven and ten days. Generally we rent a one or more often two bedroom villa. We love being able to prepare breakfast, do laundry, and have “bed snack” in the room.
Our last six trips or so we have booked by renting points through the DVC Rental Store and have had fantasitc experiences each time. We have booked chosen resorts and dates as well as picked up last minute canceled vacations through them. Our stays are typically at Beach Club Villas though we have also stayed at BLT, AKL Kidani and Saratoga each and every trip has gone off wth out a hitch and we cannot reccomend them enough.
Our last DisneyWorld trip Sept 2020 we made the mistake of booking through DVC Rental Store. I guess given a normal year things would have been much better but would advice to go directly through Disney in times like Covid. Our one and only trip not using Disney and things quickly went south once Covid hit. Lost money with DVC Rental Store but likely not as much as others because we made the choice to keep one of two booked rooms. DVC Rental Store made no effort to resell the room we chose to drop and we lost a good chuck of money even though we did buy the extra insurance. They had a added cost insurance with a step tiered refund – losing money with any tiered you exit contract. Appears as Tom noted above they have a new stress-free cancellation policy as of Jan 2021. Not interested – not going through DVC Rental Store again – live and learn
To add another layer of comfort when booking directly through an individual, a three-way call can be set up with the renter, owner and DVC member services when booking the reservation. This lets the renter know everything is legit. Also, renters can now see their reservation online after it is booked. Tom makes booking thorough an individual sound a lot more risky than it is, or at least just as risky as it used to be. IMO, it’s not as risky as it used to be. There is also risk associated with using the brokers he mentioned in this article. A lot of renters who used those brokers were left holding the bag when things shut down last year. If you want zero risk, go through Disney and pay a lot more for the same room. If you want to save a lot of money, rent DVC points for that room via an individual. I definitely do agree with Tom that you want to rent from individuals who have a good history of activity on the rental forum site. But if you do your research on that individual and are involved in the booking process everything will be fine.
Intriguing, I love to save money. However, I really don’t see savings if you have a family of 4 (w/ 2 teens). I’d have to upgrade all the way up to 2BR villa to have 1 extra bed which is a pull out couch vs. a standard room in the hotel with 2 Queen beds. That said, I don’t think you can put a big teen on the “bunk style” pulldown in a studio, correct?
Having a kitchen and washer /dryer isn’t needed either. Who wants to clean and cook on vacation?!
We were a little surprised to see that DVC rental prices for our upcoming trip in March were not really all that different from the discounted prices for the same DVC studio directly from Disney. It looks like the deals are better for last-minute bookings in February, but I would have expected more of a discount further out into 2021 given the risk you take on having to cancel. Might check again closer to our trip, but I’m surprised they don’t feel the need to discount more given the circumstances.
Sad to see so many people get screwed by one company. As DVC owners in Canada, we cannot even get across the border at the moment. So we have had to resort to renting our points. We went with Davd’s as the Rental Store had so much red tape for owners. We hav successfully rented 2 years worth of points with David’s without any issues. A couple of reservations had to be cancelled because of whatever family emergency. The folks were smart and bought insurance. All I had to do was cancel and provide David’s with proof. They in turn passed it over to the renters and they were able to process their refund. Another on was cancelled because of the closures. We worked with David’s to get those folks their money back.
Both of the big rental companies have “dedicated reservations” for set dates at deep discounts that I’m guessing are due to other guests cancelling. We’ve already taken advantage of these 3 times since reopening and have had wonderful experiences.
Granted, we live in Florida and can work remotely. But if you want a great value on a last-minute booking (the only way we’d do DVC right now), that’s a fantastic option.