By Siddhi: 

As a college student on a limited budget, I was concerned when my friend told me that our road trip to Disney would entail staying at the Old Key West Resort, one of the more upscale hotels on the property that houses the largest rooms of all the Disney Vacation Club (DVC) resorts. Browsing the site’s incredible amenities just added onto my anxiety about how I would afford paying for a DVC room in Orlando at the beginning of the summer amusement park season.

But when I found out I would only be paying a total of $200 for four nights, I was shocked. We split the cost of a room at Old Key West, so that meant that the total cost for the four of us was around $800. Still, the price tag of an early summer vacation at a high-end DVC resort seemed almost deceivingly inexpensive for what the hotel was offering, including stunning scenery, a fantastic pool, a boat rental service, a gym, and much more.

When I asked my friend how I was paying so much less than the rate that was showing up for the same four nights on the Old Key West website, he told me that he used a service called David’s Disney Vacation Club Point Rentals.

What the site essentially allows you to do is rent points from members of Disney’s Vacation Club, a timeshare program that lets guests enjoy deluxe resort and entertainment offerings. But several people who belong to the club don’t end up using all their point allotments. And so to avoid losing money on the DVC club membership, they sell their points to non-DVC members. David’s site is a highly reliable hub for people to rent these unused points.

It sounds a bit technical, but the process is very simple. David’s site provides an easy breakdown of how to go about the process.

Now I did a test to see just how dramatic the difference is between booking on actual resort sites and booking through David.

Sample Stay Dates: Sunday , August 26th – Friday, August 31st of 2012

One Bedroom Villa through Old Key West Website: Total of $4,023.46

One Bedroom Villa through David’s Website: Total of $1755.00

For the same dates and the same room, that is one heck of difference.

So if you’re planning your next vacation to Orlando’s Walt Disney World, make sure you check out David’s Disney Vacation Club Points Rental service. Old Key West is only one of many points offerings for hotels including Beach Club, Wilderness Lodge, The Contemporary, Animal Kingdom Villas, Boardwalk, and even some off-resort properties.

You can look at the point offerings and details at this site:

http://www.dvcrequest.com/

And if you are a DVC member, this is a great place for you to sell the points you can’t use as well.