As I am writing this, we are just back from our DVC Welcome Home trip – the first-ever trip that you take using your DVC points right after purchase.
Booking
When you purchase DVC, most of the reservations for your first use year are going to be booked already. So when we went into our DVC member dashboard, we were not going to be able to book at Riviera (our home resort) during our first ownership year.
We were really excited to use our brand new DVC points, and thankfully our DVC rep mentioned that every new DVC member gets one “phone-a-friend” booking favor where the booking agent can find you rooms that are not available online. But be careful! You only get one favor. Our booking agent was very careful to tell me that multiple times before making the call to Riviera to try to get us our room. But he did! We were able to stay in a 1-bedroom, standard view villa at Riviera the weekend before school started.
Welcome Home Surprises
I will say over and over again in this blog, Disney does nothing in a small way. Before we left on our trip we received several personalized mailings about our trip, and each of them included gifts.
In one they sent us a drawstring backpack and a magnetic white board, several contained stickers or postcards. But this one, which arrived 3 days before our trip, was probably the nicest. It included a metal water bottle, a cooling towel, and 2 DVC member car magnets, as well as personalized, letters, certificates, and other memorials of our Welcome Home trip.
How We Spent Our Trip
We really wanted to make the most out of our home resort for our first trip. Our time was spent exploring the Riviera. We spent a lot of time hanging out at the resort pool, checking out the restaurants on site (stay tuned for dining reviews from Ethan!), made bookmarks and traded pins in the activity room, and generally had a relaxing trip.
We also wanted to make sure we got the most out of our room, since we used our points to get a bigger room (look for a room tour next week). We’d never had a full kitchen before, and it was a really nice money saver to be able to order groceries for breakfast and lunch while we were there.
Overall, we are excited to have DVC, and to have the freedom to spend more time in the magic so we don’t feel like we need to rush to do everything every time. Check out this article to see how we made this trip even more special and exciting for our kids,
