Newby to Bluegreen has question.

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

My wife and I just switched (converted) our package from Club Optima to Bluegreen at Mt Olympus in the Wisconsin Dells. We believe we are satisfied but really need to understand the conversion rate from bluegreen points to RCI. No one seems to know the answer. So, I ask anyone here on this website. Before converting we had 71,400 RCI points which more or less means 11 days in Manhattan, at the club. Now we are Silver members with Bluegreen with 21000 per year and really do not know what that equates to in RCI points. Is 21k BG more/less or equal to 71400 RCI? All I know is we upgraded our package and feel good about the decision with some of the silver member perks. But we do enjoy some of the RCI resorts that we have visited over the last five years and just need a simple answer!

Thanks for your help

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

Welcome to Bluegreen.

Sorry, I have no answer. RCI is my weak area. Boca Bum may have the information, or possibly someone who is experienced in RCI.

I am sure you will find lots of information on Bluegreen...and RCI, and hopefully you will have answers to both.

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

Thanks, hopefully Boca can help.

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

My wife and I just switched (converted) our package from Club Optima to Bluegreen at Mt Olympus in the Wisconsin Dells. We believe we are satisfied but really need to understand the conversion rate from bluegreen points to RCI. No one seems to know the answer. So, I ask anyone here on this website. Before converting we had 71,400 RCI points which more or less means 11 days in Manhattan, at the club. Now we are Silver members with Bluegreen with 21000 per year and really do not know what that equates to in RCI points. Is 21k BG more/less or equal to 71400 RCI? All I know is we upgraded our package and feel good about the decision with some of the silver member perks. But we do enjoy some of the RCI resorts that we have visited over the last five years and just need a simple answer!

Thanks for your help

It varies. The way you do it is you book a Bluegreen Resort and deposit it into RCI Points for deposit program for $26.

In general, you can easily get 60,000 RCI Points for 8000 Bluegreen Points. Occasionally, you can get close to 80,000 RCI Points for the same 8000 Bluegreen Points.

You did well in the upgrade.

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

Thanks Boca! That will make my wife more comfortable.: We had a great rep at the resort that said we were doing the right thing with by switching to BG and becoming silver members. So far it sounds like we did good. We just need to get used to the new processes. We finally understood the other way!

Have a good day,
JT

[swirg53 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close swirg53]

But they would no longer have an RCI points resort ownership now that they are in the Bluegreen Vacation Club, correct? That is, unless they own some other RCI Points property......

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

As far as I know, you are correct. We do not own an RCI property, however, we are able to use RCI. No annual fee, but the normal US transaction fee or the normal out of country charges only. As far as I know all we need to do is what Boca said, book the BG resort and trade for the RCI resort we want to stay. And based on what he had said we went from a week and a half to about three if we do it correctly.

That no annual fee is nice not to have, I do not know if that is simply a silver member perk or a normal perk for BG members? Either way, we feel even better for the decision we made last week.

Hope that helps?

[swirg53 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close swirg53]

Maybe I am confused, but you said that you had 71,400 RCI points before your converted to BG Vacation Club points. That would mean you had an RCI Points Membership & Ownership, as far as I understand. Perhaps Club Optima was an RCI Points resort or some of the ownerships had been converted to RCI Points? With your BG Vacation Club membership, you get an RCI Weeks membership.

When Boca was telling you how many RCI Points you could get out of your BG points, it was dependent on owning at an RCI Points resort. Even though the BG properties are not RCI Points resorts, per se, most can be deposited into the RCI Points program and then it turns into X# of RCI Points rather than a full week on the weeks side. Then the RCI Points can be used to purchase airfare, a couple of nights at a resort, a full week, a cruise, car rental or amusement park admission.

Perhaps this is all a moot point, but it seems to me that you think you are going to get RCI Points and it also seems to me like you no longer have an RCI Points membership/ownership. (but that you may have had it previously)

At any rate, I think having a BG ownership is terrific!

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

Thanks for the reply. It is a bit confussing, okay a lot! I'll try to keep this as simple as possible. Club Optima was the timeshare company at a place called Treasure Island in the Wisconsin Dells. Which was a RCI resort and still is for the remaining Club Optima owners. Bluegreen is now the timeshare company at the resort and club optima still exists but is run by the resort based on the number of owners. (206 for the 4 units they own) Bluegreen meet with us and shared information about Club Optima and gave us the opportunity to take the equity (not all) and put it towards a BG membership. So in otherwords Mt Olympus is now both a RCI Resort and BG Resort based on what happened with Club Optima. Make sense?

Bluegreen owns 17 units and has the plans in hand to develop a lot more in the near future. We more or less protected our investment and made it worth a lot more. We did have to invest a little more to get upto silver, but based on what we see it was worth every penny.

Hope that help explain what is going on and why it was confussing not only to you but us as well.

Thanks
JT

[neuf150 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close neuf150]

Isn't swirg 53 correct? You now have a RCI weeks memberships provided by Bluegreen but no longer have the RCI points membership?

neuf150

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

Yes, he was.

I was just trying to explain the situation more in detail. And going back to my orginal question seeing how it compared to what I had before.

Sorry for any confusion.

[swirg53 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close swirg53]

RCI Points: Odyssey Dells

What a bummer that you lost your RCI Points membership. At least I think so. This intrigues me.

As I understand it, back with Adam & Eve (okay that was just for humor), no resorts were RCI Points resorts. Resorts went into that fold and then little by little owners converted their ownerships to RCI Points for a MAJOR DOLLAR FIGURE to do so.

So Odyssey Dells was an RCI Points resort. Do I have this right? Or maybe it still is for those who still have an OD ownership and have not sold out to BG. So, somewhere along the line, all of those owners would have converted to RCI Points..........or maybe only some of them have converted. What a bummer to have paid the price tag to convert and then hand it over to BG and PAY BG additional money to buy points. (That IS how it works; I know from trading in my Shen Crossing UDI--though it truly drives down your price per point, especially if you got the trade in for practically nothing--which I did but would not be the case if your paid for the conversion to RCI Points.)

I still don't understand the resorts ownerships, etc. of BG. Maybe I am too dumb to understand. Did BG buy all of OD or just inventory that was available? Does BG control ALL the reservations at OD? As they get owners to convert to BG, then does that "interval" then "belong" to BG?

Susan

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

Hi Susan,

First, you are not dumb and it really is a long story. And very confussing! Once I have a little time I will explain more in detail. I'll be in touch.

[AGRADELEOUS Member Find all posts View Profile Close AGRADELEOUS]

I'm still trying to figure all of that out too. My family just bought last week, and our "ownership" is at the Las Vegas resort. Another member told me that's a nice resort to hold ownership, because it gives you more ?leverage? when trading points with RCI, I'm still trying to figure THAT one out! I do know that I researched timeshares for two YEARS before buying, and to me Bluegreen seemed the best bet overall.

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

I'm still trying to figure all of that out too. My family just bought last year, and our "ownership" is at the Las Vegas resort. Another member later told me that's a nice resort to hold ownership, because it gives you more ?leverage? when trading points with RCI, I'm still trying to figure THAT one out! I do know that I researched timeshares for two YEARS before buying, and to me Bluegreen seemed the best bet overall.

It really doesn't matter where you are deeded. It is more important to have a preferred level than to be deeded at a specific resort.

The one exception is related to what is called your priority week. Your priority week is the underlying deeded week and unit number you own. You have exclusive access to that unit from 12 months to 11 months in advance of check in.

This priority week is only useful if you own a great week that is hard to get with regular points and you use it 3 times out of 4 years. Otherwise, points are points.