I've played around with the numbers to live out of our timeshares and contemplated doing it. Thanks Joan and Ron for letting me pick your brain at the Orlando TUG get togethers.
We had planned to start going 6-12 weeks at a time to different areas of the country now that my husband is retired. This summer was not part of the plan but has just kept morphing into a longer stay away than we ever thought. We left home on July 18 to stay at our son's and go to a long weekend event for my 50th class reunion. The original plan was to go from their house to Glacier Canyon for just 6 nights then bring their girls back to Florida with us for a couple of weeks.
Wyndham Glacier Canyon, July 28-August 5, 8 nights, 210,000 points, 2 bedroom deluxe **6 nights booked at full points. FWIW it didn't actually kill me. The two additional nights were upgraded.
Brought our 2 granddaughters back to Florida with us for the stay in Orlando and a side trip to Clearwater.
Worldmark Reunion, August 4-18, 14 nights, booked with our RCI points account, 15,000 points and $478 exchange fees, 3 bedroom deluxe
Wyndham Clearwater, August 8-9, 1 night, 15,000 points, 2 bedroom presidential, upgraded.
Wyndham Bonnet Creek, August 17-24, RCI points account, 7500 points + $239 exchange fee. August 24-28, 35,250 Wyndham points. 2 bedroom dlx, 11 nights. The 4 extra nights were upgraded.
Got home from Orlando and flying the granddaughters back to Ohio to find that our AC was out. Florida 90 degree heat and no AC, I'm not staying there! We live 15-20 minutes from Palm-Aire so I booked us into Palm-Aire while the part was being shipped and the repair done.
Wyndham Palm-Aire, August 27-30, 3 nights, 18,000 points, 2 bedroom presidential, upgraded.
Slept in our own bed for 6 hours then ran from Dorian. I booked whatever worked to get us out of any possible path of the hurricane.
Fairfield Glade, August 31, 1 night, 9250 points, 4 bedroom presidential, upgraded.
Wyndham Nashville, September 1-3, 2 nights, 12,000 points, 1 bedroom deluxe, no upgrade.
Fairfield Glade, September 3-6, 3 nights, 12,000 points, 4 bedroom presidential, upgraded.
Fairfield Plantation, September 6-7, 1 night, 6500 points, studio, no upgrade yet and not expecting one.
Lighthouse Resort and Club, Sanibel, September 7-14, 7 nights, RCi points account, 7500 points and $239 exchange fee, 3 bedroom unit.
51 nights. Total cost $ 2828.06, $55.46 per night.
Used 318,000 Wyndham points, $1666.73 in maintenance fees. Used 30,000 RCI points, $205,33 in maintenance fees and $956 in exchange fees.
The 6 full point nights at Glacier Canyon, mfs $969.64, really brought the total cost up but the rest of the nights were cheap by comparison. If I deduct that stay it makes 45 nights at a cost of $1858.42, $41.30 per night. If I was trying to do this as cheaply as possible I wouldn't have had a night overlap between the Reunion stay and the Bonnet Creek stay. That was for our convenience in moving resorts. I also wouldn't have stayed at Bonnet Creek but would have picked Star Island or Cypress Palms because those extra 4 nights we needed would have been less points at Star Island or Cypress Palms.
It should be noted that except for the 6 full point nights at Glacier Canyon none of this was booked more than 3 weeks out and some of it the same day or within just a couple of days! I'm kind of impressed how it all came together when I needed it to. I've always told my husband that when we start going for several months at a time that I was confident that between our Wyndham and RCI points and last call weeks I could always find us something without having to plan months ahead of time.
Having the timeshares is a real blessing because it gave us the option of having an inexpensive place to run to, not sticking around to see what Dorian was going to do and possibly not being able to leave if we waited too long. Even without a direct hit there are still high winds that take down trees and cause power outages. Sometimes for several days. As my husband knew just how hot it was in our house while he waited for the repairman to come there was no way I wanted to risk having to live like that for several days. We got home from Palm-Aire packed what we needed, closed the house back up, ate dinner, went to bed and were on the road at 1:30AM. Traffic on the turnpike was minimal so that part of our plan worked beautifully. After 4.5 hours of driving we stopped for breakfast in Gainsville, FL at 6AM on Saturday morning. The four gas stations at that exit had no gas. We weren't critical yet and were able to get gas at a town up the road. Normally we don't fill up at just a hair under half a tank but after that we did. We had been seeing what we estimated were hundreds of utility bucket and work trucks, Asplundh tree trucks, EMT and rescue trucks and vans. At our second stop there was a bucket truck getting gas next to us. My husband was talking to the guys and they said there were thousands of those vehicles headed for Florida. Later that day I read online that 18,000 workers from 34 states and Canada had come to Florida.