[timmae]

My wife and I went to Disney for the first time in April 2012... I had been there as a kid (as an 8 year old in 1983) but she had never been. Our trip was fun but we didn't know about meal reservations, which hotel to stay at, cool things to do outside of the parks, etc so it wasn't an awesome, we need to come back here, type of trip. A few months later we received a flier from Doorway to Dreams which was DVC's hub in Chicago. We scheduled an appointment thinking we'd just pocket the free $50 gift card and call it a day. Needless to say we walked out of there being the proud owners of 100 points at Animal Kingdom Villas. We took a trip in late 2012 using our points and were blown away by how much fun it can be when you stay at DVC, make reservations for meals and find all of the "off the grid" things to do on Disney property. We went once more in early 2013 on our AKV points and then decided to but more points at AKV since we were using them so often. We ended up with 125 more points at AKV. Then we heard about Grand Floridian Villas and checked those out on our trip in late 2013. We bought 100 points at GFV for a total of 325 points altogether. We now split our stay between GFV and AKV on our long (week long) trips. The bags are transferred free by Disney between resorts so we can go to the park and have fun and just go to our next hotel that night. Very cool way to plan trips as we hit MK and Epcot when at GFV and AK and HS when at AKV. The point system really works for us also as we are visiting with friends in January so we can easily reserve a larger suite. The only downfall is that the Grand Floridian is almost too nice to leave. We also love being able to reserve well ahead of everyone else so we can get suites, villas, etc. I am guessing we'll look at the Polynesian Villas which are being built right now when we are there in October. What specific questions do you have?