Original Message:
Re: Marriott Vacation Club "Destinations" - What I Like and What I've Done (by Den):
Jean - We are in So California, a long distance from many of the Marriott properties. We own Newport Coast Villas (1 Gold, 3 Plat, and 1 Plat Fixed, 4th of July) and Grand Chateau (1 Plat), Custom House in Boston (1 Plat), and 2,500 Dest Pts. Two of the Newport Plat weeks were acquired privately as the price was so reasonable. This may sound like a lot, but we have 5 married children and 13 grandchildren. Newport Coast weeks were acquired so that we could have family reunions together. Custom House in Boston is my favorite.
I think that legacy owners are the winners with the Dest Pts program as we can generate lots of points depending, of course, on what we own. For example, the Newport Coast 4th of July week yields 5,300 pts every year so we routinely trade it for Dest Pts. I discourage our children from buying Dest Pts as I think they are too expensive in relation to weeks you can buy privately.
This has become a bit of a game in trying to see how much we can do with what we have and we've done some neat things for our families. Two of our son's families (incl 4 grandchildren under 8) return from Cypress Harbour and DisneyWorld tomorrow.