Time Share or Vacation Clubs

[frisbear Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close frisbear]

My wife and I stayed at the Colonial Crossings (Williamsburg) and Royal Islander in Cancun 2 years ago and loved it. We have been throwing around buying a timeshare since then. We are 2 teachers with 2 small children and live in the Washington DC area. We hope to travel to all parts of the US and Canada (beaches and inland parks and destinations) over the years with our kids each summer. We may go to Disney 2-3 times in the next 10-15 years, but it is not an every year thing. Do we need 5 or 6 star resorts....no. Most trips will be by car....but not all. Sometimes we like to stay 4 or 5 days and move on to another location.

We have been getting calls lately from the Colonial Crossings as well as Marriott (I have Marriott points for a few trips) and other random resorts to come view their properties. I understand that I should not buy directly from the property itself but try to get a resale.

Colonial Crossings was offering us a 2 bedroom lockout 2 years ago for about 15K and is still calling us. It appears as if they are still struggling to build the resort so it looks like we made a good decision not to buy there even though they are 2 hours from us.

I am interested in the Marriott system because of their resorts around the US and because I am a Rewards member. But I am sure they are way over-priced for my budget.

My neighbor just got back from Mexico and bought 20 vacation packages for $10,000, anywhere in the world with Interval International.

My question is......is a timeshare a smart move for us or would vacation packages be better? If we bought a timeshare, what type of timeshare? Where would be a good logical location for us? Marriott points? Sheraton?

Should we buy vacation packages instead so we are not locked into a particular property?

Can we get into a system that allows us to go from resort to resort every 4 or 5 days....so we are not locked into one property for a week at a time?

I know there is alot here.....but I want to give the most information to make the best educated decisions.

Thanks
Rob

[Spence Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Spence]

Colonial Crossings was offering us a 2 bedroom lockout 2 years ago for about 15K and is still calling us. It appears as if they are still struggling to build the resort so it looks like we made a good decision not to buy there even though they are 2 hours from us.

They have a long way to go!

I am interested in the Marriott system because of their resorts around the US and because I am a Rewards member. But I am sure they are way over-priced for my budget.

Yu don't get the Rewards conversions with resales.

My neighbor just got back from Mexico and bought 20 vacation packages for $10,000, anywhere in the world with Interval International.

Anywhere in the world with interval Interntional is very misleading, first, what you want has to have been deposited into II by someone, then II has to deem your vacation club deposit as worthy of the trade. Your neighbor has a high chance of being disappointed.

My question is......is a timeshare a smart move for us or would vacation packages be better? If we bought a timeshare, what type of timeshare? Where would be a good logical location for us? Marriott points? Sheraton?

Only you can answer that with six months of reading every timeshare post on this BBS.

[Glitter Brunello Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Glitter Brunello]

Spence is right, you have a lot of homework to do. Hang around, read the forums on the various things you are interested in. Right off the bat, though, I need to debunk your misunderstanding of Marriott points. Marriott doesn't really sell a points system/club. They sell weeks. If you can't use your week, and you have sufficiently overpaid for it by buying from the developer (quiet, folks, I do know some of you have figured out how to not lose money by buying pre-construction, but I'm doing broad strokes here), Marriott "allows" you to trade your week for points if you can't or don't want to use it as a traditional timeshare week. Generally, the points trade-in values [STRIKE]SUCK[/STRIKE] are far from optimal. I do think Marriott is a good product, but you need to educate yourself to see if it is right for you, and to know what to buy to suit your needs.