How we calculate

Cost per night

Cost per night is the broker’s total price for the stay divided by the number of nights. The board is ranked by it, not by the total, so a short trip can’t come first just by being short. The total is the broker’s own, as listed on their site.

Disney’s price

For each stay we look up what Disney charges in cash for the same villa category on the same nights: its published rack rate, tax included. The rates come from MouseSavers’ tables of Disney’s published prices. “59% below Disney” means the broker’s total is 59% less than that cash price.

Disney prices each villa by view. Where we can’t match the listing’s exact view, we use Disney’s cheapest view for that villa, which makes the saving smaller, never bigger. Disney sometimes discounts, so the real gap can also be smaller than shown.

The night-by-night table on each listing splits the broker’s total by each night’s share of the points. Brokers quote only the total; the split shows why some nights cost more.

When there’s no matching cash price at all, for example because Disney hasn’t published rates for those dates yet, the listing says so instead of showing a saving.

Points

DVC stays are priced in points. A listing’s small print shows how many points the stay takes on DVC’s published point charts and what the broker charges per point. The season you travel moves the price of a stay about 2×, while brokers’ price per point varies by about 15%, which is why we rank by the night and not by the point.

What counts as a deal

“Top 25% for this resort” marks a listing that costs less per night than at least three quarters of every listing we’ve seen at the same resort in the same room type (a deluxe studio against deluxe studios, not against a smaller tower studio) since tracking began, live or gone. We only say it once we’ve seen at least 12 of them.

The note on how fast deals like it go comes from how long past listings in that cheapest quarter stayed up before they disappeared, measured across every resort. Listings that were already up when we started tracking them (so we don’t know when they were listed), and ones that only went because their check-in date arrived, are left out.

Price drops

Every listing is checked every 30 minutes. When a price falls by at least $25 and at least 2%, we show the old price struck through. Smaller changes aren’t shown as drops, and if the price goes back up, the drop comes off.

Gone

When a listing disappears from the broker’s site we mark it gone and keep it at the bottom of the board for a day. It has almost always sold, but we can’t prove it. If a check of a broker’s site fails, its listings are not shown as gone.

Cancellation terms

Each listing states the broker’s cancellation terms as a plain fact: cancellable for credit, all sales final, or “cancellation terms not published” when we couldn’t find them. Where the broker publishes a schedule, the listing’s page shows it with real dates for that stay. Check the terms on the broker’s site before you book.

Which brokers

The board lists confirmed reservations from brokers whose own sites we read directly: DVC Shop. More are coming. No broker is left out for not paying us, and none can pay to rank higher: see the referral disclosure.