Westgate Resorts vs. Hyatt Vacation Club vs. Disney Vacation Club: A Real Owner's Comparison
This post accompanies Episode 25 of the Marrying Your Passions podcast. Listen to the full conversation for the stories behind each purchase, our honest ranking, and the reasoning that ties it all together.
 |
| Nathan and Alicia at Westgate Historic Williamsburg Resort |
We know timeshares are a hot button topic. There are two camps out there: the owners who've had one for decades and won't hear a word against it, and everyone else convinced it's a scam. We fall firmly into the first camp. We own three timeshares: Westgate Resorts, Hyatt Vacation Club (originally purchased as Welk Resorts), and Disney Vacation Club.
This isn't a sales pitch. We don't have an affiliate deal with any of these companies, and what you do with your own travel budget is entirely up to you. What we want to share here is the practical side, the real numbers, the ownership structures, and how each system actually works, so you can decide for yourself whether timeshare ownership makes sense for you. For the full stories behind why we bought each one, and the honest ranking of which we'd keep and which we'd sell, that's what the podcast episode is for.
One thing worth saying upfront: timeshares are not an investment, and we're not financial advisors. We bought ours to use them.
Westgate Resorts
Westgate is a deeded, week based ownership system. We bought our first Westgate timeshare in 2014 (you'll have to listen to the episode for how a spontaneous trip turned into an ownership decision). Since then, we've upgraded several times, and our current ownership is a six bedroom lock off, which we typically split into six separate one bedroom stays, giving us up to six weeks of vacation time a year.
 |
| Overlooking Table Rock Lake and the Ozarks at Westgate Branson Lakes Resort (our home resort) |
Here's how the system works: your home resort stay has no exchange fee. Book anywhere else in the Westgate network and you'll typically pay around $150 to exchange in, though that fee is often dropped to $50 or waived entirely during holiday sales at high inventory properties like Orlando, Vegas, and Branson.
Real numbers: our annual maintenance fee on the six bedroom lock off is about $2,600, which breaks down to roughly $61.90 a night across our 42 available nights. For comparison, retail rates on a similar one bedroom lake view unit run $162 to $197 a night depending on the season. We paid about $60,000 for our original purchase, for context, that's less than the average price of a new full size pickup truck today, and the mortgage is a separate cost from the maintenance fee, the same way a car payment is separate from gas and upkeep.
Westgate is pet friendly at every property, which matters a lot if you travel with animals. It is one of our favorites!
 |
| Alicia and Peppermint Patty out for a walk at Westgate Branson Lakes |
Hyatt Vacation Club (Formerly Welk Resorts)
We bought in back in 2019, right before the pandemic, when this was still Welk Resorts. Welk was founded in 1964 by television bandleader Lawrence Welk and grew into eight upscale resorts, mostly across the West Coast and Southwest. In 2021, Marriott Vacations Worldwide acquired Welk Resorts, and in 2022 those properties were rebranded as the Hyatt Vacation Club Platinum Program.
 |
| The gorgeous mountain view at The Ranahan by Hyatt Vacation Club in Breckenridge, Colorado our go to weekend spot while we lived in Denver. |
It's a points system, functioning like currency toward nightly stays. We started with 90,000 points and have upgraded to about 420,000, enough for anywhere from a week to four weeks depending on the property. These resorts run noticeably more upscale than Westgate, closer to a four star hotel experience.
The catch for us: we live in Florida now, and since we bought in under Welk before Hyatt's acquisition, we haven't found an easy way to book directly into Hyatt's Florida properties with our points. We can access a handful of Collection properties beyond the original Welk network, but most Hyatt Vacation Club properties aren't pet friendly, and most of what we can easily use no longer fits where we live.
We mostly use these points now to exchange into other resorts through Interval International, or through Hyatt's own program to book cruises or convert into World of Hyatt hotel points. A general rule worth knowing: exchanging points for a cruise or hotel stay is usually a weaker dollar for dollar value than using the points directly at a resort, but since the maintenance fee is owed either way, using the points still beats letting them go unused.
 |
| We loved visiting the beautiful, Villas of Cave Creek in Arizona using the Hyatt Vacation Experiences Collection |
Disney Vacation Club
We purchased DVC in 2019 using their Riviera Resort as our home resort, buying in at 100 points, the minimum at the time.
One structural difference worth knowing if you're comparing timeshares: Westgate and Hyatt Vacation Club ownership is for life. DVC is a membership with a term, usually 50 years from when the resort was built, after which it reverts to Disney.
 |
| We love Disney's Riviera Resort especially during the holidays! |
Like Hyatt, DVC runs on points, with cost per night varying by resort and season. Our 100 points usually gets us 4 to 6 nights in a studio. Home resort status matters here too: Riviera ownership lets us book 11 months out at Riviera specifically, versus the standard 7 month window everywhere else in the DVC system. Exchanging points into a regular Disney hotel room is a weak trade, roughly 40-plus points a night at a resort like the Yacht Club versus 17 to 22 points a night at our home resort. Point costs vary a lot by property, so it pays to shop around; Saratoga Springs and Old Key West are usually the cheapest and most available.
One genuine advantage DVC has over the other two: there's an actual, active secondary resale market. Buying resale is usually cheaper, though you give up Disney's direct purchase perks. Compare that to Westgate and Hyatt, where there's essentially no resale market at all.
We paid about $19,000 for our 100 Riviera points back in 2019. Disney publishes its point pricing publicly if you want to look up current rates for yourself.
Of DVC's properties, only the Cabins at Fort Wilderness Resort are dog friendly.
 |
| We loved having Peppermint Patty with us at the Cabins at Ft. Wilderness |
Which One Would We Sell?
We won't spoil this part, it's really the heart of the episode. But here's the shape of it: each of these three earns its keep for a genuinely different reason, and one of them stopped fitting our life the way it used to. Hear the full reasoning, including a really persuasive case our accountant (also known as Alicia) makes for why not building equity isn't actually the dealbreaker it sounds like, in the episode.
A Few Honest Objections, Addressed
The sales pitch: it varies by company and by person. Some are more aggressive than others, and DVC in particular runs a fixed price with little negotiation. Our advice: treat it like buying a car, be willing to walk away, and don't be afraid to ask for a better deal.
Rising maintenance fees: ours have gone up since 2014, but never dramatically, usually $5 to $15 a month more per year at most.
Special assessments: we've never been hit with one on any property.
Owner update meetings: when you use your timeshare, you'll often get invited to an "owner update," a sales meeting for existing owners. You can almost always decline, and attending usually comes with a small gift.
Exit companies and resale scams: we've never tried to sell, so we can't speak to this from experience. Many of the exit companies out there seem sketchy from the outside.
Our Take
We've got a golden rule that guides how we think about all three of these, and honestly, it applies to a lot more than just timeshares. You'll want to hear it straight from us, along with the full story of how a near-sale during COVID accidentally led us to fall in love with a town we'd never heard of, and how our combined ownership has us picturing what retirement travel could actually look like.
Not someday. Today.
 |
| Alicia, Peppermint Patty, and Nathan |
 |
| Visiting the Pacific Ocean outside of the Four Season Aviara Resort outside of San Diego using Hyatt Vacation Club Points |
 |
| We loved hearing the historical reenactor at the Westgate Historic Williamsburg Resort |
 |
| The view at sunset from Westgate Myrtle Beach Oceanfront Resort |
 |
| Using our Hyatt Vacation Club points for a Virgin Voyages cruise to the Bahamas. |
 |
| Peppermint Patty loves the doggie welcome bag she gets when she visits Westgate Resorts! |
 |
| Relaxing outside of the Westgate Resort and Spa in Park City, Utah |
 |
| Elvis used to live at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort when it was the International Hotel |
 |
| Westgate Smoky Mountain Resort and Waterpark is beautiful and one of our favorites. |
Comments
Post a Comment