How to Stay Organized and Manage Your DVC Membership

You’ve just become a DVC Member, you’ve got your points, and now you’re ready to book some incredible Disney vacations!  To keep everything going smoothly with your DVC points, here are some tips on how to manage your membership.  

Set Calendar Reminders

Annual calendar reminders are helpful for remembering your banking deadline.  This way you’ll never forget to bank any unused points and put them at risk of expiring.  Calendar reminders are also useful for remembering the 60-day mark for making dining reservations or the 7-day mark for Lightning Lanes.  If you have multiple upcoming trips (as DVC Members often do), it’s easy to forget these dates.  

Set Up Payments for Annual Dues

Annual dues can be paid as one lump sum in January, but there are other options.  You can opt to pay one lump sum via autopay annually using a credit card.  Alternatively, you can choose to pay monthly.  Note that you can only enroll in monthly payments using a U.S. bank account, so this won’t work for international DVC Members.  

For many DVC Members, paying dues with discounted Disney gift cards offers the best value.  This method can work when paying dues as one lump sum or even with monthly payments if you make the gift card payment online before the amount due is drawn from your banking account.  

Track Your Point Usage

Whether you like to plan out your vacations far in advance, or you just want to stay on top of your point usage, a spreadsheet can be helpful.  You’ll want to note not only how many points you use but also which trips have banked or borrowed points.  This way, should you ever need to cancel a trip, you know which points cannot be banked and need to be used before the end of the Use Year.  

Save a Packing List

You’re bound to book lots of trips with your DVC points, so it helps to not reinvent the wheel every time you go on vacation.  Save a packing list (be it in a notes app or a Word file) that you can tweak slightly from trip to trip, depending on the number of days or time of year that you are traveling.  A packing list will save you time when you pack for your next trip and help remind you of some essentials that you may otherwise forget.

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