My family needs to take more vacations!
My apologies if this post is too long.
1) Where do you want your home resort to be? Within a days drive from Southern California, Orange County, so my family can take a weeks vacation and not have to buy airfare if we don’t want to.
2) Do you want to visit your home resort at least half the time, or do you want to trade more than half the time? I’d say go to the home resort 1/2 the time. Exchanging for bigger trips every couple years
3) What are your 5 top trade destinations? Hawaii, Caribbean, tropical resorts, no specific islands, possibly national parks.
4) How many people do you usually travel with? 2 adults and 2 kids (ages 7 and 3)
5) Can you travel any time, or are you locked into the school schedule? School schedule
6) Can you make firm plans 12 or more mos. in advance? Yes
7) Can you vacation for a full week at a time? Yes
8) What level of accommodations do you prefer on a scale of 1 to 5 stars? 4 I guess? I don’t need granite counter tops. Just clean, comfortable units. Most important would be the grounds and fun stuff for kids. Nice pools, game rooms, etc.
9) How much can you afford to spend upfront, without financing? Maybe 2k for the “perfect” situation. But I’m really attracted to the real bargain deals.
10) How much can you afford to spend every year for a maintenance fee that will come due right after Christmas, and increase each year? Ideally < $1000 again for the “perfect” situation I could stretch it a little.
11) Are you a detail oriented planner? Yes
Do you understand that once you buy a timeshare, it may be very difficult to sell or give away, and you are responsible for all fees, until you do? Yes
Reading the TUG forums has become my favorite past time since I discovered that timeshares could be purchased so cheaply on the resale market. As a result of all my reading, my top considerations so far in no particular order are ......
The Welk in Escondido. It seems like a nice resort with decent weather in the summer months when most of our vacations would be planned. Warm weather is good because the pools will be a big part of what we do. With the Welk I’m not sure how well it would trade to go to Hawaii in the summer though.
One of the Carlsbad resorts like Grand Pacific Palisades, MarBrisa or the Carlsbad Seapoint. Something like the MarBrisa would be reaching the top end of my budget but it looks pretty nice and is part of the Hilton Grand Vacation system.
Do something like the Grandview in Vegas taking advantage of RCI points or SDO in Scottsdale taking advantage of II and its trading power to go to Hawaii, Caribbean, etc in the summer occasionally. Both are within a days drive so they could still be used as a drivable vacation destination.
The Wyndham Grand Desert and be a part of the Wyndham system which seems to be a little lighter on the wallet than Hilton, Marriott, and Starwood but still has locations Hawaii, etc.
I’ve read Worldmark is recommended a lot to west coast travelers. Their MF’s are very reasonable, and it has a great reputation as a solid trader, but in the research I’ve done online not many of the resorts within a days drive seem very interesting to me. Indio seems like the most interesting resort but my wife is from Palm Springs so convincing her to vacation in Indio isn’t going to happen. If I was closer to the Oregon coast I’d be all over Worldmark. Maybe my impression about the Worldmark resorts by me is wrong. I’ve never actually been to one. I’m attracted to the nice pool areas and stuff and I’m not seeing a lot of that with Worldmark in california.
You all have a terrific community here and have taught me a lot already.
Thank You,
Brian
Brian Welcome!!! I am one that believes that owning a bunch of points at the Grandview in Las Vegas makes sense to me..... I will have over 180000RCI Points a year and right now pay around $1000.00 MFs BUT getting the Grandview does come at a cost my last one that I got 120000 points I paid $2800 for.... but then they covered ALL the expenses.... so its a crap shoot... last night I saw one that was 98000RCI points that went for 1164.99
