Above: Nice home in Celebration.
Visiting Celebration
Flying east, I have trouble waking in the morning. This time it was a little more complicated. I woke at 0230 and couldn’t sleep till 0530. And when I did, I woke up around 1030.
We had a light breakfast and went out at 1200 for our 1230 timeshare presentation. Barbara drove us to a town called Celebration, a master-planned community originally developed by the Disney company.
We had lunch at a Cuban/Spanish restaurant in Celebration. I wasn’t hungry probably due to jetlag, but felt much better after a sandwich and salad.
From here, we went to a resort next to Arabian Nights. We were shown around Phase 1, which was an old resort that is refurbished every five years. Phase 2, is newer and we accessed it through a Nature Reserve. We then went to the newest, which was Phase 3. Phase 4 is being built.
Phase 3 units consist of two subunits, so an owner can use their one week stay as two weeks if they stay in a subunit.
Hardsell
Then came the pricing. They started at USD18K for a timeshare purchase that gave usage of one week per year. When we didn’t show much interest, it dropped to USD10K for one week per two years. In each case, the one week came with two weeks bonus, which meant a total of three weeks per year.
When we still didn’t bite, they offered us a mortgagee sale situation for only USD4K at Magic Tree, where we were staying.
All these come with an annual cost of USD499 for maintenance and if one wishes to use their owner’s week at a different resort, an exchange fee of USD169-199 applies.
We’ve done timeshare presentations before to benefit from their free gifts, which can be quite rewarding for an hour or two of our day. We know that financially it doesn’t make sense for us, and it doesn’t fit in with our kind of adventure holidays. We rarely stay in a place for an entirely week.
Barbara enlisted the help of a colleague and then a Corporate Office manager to help with the hardsell to no success.
We left around 1630. While this was longer than the typical session, it did include lunch in a nice restaurant and a tour of Celebration and a resort. In Auckland, all of this would be done in a large room with pictures and videos only.
We left for the Lake Buena Vista area for some shopping and had a snack at Taco Bell. We returned to the hotel for some rest and planning.
As we were in the USA, we couldn’t help ourselves with junkfood for dinner. Wendy’s had burgers at USD0.99, chili at 1.09 and salad at 1.09 as well!