Subscriber Benefit: DVC Rental Deals Page
Happy New Year! Did you wake up this morning thinking, boy, I sure could use some great Disney room rates to keep this fresh start of a year rolling into positive territory?
I did.
Did you also wake up wondering who ate all of the chocolate covered cherries evidenced by the wrappers surrounding your New Year’s Eve sofa spot?
Just me?
Well, while I ponder that seemingly eternal question, I’d like to point out a terrific benefit we here at Touring Plans Labs (just made that up) started providing to subscribers last year: the Disney Vacation Club Rental Deals page.
Quick Back Story
If you are a regular reader of the the Touring Plans blog, you may recall my Disney Vacation Club rental origin story in DVC You There! At that time I described the start of my rental data project and the deal-finding possibilities that might arise from tracking dedicated DVC rentals.
Since that time the project has grown from a mere 1,531 rentals to over 25,000.
How does this help you?
Good question! Keep them coming!
At any given time, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 dedicated DVC rentals listed on various sites. Sometimes a lot more!
Sure, you can visit each of these sites and search through them looking for good deals. But do you always have extra time? (If you do, can I have some?)
But, what, you might ask yourself, IS a good deal?
Another good question. We’re so proud of you.
Well, Touring Plans provides a hand-picked listing of the better dedicated rentals and updates it weekly.
How do we know these are “better?”
In the course of the project I am tracking prices over time and crunching all the numbers to find the median price of rentals for each resort and room type. Out of the thousands of rentals we’re picking out those coming in 20% or more under median for that room as well as other unique rentals that we think would be interesting to subscribers.
We’re providing this curated listing to help you find the most exciting deals with just a few clicks.
For example, looking at last week’s update you can see you could have booked a Hilton Head 3 Bedroom Villa for $432 per night, which is a wonderful 60% under the median for this room. Or a Saratoga Springs studio for $204, which is 31% under median price.
We like saving money.
We like saving time.
This list will help subscribers do both and we love that.
You can find the DVC Rental Deals Page here.
If you are not yet a Touring Plans subscriber and would like to become one, you can visit here to sign up and get in on the savings too.
If you’ve found any exciting DVC rentals and would like to share, feel free to post them in the comments!
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Thank you, John!
Appreciate the info and all the time you spend creating all this helpful content. Your response will encourage us to check the list regularly and evaluate the prices against non DVC options.
We’re thinking about a trip for sometime between 12/8 and 12/17, and it seems like there are fewer DVC rentals around WDW, altho it’s not a super busy time at the parks. Is this my imagination? Or have we already missed the prime booking window?
We’re looking for a studio, split stays are fine, and hoping for a 5-6 day trip, altho all those days may not be in DVC. Due to budget.
Looking at the chart, I’m beginning to wonder if we should try Aulani rather than WDW . . .
Hi Mary,
While I can’t know how many “regular” DVC rentals are created via direct date requests vs the “dedicated” ones the sites list, I can say that the number of dedicated listings this year has been down about 6% from last year at the same time and about 10-12% from 2023. So, at least in the case of dedicated listings there are definitely fewer rentals.
The good news is that there still are a nice amount of rentals that appear at attractive price levels. It can be difficult to estimate how many rentals will appear and when that will happen, because things do change over time – but if we can use the December 2024 data as an example, maybe it will provide a little insight.
But first: a TL;DR:
Just keep swimming. er, I mean, watching: Good rentals come and go all the time – many priced a lot higher than I’d expect, but if you check every day you have a decent shot of finding a nice rental pop up. BUT – they go quickly, somewhere between 0 and 3 days, so you have to be ready.
Searching for the start dates 12/9 to 12/18 last year, I found there were 227 WDW DVC studios listed for rentals 2-nights or longer that had a price less than 10% above median.
We are currently 227 days out from 12/9.
By this date last year about 135 of those 227 rentals had already appeared and their price was somewhere hovering between an average of 4%-7% under median. (Which I think is pretty good for December. The best we saw was 22% under median for a 3-night OKW Studio.)
Over each successive 30 day period, another 12-22 rentals appeared – and in this time frame the prices jumped up to be up to average 5% over median. (Still OK for the dates, methinks, but you’d want to compare to other alternatives, of course.)
Once we got to 90 days out from check in last year, 35 rentals appeared over the next 60 days with prices back down to a 3% under median.
At 30 days from check in, only 4 new rentals appeared – and oddly, these last minute listings jumped up to average 10% OVER median. :shrug:
Good luck!