upgrade from mayan palace to grand mayan

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

Hi there,
I am new to the thread. We went on an RCI exchange to the grand mayan last years and ended up buying at the mayan palace. We are heading back this year and wondering if anyone has an idea what upgrading the ownership is? Since we way overpaid for the mayan palace ( compared to resale), I don't want to get taken again. I am interested in the grand mayan because of the better rooms/ baths and kitchens. We used the kitchen a lot since we travel with young children. I don't really want to own additional weeks just the better accomodation. Has anyone done this lately?

Thanks a lot
Jill

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

I dont know specifically but I would bet you could buy a Grand Mayan cheaper on the resale market than you could upgrade. Just don't let them talk you into buying something you dont want or understand.

[rikkis_playpen Diamond Club Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close rikkis_playpen]

Welcome to the forums!

You can probably save money by making a resale purchase, but you might also find it is very difficult right now to get rid of the first contract. You may want to try and sell (or simply give away) the current membership first, and then acquire a resale for the Grand Mayan usage. Otherwise you may find that you are stuck with two memberships, and the annual fees plus the periodic refurbishment fee requirements. That could get quite expensive!

The transfer fee requirements for these memberships can also be among the highest in the industry. You can find some info about the transfer process in this thread:

http://www.timeshareforums.com/forum...sfer-info.html

Ultimately, it's all about usage and enjoyment. If you feel the upgrade will improve the quality of your vacations, and you plan on returning year after year, it may well be worthwhile.. But, do so with the understanding that timeshares are not an investment.. The money you spend on the upgrade won't ever be able to be recovered if you later decide to sell.

You may also want to send a private message to TonyG (he moderates the Mexico threads is a specialist with Mexican resorts) as he can probably give you pricing both for selling what you now own and for buying a Grand Mayan resale.

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

Thanks for the help, I am not interested in having 2 contracts at this time, 2 weeks ( I bought I Vacation fair) is all I can use right now. I will try your advise and see if the upgrade is worth it or not...we just really loved the units at grand Mayan last year and with young kids you spend a fair amount of time in the room.

I appreciate the help,

Jill

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

The advice about purchasing resale is good. I have seen some Grand Mayan (GM) 2-bedroom weeks sell for $6500 with the VF week , transfer fees, and closing costs on eBay recently. It will cost you at least that much to upgrade. If you got the no m/f unless you go option on your contract, you only have to pay the renovation fee every 5 years. Since we have other timeshares, some years, we do not use our MP or GM weeks unless our family is going on vacation with us.

Another option is to deposit your MP week with RCI and then do an exchange into Grand Mayan. MP/GM owners are not subject to the 1-in rules. You will not always get a Grand Mayan, but it does happen fairly regularly. You have to pay the exchange fee, but the MP m/f + exchange fee are generally less than or about the same as the cost of GM m/f.

Just an aside - a 2-week, 2-bedroom MP contract sold on eBay yesterday for $36 plus the closing and transfer fees for a total of $1567. The m/f for two weeks was $1096 ($548 per week). That is the kind of contract you need to have to use for upgrade as it has more "equity" value to them. The original owner probably paid close to $30,000 for those 2 weeks. The older contracts have lower transfer fees and newer ones have equivalence of 5 m/f to transfer making it nearly impossible to sell.

We have 6 Grupo Mayan weeks. 4 are MP and we bought the first one from them and the other 3 on eBay. We have 2 GM weeks that we used 3 other MP eBay purchases to upgrade with. The key was that one of the contracts had 2 weeks on it. We still had to pay a significant amount to upgrade to 2 GM weeks using those 3 weeks.

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

Thanks, I wish had thought about the RCI angle earlier. We have are booked at Mayan Palace March 19-April 2 and have already paid our MF's. Do you know if they ever let you pay the MF difference when you get there without buying the upgraded unit?

And am I understanding you right that you bought 3 weeks of MP and then exchanged them for GM weeks with the actual resort sales staff? My concern right now is our amount of time available to vacation. We only have 4 weeks per year and some of that needs to be spent here o with family. We are both still working and have young children. That being said we want a guaranteed vacation we will love when we do go away.Best of both worlds you could say.

Thanks for your help,
Gillian

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

Last year they did let you pay the difference in m/f to upgrade to a larger unit or to GM. But, that was the year that no one was required to pay m/f unless they went and the economy in Mexico was really suffering from a lot of bad publicity. That was the only time in the 10 years that we have owned that we could do that.

Yes - we upgraded with the Grand Mayan sales staff using the weeks we bought on eBay. They gave us the price the contracts originally sold for minus taxes and closing costs towards the purchase of the 2 GM weeks and we paid the difference plus taxes and closing on the difference. It would have cost us more if we had used the one week that we bought from them to get 1 GM week with VF week. They do have a fee per contract for upgrades (so they can "stick it to the resale buyers"). The key is to purchase a multiple week contract resale. One sold yesterday ON eBay for almost nothing - 2 weeks for $1567 including closing and transfer fees! It was an old contract that had just a m/f for transfer fees. That one would have been awesome for upgrading because they would have given you about $28,000 as downpayment towards the upgrade.

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

Boy, you really do need to know what you are doing. I will take a look at the auctions but it still wouldn't help for this year would it. I have to keep reminding myself that the MP will not be bad...just loved the GM so much. We were in that big tub everyday!