Weeks or Points

[BigPapa Member Find all posts View Profile Close BigPapa]

I am a bit confused. I am brand new to timesharing. I bought a week 27 unit at the Orange Lake Resort North Village in Orlando. When I bought it a few weeks ago the RCI website said it is worth 83,000 points.

Can somebody explain exactly how this works? What is better, trading weeks or points? Orange Lake is a Gold Crown Resort. Does that mean I can ONLY trade into other Gold Crowns? Or can I trade into a silver crown?

If I convert my timeshare to points for 83,000 does that mean I could stay at a resort worth 41,000 for two weeks? Or turn my one week into two week long vacations?

Why would I trade weeks if points gives me more flexibility?

I guess I am just not completely clear on how it works.

Big Papa

[opkansas Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close opkansas]

Good Questions

I am a bit confused. I am brand new to timesharing. I bought a week 27 unit at the Orange Lake Resort North Village in Orlando. When I bought it a few weeks ago the RCI website said it is worth 83,000 points.

Can somebody explain exactly how this works? What is better, trading weeks or points? Orange Lake is a Gold Crown Resort. Does that mean I can ONLY trade into other Gold Crowns? Or can I trade into a silver crown? You can trade down to a silver or 1BR or studio . . . but why? It's 1 for 1.
If I convert my timeshare to points for 83,000 does that mean I could stay at a resort worth 41,000 for two weeks? Or turn my one week into two week long vacations? EXACTLY!

Why would I trade weeks if points gives me more flexibility? I wouldn't!

I guess I am just not completely clear on how it works. You bought a week. If you want points, you will have to join points with Orage Lake or someone else. The price for Orange Lake conversion will probably be about $3000.00 - which is too high. The DISADVANTAGE with points is that, when you commit, you commit for 3 years. But there is a HOME program so that you could trade your points even for your week.Big Papa

I know where you can get into points for $717.00 and you get 13,000 more points annually.

[philsfan Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close philsfan]

I am a bit confused. I am brand new to timesharing. I bought a week 27 unit at the Orange Lake Resort North Village in Orlando. When I bought it a few weeks ago the RCI website said it is worth 83,000 points.

Can somebody explain exactly how this works? What is better, trading weeks or points? Orange Lake is a Gold Crown Resort. Does that mean I can ONLY trade into other Gold Crowns? Or can I trade into a silver crown?

If I convert my timeshare to points for 83,000 does that mean I could stay at a resort worth 41,000 for two weeks? Or turn my one week into two week long vacations?

Why would I trade weeks if points gives me more flexibility?

I guess I am just not completely clear on how it works.

Big Papa

Are you a weeks member or a points member? If you are a weeks (only) member it will probably cost a lot to convert to points. With some exceptions, it is generally around $3K to do that conversion.

If you convert, yes, you can get as many vacations as you like that cost up to 83K points. However, you probably won't get two or more units of the same size as the one you deposited to get the 83K points unless you do a lot of last minute travel.

The Gold Crown rating has little to do with trade power. It may be that you will not be offered some resorts as trades because of the high level of amenities at your resort. RCI doesn't want you to show up at a standard resort and complain about how bad it as far as amenities go compared to what you deposited. They filter out those resorts of 'lesser' quality to avoid that situation. Do some online searches, you will see resorts of varying 'resort recognition' on the list of possibilities. If you don't, or nothing is offered in the area you want to travel to, call RCI and ask if there is really not anything available or if there is something there of 'lesser' quality that is just not being offered. Some areas don't have a lot of Gold Crown availability. That may not be important to you if you want very much to visit that area.

Since you know your resort is worth 83K, perhaps you are already a points member? How did you get that number? Did you see it in the resort directory before they removed all of the points value lists last week?

[Jya-Ning Silver Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close Jya-Ning]

Why would I trade weeks if points gives me more flexibility?

1) with flexibilty, you loss certainty.

2) also with point, sometime people look at the value of points and compare to their own value system, and believe the value of points is not truely right. And if you own a sept week in OLCC, or if today RCI give your wk the value exactly the same like week 32, or if today your resort is not OLCC where developer may own enough or is still in the process building and can ask RCI give more points to their resort, Or if today you usually trade for resort x, and realize that if resort x is also a point system, but after convert, you will not have enough point to get the same week you always want to go, you may feel the same way. In your case, if you like flexibility, you should look at if it make sense to convert to point. And since you never trade before, it makes more sense to convert your week.

It will be the same as if you want to buy RCI point resort, how much you should pay when you think of convert.

Generally, the prime week, more bedroom may usally be a better target to convert since they pay the same MF but get more points.

If you convert for the purpose of trading, the shoulder season, is the one that make more sense, since they may enjoy the same point value as prime week, but resale cost a lot less. or in your case, the overbuild area also make good sense, since they will has disadvantage when trade in week system although your resort maybe a very good one, since a lot of resorts has those 1 in 4 rules, thus can not really reflect their demand power.

If you own the really good prime week, you can alway rent it easily say 3 month or 6 month before hand, it makes no sense to convert, since if you rent out, it gives you more flexibity to travel, and if you can not rent it out, when you deposit to week, it still give you enough trading power to get a week exchanger. But week like that are very rarely and usually cost much more in resell market, plus, I don't believe your week is in that category.


Jya-Ning