Did the talk. Sounds like a lot of folks preferred guaranteeing a certain week and now it's all points based. $1200 year maintenance fees and about $25k down. Some pros, some cons. Any members out there?

Yep. We bought in to the one in Vegas about 12 years ago. Don't know if we would do it again, but we do us it pretty effectively. And we are about 3 years from retiring and will use it even more then. We have let friends and family use our days in Vegas when we knew we could not use a week at any MVC. We ALWAYS trade our week in for points (now I think all you can buy is points). We have gone to Lake Tahoe several times and used our points there and stayed a full week. We have never had a problem getting a reservation. We went to Europe in April so we will not spend another full week traveling the rest of this year. So we "banked" our 2017 MVC points to use next year. We will go back to Tahoe, maybe San Diego or go to a MVC in the Caribbean. As a last resort, you can trade the MVC points in for Marriott Reward Points. We are Marriott people (Marriott credit card and always stay at a Marriott) so we get some advantage from that.

If you learn how to work the system and use your points effectively then it is a fairly good deal. You have to have the ability to use it every year. Trading for Marriott Reward points every other year is not cost effective. When we trade we get 90,000 Marriott Reward points and that is not a good trade for about $1500/year in maintenance fees. A JW Marriott in a big city will by 40,000 points a night.

We have also stayed at the MVC in Park City, Utah for skiing. So there are lots of options.

What is your age?

I am a multiple timeshare owner, but my timeshare purchases (Marriott and 2 Hyatts plus an individual Las Vegas place) have come from Ebay resales not directly from the companies. I paid on average < 750 each for Hyatt Breckenridge Hyatt Tahoe and Marriott Palm Desert, and in the case of my Vegas ones - one dollar. While I do pay annual maintenance fees, so my fees now total 5K or so for all of them, I did not have the initial investment that I am trying to amortize to justify my purchases. I have also switched mine for places all over the world for now over 15 years.

If you want to be smart on timeshares, subscribe and read on TUG. After reading that, you would not pay 'retail' for a TS ever.

Have been a MVC owner for 18 plus years. We've really taken advantage of our purchase, but you have to really play the system. If you just use the week purchased at home resort or trade for another, it probably isn't worth the $$ spent (just paying upfront).
We purchased a 2BR with a lockout feature which if we put it in the Interval system we could get two weeks for a week. That has really been a benefit. Also we purchased the highest rate week which means it is very easy to trade. Less desirable weeks don't trade out as well (sales person really helped when we did our purchase).

We finally switched to points this year, but have the option of switching back. We actually didn't have to pay the $$ to switch, as Marriott made us an offer we couldn't resist.

When we purchased, the salesman (Naval Aviator/Reserves) helped this old Jarhead out with some great tips for using your week(s).
1. Pick off periods to travel
2. Pick resort that only offers 2BR plus
3. Purchasing a week may be better than using your week or trading your week
We've stayed at Marriott's Ford Colony at Williamsburg, Va., every year at Thanksgiving, always
purchase the week through Interval and stay through Friday after Thanksgiving (cost- less than $400),
but if we made the week run through the weekend after Thanksgiving the cost jumped to $1700 plus.
So we go early and check out early.

We do the same for Disney World/Hilton Head/Myrtle Beach/Branson/New England/Panama City/etc.,
there's slow times and you must take advantage.
4. We use our MVC/Interval membership 6-8 times a year. You have to use it or it is not worth the purchase
cost, plus maintenance fees, plus trade fees. Resale ????? Ha! Ha! Daughter in law purchased
DisneyVC for half the price Disney was offering, but sales had to be cleared by Disney, which it was.
5. I would not pay the purchase price today for some of the exclusive resorts, just not worth it. Can purchase
a week for the cost of the yearly maintenance fee.
6. Stick with the likes of Marriott, Sheraton, Hilton, Hyatt as customer satisfaction is much, much higher.

Almost bought one in Tahoe glad I didn't as my company bought a condo there.

Remember you have to pay pro rata taxes as well.

Taxes included in Maintenance fees.

Has another poster said, I would look at thenTUG website. We have owned the Disney time share for over 20 years and Shell Vacation for 18'years and bought direct both time. Didn't know about the resale market at the time. We could sell our Disney for more than we paid but not the Shell. I would research the benefits of buying direct vs resale. Resale loses most if not all of the perks from buying direct, but there is great saving buying resale.

All good info. We weren't gonna do it but there were a few good points "the closer" in the presentation brought up. However everyone we spoke to said maintenance fees continue to go up, and even booking the same room at properties that MVC offers over on the Marriott website we could get a good rate on a room. So we took our room credit and some dining credits and said no thanks.