Disney Vacation Club Membership: A review

Good Evening fellow followers!
So tonight I wanted to focus on something that is very near and dear to my heart: Disney!
Honestly, one of the best investments I have ever made is in a Disney Vacation Club Membership. What is it you ask? Think of it like a time share. Basically, you buy a certain number of points per year and for these points, you can book resort stays at Walt Disney World, Disneyland, and all international Disney locations. You can also book Disney cruises, Adventures by Disney travel experiences and hundreds of non-Disney hotel stays.
For example, 100 vacation points per year will cost you, roughly $10k. Sounds like a lot right? Well, what you need to understand is that you will not pay $10k every year, but rather it is a one time investment and every 12 months, you will be entitled to 100 vacation points and any points you did not use from the year before will transfer over. With 100 vacation points, you can book things like a 3 or 4 night cruise in an ocean-view and sometimes even verandah room, you could do a weeks stay at the Animal Kingdom resort during certain times of the year, and you can even enjoy time away at the brand new Aulani resort in Hawai'i and many other fun excursions.

Also, with the DVC membership, you get exclusive discounts throughout the Disney resorts and get to be part of special member events.
To break it down, Sean and I, each, have a DVC membership and we put $1000.00 down and pay about $160.00 per month. This is for both of our memberships (we have 50 points each). We do not have any other major guilty pleasures we spend money on, except for the occasional video game, so this was perfect and fit into our monthly budget. We have stayed and used our membership so many times in the year and a half we have had it, it has already paid for itself. For example, we are staying that the Boardwalk resort, with boardwalk view, in a deluxe studio from March 22 until March 25. This stay cost us about 60 vacation points, meaning we still have 40 points left over to use on another stay until the points renew in November. I do have to say that we usually do one-nighters, but we both wanted to spend some time with each other away from work and school so we splurged a little. If we would have paid for this out of pocket, it would have cost us a whopping $1693.00!!! This way, we used our points, we still have points left over, AND we get new points towards the end of the year to do it all over again.

We have previously stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, Saratoga Springs Resort, Old Key West Resort, and the Wilderness lodge in both studio accommodations and 1 bedroom villas (which are huuuuge!!) multiple times. I would estimate that if we would have paid for all of these stays out of pocket, we would have spend around $8000.00+.
Sean and I live only about 30 minutes away from Walt Disney World and we do frequent "stay-cations" over the weekend, so this has totally been a worthy investment. I would even recommend this for families or couples who like taking trips and vacationing at a Disney resort once a year or so, as this will pay for itself. Take a look, you may want to become a member yourself!