I want to start by saying that I grew up in Orlando, Florida and basically lived at Disney World. My family would visit at least twice a week when we weren’t on our blackout dates!
Fast forward to Summer of 2014. Vadim and I had two daughters, 3 and almost 2. We were getting an itch to start traveling and thought that Disney would be the perfect place to start. However, so many people kept telling us that the girls were to young to go and it would be a waste. I of course disagreed and was certain we would have an amazing time!
After some convincing on my part, we started planning our first Disney trip for March 2015. We decided to stay off site at a time share location (Wyndham Bonnet Creek). We rented a car and planned on driving to the parks because their bus service schedule would not work with our family. “It’ll be great!”, we said…
We got to the resort, of course they pushed us to schedule the dreaded timeshare presentation meeting. We decided to do it because they were offering a nice deal. When we met in the lobby with our two little girls, no one showed up for over an hour! After much discussing with sales people, crying kids, missed park day etc… we left.
When we got to the park finally, we were wondering around Magic Kingdom and stopped by a DVC stand. We learned all about it and while we had a lot of questions, we wondered if there was a different way to get in. We wound up looking at resale and thought that it made so much sense for our family since we wouldn’t be using Disney Adventures and it didn’t seem to make any sense to use our points for cruises.
We came home from a wonderful magical vacation and spent the next 3 weeks researching DVC resale every day for hours! After spreadsheet after spreadsheet and calculations upon calculations, we pulled the trigger on Boardwalk.
Our first stay as DVC members was December 2015. While my husband didn’t like and wasn’t impressed with Boardwalk, he couldn’t deny they amazing location of it. Being on site, able to use the busses and boats that came every 20 minutes, being able to walk to Hollywood Studios and Epcot made everyone in our family happy! Being able to walk into the back of Epcot instead of standing in those crazy lines up front was just amazing! It was a huge selling point and we decided to buy more points resale! 🙂
While on this trip, my youngest and I wound up with a stomach bug and the cast members at Boardwalk was just amazing. My husband took our eldest to the parks and we stayed behind being well cared for. By the next day, we were all back out at the parks having a great time!
During this trip, there was so much MAGIC! Every time we walked by a DVC kiosk, the kids would get rolls of stickers and they didn’t even know we were DVC members!
One night, we took the bus back to Boardwalk and when we walked in, Mickey & Minnie were in the lobby in their beautiful holiday attire! We were able to have some sweet moments with them and the girls were over the moon with the whole day and evening! We now have pictures and memories that we will never forget thanks to DVC!
This was just the beginning of our DVC journey and it still continues today. We are now in the process of buying and selling more so it’s always a fun and exciting process. Disney always has something to pull us back in.
Timeshare Explorers 