i actually really empathize with
@LuvtheGoof, because i see a lot of myself and my situation in him. all except with the love of disney transport. i thank my lucky stars that i have only take two trips in the last two decades that i didn't either have my own car or a rental. disney buses are where a little piece of everyone dies.
my family bought into DVC in '93. great investment, gave my family and i tons of amazing times throughout the years, and we still utilize our points. up until 2011, i had been off property just once ( in '94, we spent a day at UNI). let me just say that i, too, thought i had little interest in venturing out of the bubble. then i saw the light. even if you have no interest in the IP at UNI, you should try it out. i grew up in a time where i bit on all the talking points, that UNI's standards aren't disney, and there's just something about WDW that UNI can't replicate. unfortunately, the performance we came to expect from WDW in the '90's is found further up I4 nowadays.
listen, disney is still fun, and being a DVC member can be great. points give us members access to some hotels that just wouldn't be feasible at rack rates (it's how i stayed at BLT in a magic kingdom view one bedroom for my honeymoon). but if we didn't have the luxury of being DVC members, i wouldn't even think about disney as a vacation destination anymore. it's stale and just doesn't provide a good value, particularly for the demographic my family is currently in. i don't know when you bought in goof, but is it long enough ago to remember the two *FREE PARK PASSES* that accompanied every stay until the new millennium?
that's just one way of how things were different back then. should i dip into the time, on a 1995 visit, that our AC in our OKW studio was broken. a tech showed up at 11 PM to repair it, and a huge gift basket arrived the next morning to apologize us for the inconvenience. in 2010, i stayed at an OKW studio and the refrigerator had defrosted all over the carpeting. not only did it take maintenance two days to come, when they did, they essentially sprayed carpet cleaner, leaving us with a moldly, mildew smell in our room for the duration of our stay.
it's anecdotes like this, that i'm sure we can all share to an extent, that have cheapened the experience. i think it's great you're still enjoying your DVC investment, but is it really as enjoyable as when you bought in? if it is for you, that's great! but i can't say ours is. and that infuriates me, because you've essentially pre-purchased vacations from a company that has flat out moved the goal posts.
It's taken a while just to get back to pre-2008 levels. It depends on when you started this exercise, but for someone who bought in pre-2008 the $30K could be all or at least mostly gone by now vs years of DVC ownership left.
