how to get the most of BG?

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

Hi all, new owner here. We bought from BG last month after staying at The Fountains. I am still pretty excited about BG and was treated very well by sales people and resort staff and I knew basically what I was getting into. So I won't be one of those people bitching about the sales people etc. But I would like to see how can I make best use of my points etc.

We bought a small package to start with 8,000 every 2 years and figure we'll upgrade later possibly. How can I make the most of these points?

Also, my wife seems to have a bit of buyers remorse (although she's like that with any big purchase at first). Maybe we just need to take a few trips before she will feel good about it. She thinks for the price of maint fees we could just rent a place for a week, which is her main issue.

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

With 8000 every other year points, you need to be very judicious in terms of what you try to do. It's not very many points.

Here is what I would do:

Take all 8000 points and book as many days as you can get for a specific resort, unit size and season. Then, use bonus time to add days before or after those dates. If your reservation is within driving distance of several other BG resorts, you have a good chance of extending your stay with bonus time. Check availability for bonus time starting at 48-nights online and keep checking until about 1 week before check in. There are a lot of cancellations that occur between 10-days and 21 days prior to check in.

Use Hot weeks if you can travel within 10-days from check in. It only costs 3000 BG points. Hot weeks are last call RCI weeks.

Whenever you are ready, add some additional cheap points. Or, upgrade to a Premier level. Just make sure you purchase points that will combine properly with yours. Otherwise, you will end up paying way too much every year for maintenance fees.

The biggest issue with 8000 biennial points is that the annual fees are very expensive for how many points you own. 8000 biennial points has Maintenance fees and taxes of $472. Annual dues are $129. Traveler Plus is $49/year. Total annual fees: $650. That is $.1625/point for 4000 points per year. That is very expensive. However, if you add cheap, combinable points, you can lower your $/point for annual fees.

Welcome aboard. Bluegreen is a great Vacation Club.

[marshalldillon Member Find all posts View Profile Close marshalldillon]

I got my start in BG just like you...with an 8000 biennial package, purchasing in December, 2003. We used it to the fullest until recently upgrading. (We are in the process of upgrading for the 2nd time and will have 19,000 annual points. THe last 15000 points cost half what I paid for the initial 8000 EOY points. WOW!!!)

You need to study the resorts and find which resorts you can maximize your points at. Some of the resorts will require too many points for you to maximize use of Bluegreen due to your limited points, but you can still do plenty with the numbner of points you have. (Eventually you will want to upgrade and you should buy via Boca Bum ( a resale agent on this forum)/Pinnacle Vacations.

Using the points you have, you will not be want to book full week stays, book Mondays thru Fridays for minimal points and utilize bonus time on the weekends. The resorts we stayed in while maximizing this size account were: Christmas Mountain, Harbour Lights, Mountain Loft, Laurel Crest, World GOlf Village, Big Cedar, Falls Village, (Daytona Sea Breeze/The Fountains with Bonus Time) and Orlando's sunshine resort.

I was frustrated my first year until I learned how to work the system and maximize my points. I now love the Bluegreen System and want you to enjoy your purchase to the max. If I can help you, feel free to send me a private message.

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

Welcome to a lifetime of better vacationing.

We bought a small package to start with 8,000 every 2 years and figure we'll upgrade later possibly. How can I make the most of these points?

With that amount of points you will want to avoid weekends. At most resorts, weekends cost 50-75% the number of points as a full week. Also, travel off season. Another route is to deposit with RCI an off season studio or 1 bedroom BG week at a highly desired resort so that you can trade for a week in a 2 bedroom in a resort at a more desirable time. Also, you can make use of bonus time or using Hot Weeks get a week for 3000 points if there is last minute availability (due to cancellations). Read the information that you got when you bought and also devour the BG web site. Then ask more questions.

She thinks for the price of maint fees we could just rent a place for a week, which is her main issue.

In the present economy she might be right. But who knows what the economy will be next year. After visiting another resort or two you might consider picking up more points on the resale market (right now they are cheap). However, you have to be careful and make sure that the number of points you get, what you eventually plan to get, and what you have all meld together in the right Trust Fund. (The trustee who holds you deed sometimes establishes new Trust Funds to make maintenance fees more equitable as times change and owner wants change. Some trust funds favor small number of points and some favor large number of points. Some times the difference is small and sometimes it isn't. Problems arise when you have more than one unit in two different trust funds.) Since you just bought from BG, your points are in Trust Fund E. If you join the Bluegreen Yahoo Group, there is a spreadsheet in the files area which allows you to calculate maintenance fees for points in different trust funds. You can also get insights and advice from members of the BG Yahoo Group. When you want to enter the market, contact Jim (BocaBum) first and he will steer you in the right direction (even if he doesn't sell to you {he's a good guy}).

Charles

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

Hi all, new owner here. We bought from BG last month after staying at The Fountains. I am still pretty excited about BG

Sculli,

You have just learned two very important things. 1) Others are also excited about BG. 2) People in this group are willing to help (three of us were writing long missives to you at the same time).

Charles

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

Hi, welcome to BG

I'm still pretty excited about it after being an owner for 2 years, so that is a positive thing

One word of caution is that Fountains is one of the top of the line resorts within Bluegreen. If you are expecting all of the resorts to be that same quality, you might be surprised and disappointed. If you realize there is a lot of variability with Fountains (and Big Cedar) representing the top of the heap, you'll be fine.

You'll learn a ton about how to make the system work for you on this board (plus TUG and the Bluegreen Yahoo group - check those out if you haven't already found them.)

Good luck -

Anita

[Timeshare junkie Member Find all posts View Profile Close Timeshare junkie]

Welcome Aboard,

one thing I really like about BVC is that the resorts are all excellently located.

The popular timeshare model is to build a really nice resort on a cheap, crumby piece of land eg Vacation Village at Weston (who wants to be in FL and 20 miles from the shore) or many Vegas resorts that are way off the strip.

BG's resorts are really well situated, usually beachfront in FL and SC.

While I was disappointed a few years ago when they decided the way forward was to have a presence in Vegas (there was so much timeshare in Vegas already - and who takes the family to Vegas anyway that someone needs a 2-bedroom, stay in hotel on the strip), they are expanding in to some really exciting regions like New Hampshire, the Cape, Bahamas and Williamsburg (ok, enough already in Wburg - don't we have 2 or 3 resorts there now).

If you got Select Connections that will expand your options. And check out RCI's nightly stays - a huge plus for BG owners. I was an RCI points owner already so I know how great that system is if you know how to use it.

Eventually I think you will need to upgrade, but a great way to test the waters.

OH yeah, and I think the BG website is fantastic too. Makes being an owner really easy.

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

who takes the family to Vegas anyway that someone needs a 2-bedroom, stay in hotel on the strip),

Someone who might take a family to Las Vegas is a family on a "western" trip in which Vegas is only a small part of the trip. I think that all of the 2-bedrooms are actually lockoffs of two 1-bedrooms. And I don't like "hotels". BG has spoiled me.

That being said, I do wonder if it made "business" sense for BG to build in Vegas. But, it might increase the saleability of BG points to the uninitiated.

Charles

[Ediesbeads Member Find all posts View Profile Close Ediesbeads]

Welcome to BlueGreen! You have already gotten some great advice. I will second one of the suggestions, which is looking into Sun - Thurs night stays. We live in the midwest, and we've enjoyed taking trips to locations that are two days drive such as Myrtle Beach. We leave Saturday, stay over night in a motel, arrive Sunday. We stay at the resort Sunday - Thurs night, check out Friday morning and head home. We arrive home Saturday and have Sunday to rest and catch up on laundry etc before heading back to work on Monday. It's a pretty nice vacation. Only 5 nights instead of 7, but we can take two of those trips for less points than one full week often times.

We also used the 3000 point Hot Weeks to extend a stay in Orlando for an extra week. That was FUN! We were already there... we had the summer ahead (DH is a prof, so he doesn't work summers) so we enjoyed another week of playing!

So do your homework and learn the ins and outs of how to get the most from your points and you will have a great time!

Edie

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

We live in the midwest, and we've enjoyed taking trips to locations that are two days drive such as Myrtle Beach. We leave Saturday, stay over night in a motel, arrive Sunday. We stay at the resort Sunday - Thurs night, check out Friday morning and head home. We arrive home Saturday and have Sunday to rest and catch up on laundry etc before heading back to work on Monday.

Ditto on this. Well, pretty much - we usually stay in a motel two nights on the way home, so we can dawdle a bit and hit the huge used book store in Knoxville or the Parthenon in Nashville or otherwise touch base with places we like that are on the way. But we usually get home on Sundays before two, so Monday is not such a shock to the system.

If you have the opportunity to go off-season, another option is to use your RCI membership (you're paying for it anyhow) to get a week somewhere with Last Call or Extra Vacations - lots of stuff off season for under $300/week. I generally limit myself to places that rate a "seven" or above on the TUG reviews, and I'm sleeping eight, but I still find a lot to interests me. Haven't done anything with any of it because I always end up going Bluegreen, but they're out there. I would guess the options are similar to those you get through Hot Weeks, but the lead time is longer (48 days with Last Call, considerably longer with Extra Vacations), and it costs cash not points.

One word of caution is that Fountains is one of the top of the line resorts within Bluegreen. If you are expecting all of the resorts to be that same quality, you might be surprised and disappointed. If you realize there is a lot of variability with Fountains (and Big Cedar) representing the top of the heap, you'll be fine.

Second that warning. When I first went looking for BG reviews, about half of the unhappy owners I ran across bought at the Fountains or Big Cedar. This past summer I pulled all the TUG ratings for the BG resorts that interested me, and the BG average was 7.54, while the Fountains got 9.25 and Big Cedar 9.34. Dunno what the average is now - I do know Big Cedar is the same, but the Fountains has fallen to 8.75, while some of the others have improved.

It may depend on what excited you about the first one you saw. Going from the Fountains to Shenandoah Crossing would be a huge shock for most people, because they are very different, both in quality (BG doesn't have as much to do with SC's management) and in focus (SC's in the boonies, while the Fountains is in the thick of things). Going from the Fountains to Shorecrest I, less of a shock for the experienced traveler, because they'd expect units and resorts on the beach to be smaller, while Orlando and Myrtle Beach are similar in terms of plenty to do right close.

If you were initially excited about the variety, then BG is going to work great for you. If you want every place to be like the Fountains, not so much, however it is possible to get the best experience some places that get rated lower than the Fountains. The one we've stayed at that gets the lowest rating (Mountain Loft, with a TUG rating of 6.9), I suspect gets such a low rating in part because there's not enough sound-proofing between connecting units. We got a stand-alone unit so that wasn't an issue, and we loved it.

[Ediesbeads Member Find all posts View Profile Close Ediesbeads]

Can you share how to find TUG ratings for the resorts?

Thanks!
Edie

[logan115 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close logan115]

Can you share how to find TUG ratings for the resorts?

Thanks!
Edie

You need to sign up (ie pay $15) to become a TUG member, then you can access the reviews/ratings.

Chris

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

TUG is well worth the price of membership!

The reviews and the sightings (if you plan to exchange at all with RCI or II) are fantastic.

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

TUG Rocks

The reviews and the sightings (if you plan to exchange at all with RCI or II) are fantastic.

Timeshare Users Group - The first and largest online community of timeshare owners providing timeshare resort reviews, timeshare ratings, FREE timeshare advice and FREE Timeshare Classified ads!

TUG is well worth the membership price. After the first year you can sign up for 3 years for only $30.

Charles