How many points for a cruise?

[Signguy Tom]

I understand that the points vary from year to year, but can anyone give me an approximation of how many points I would need for 3 adults? The dates and # of nights and rooms is negotiable, I am just trying to get a ballpark.

Thank you!

[skelster]

If you are wondering why no one responded prior to this, it is because you gave an almost unanswerable request. Nevertheless, I will try and give you an answer; I'll give you what you asked for and then give you the answer to the question you should have asked.

The minimum cost for a cruise is about 61 points for first two and 42 for third adult...max I saw was 673 for first two and 300 for third. As you can see, the answer is probably worthless to you. The cruises occupy about 10 point charts based on location, and length of cruise. Each point chart then breaks it down even more into cabin class and sailing dates. Go to the disney cruise lines website and get an idea when you want to cruise (yes, it makes a big difference), how long (3, 4, 7, 10, 11, or more days...believe it or not 14 days is a lot more than 3 days), how (what size/style cabin...a cat 3 is probably 3-4 times more than a cat 11) and where (Europe, W. Carribean, E. Carribbean, trans-Atlantic, etc.) If you figure it out you may get a more usable answer.

:teacher: But the question you should have asked is this...is it economical to use points for a cruise. The answer is usually no (if you are a renter and not an owner then definitely NO). If you have a chunk of points you want to use to go cruising, rent them out for $10 each. Pay for the cruise out of that money. You will have alot left over. It is much more economical to do this than get only $5-8 value per point by going directly with points. As an owner there may be conditions that override the economics (what value do you place on avoiding the rental hassle, etc) but that is a personal call.

I'm sorry if my reply seemed a bit brusque, but to me it seemed like you wanted us to fill in the blanks on what you feel is important. It has taken me all my life to figure out who I am and what is important to me and I am tired. You will need to figure these things out for yourself. Good luck

[Signguy Tom]

Thanks for the reply, Brian. I had looked into it a little more after I posted the question. It didn't take long to realize that there wasn't an easy answer. My daughter wants a cruise for her graduation trip and I was just looking to see if our 175 points was going to be enough to do it. I had absolutely no idea there were so many variables or I would have been more specific.

Thanks to your response along with the other info I gathered, I have determined that we will likely use our points for a WDW visit, and pay OOP for a cruise - perhaps even a non-Disney. We have over 5 years to figure it out.

Thanks again for your reply.

Tom

[skelster]

Tom,

If you still are thinking about it later on, www.dvcmember.com, the offical website has point charts for the cruises right online. If it is in 5 years, remember to keep your options open...you might find you have a bunch of banked points with no plans to use them or rent them. You could probably do a land and sea combo on points if you had them banked. Still I would rent my points in that situation if I had the time to do so. Good luck, and sorry again if I was doing my imitation of a crotchety old man last night.

[skelster]

Tom,

I just realized I may have mislead you slightly. Using points to cruise is economically advantageous over always paying cash. If you do 20 years of cruising it is far cheaper to use DVC points to pay for the cruises than to always pay cash. It is just not the most economical way to use them. Each annual point you use for a cruise saves you maybe $8 on their cash price. Using them at DVC resorts, the room I just checked got a value of $26 per point over rack rate. By using only at DVC resorts we definitely recoup our initial investment sooner, but we will recoup it eventually as long as we use (or rent out) our points. Only for a non-owner it is definitely a disadvantage to rent points for using on a cruise. It would be cheaper to pay cash to DCL than to rent from one of us owners at the current going rate of $10pp.