I agree. HOWEVER, the interesting part of this is will DVD put both contracts under the SAME membership #? I don't think so, but you never know. Reason DVD might not is that they have different perk profiles. If under 2 membership #s, then you would have to make 2 separate ressies for 1 stay if the first contract did not have enough points.
Each add on gets it's own technical contract. If it is the same UY you will get the same first part of the number, like ours is xxxxx.0 xxxxx.1 and xxxxx.3. That for our original as well as our 2 add ons. Our original was a resale but grandfathered in. Our other add ons are different resorts but same UY. They do look at each contract as separate though but just a part of the same number, and they can see what each one is (including purchase date).
We just did exactly that. We bought 110 AKL points through resale and a few months later we bought 75 Polynesian points direct. They do combine them into one membership number. We did buy the same use year, but that may not always be possible based on which resort you purchase. They just happened to be selling Poly currently which is what we wanted. They were running a special where we got an additional 75 points from the 2016 use year and didn't have to pay dues on them! We had planned to buy more through resale, but the perks of buying direct sucked us in. I think we are done for now! ;-)
Sometimes the minimum is 25. Attempt to get the same use year and home resort. As long as you have any direct contract with DVC, you will get the card. That being said, perks and discounts can get better or worse at any time.
You can go as low as 25. Keep in mind most of the perks like dining & merchandise discounts, member parties and member only venues like Top of the World lounge at BLT and the EPCOT DVC lounge are available to any member even if they are not staying on property using points so you can be at WDW using your resale points and still take advantage of those benefits. The only exception is trading in the points for Disney hotel rooms or cruises. In that case you will only be able to trade in the 25 points bought direct not the other 290 points. Having a small direct contract is a great way to beat the new restrictions on resale. Like others said, just make sure it's the same use year. It will make it easier.
You can but it's hit or miss on availability. In my experience you most likely will get OKW or SSR or in rare cases AKV or BWV and usually in a 1BR villa. You have to check the RCI site daily as trade-ins become available when a DVC member trades out so it can change any day. I've seen more available under 6 months out then I've seen further out. It can also be a pricey trade-in in both point costs and fees. DVC is at the high end of the point values so if you do get a trade in it will cost you a lot of points (not a 1 week for 1 week trade). As far as fees, a few years back DVC changed their fee for RCI people trading in from $95 to $190. This is a DVC "resort fee" charged in addition to the $210 exchange fee RCI charges so it's $400 in fees to trade in. I haven't tried it in a few years so my info could be outdated, but it's not a great value to trade into DVC through RCI.
Good info. I never tried to get into Top of the World lounge when I wasn't staying at BLT but they have let me in when just showing my DVC card so I assumed it wouldn't matter if you were staying on property. That was also before magic bands too so maybe that factors in. Maybe they do that to cut down on local DVC owners hanging there too often, but the place hasn't been super crowded when I've been there anyway (outside of the fireworks crowd who are mostly outside).
The official rules state you have to be at any Disney hotel, but not all check. Some also were not aware that a white membership card is valid as well.
I like having both. It's good to be able to visit WDW at times and also stay other places. It's especially good for me because the Hilton timeshare is owned by a relative who lets us use it a lot of the time and trade in for other locations
Even if I had to pay for the MFs it would still be a good deal. The only downside is we have gotten spoiled and prefer to stay in a condo over a hotel room now. We stayed overnight a few nights in a studio hotel room at the Jersey shore this summer and when we walked in the room my 7 year old asked where the kitchen was. I don't think he's stayed in a hotel room that he remembers.
