Hello, (Disney) world

Hi, all. Glad to see this forum launch.

When I discovered DVC, I'd been going to Disneyland for a few years or more, though not with any great frequency--we visited the weekend my wife and I got married and brought our son when he was 4 and 5. Our second stay as a family was when we finally stayed on property at the Disneyland Hotel, which changed how we vacation at Disney. They were marketing the upcoming VDH, and we also had breakfast at VGC, which made me dream of staying there, but had feeling like it was so far out of reach.

Eventually I dug into DVC and learned about resale and renting, listened to tons of pods, read some websites and the DVC Field Guide, and started building spreadsheets. We never had been to Disney World as a family and lived on the East Coast now, so we planned a big, blow-out WDW vacation and rented points at BCV to see what we thought. In the meantime, we went ahead on buying a contract at VGC, realizing it would be great to go every 2 years and stay with family in a 2BD there after school let out. Our first stay there is this June.

Meanwhile, we stayed at BCV last spring, when Stormalong was closed, but it was a great proof of concept for us, so we closed our VGC contract and bought a direct contract at PVB for 200 points to get that blue card, since we knew we'd be coming down more often after this first trip (we stayed on property 3 times last year, and have at least 4 trips happening this year, and maybe 5 next year; we also went to our first Moonlight Magic event back in February, when we had our first stay at PVB). We also have purchased Membership Magic Beyond twice, which has been great for us, just in terms of the photo pass last year and buying max BOGO OTU points last year and this year.

We might not have gone to Hawai'i so early in our son's life, but we really wanted to try Aulani as a family, and so we went and fell in love with that place, too, and O'ahu, generally. So, I am certainly hoping to go back on a semi-regular basis.

This year we had that Presidents Day Weekend trip in February, have our first VGC 2BD stay in June, and I'm going with my son in July and August (though we're light on points, so we're staying at Pop in July and OKW and POFQ in August), then we'll stay in a 2BD at VGF for my mother-in-law's 70th birthday. My wife showed her around when she came down with her for a conference, and she had a nice time, too (she enjoyed Olivia's and VGF). Unfortunately we didn't get our VGF points in time to book at 11 months, and so we only got her actual birthday for the 2BD, so we're waitlisted and booked for a split stay in the meantime.

Anyway, people talk about how all this money spent on DVC or Disney could be used for international vacations, but we're not letting that stop us from doing both, with Paris (and DLP/Adventure World) in August and Mexico City in November. We're mostly booked to visit Tokyo (and Disney Tokyo/sea) and Kyoto next spring break). So, you know, not everyone can do that, obviously, but we can--and life is short--so we are going for it.

Now we just need more points so we can stay DVC every time we visit WDW!