About DVC Compass
The good ones go fast. We help you find them first.
A confirmed reservation is a real, booked Disney Vacation Club villa that somebody can no longer use, so they pass it on. They are usually a good deal and occasionally a remarkable one. The catch is that they turn up without warning, sit for a few days, and go.
They are also scattered across rental sites, with no price history anywhere and no easy way to tell a strong asking price from an ordinary one. So we keep the record. Every villa we can find, priced against what the same room on the same nights would cost in cash, and rated against every comparable stay we have on file.
The market right now
1,558
Villas we are watching right now
97%
Cost less than booking the same room, the same nights, for cash
$900
What a typical villa saves against that cash price
Cash prices are our estimate, built from published rate calendars. A ballpark for comparison, not a quote.
The good ones do not sit around
48 hours
How long a top-rated villa lasts before someone takes it
16 hours
one in four of them go even faster
$1,300
What a top-rated villa typically saves you
Measured over 1,882 villas we watched appear and leave.
Two questions, not one
Judging a confirmed reservation properly means answering two separate questions. They are easy to run together, and they give different answers.
Does it beat paying cash?
We take the asking price, fees and all, and compare it with the cash price for the same villa on the same nights. Not a similar room. Not an average night. That stay. Almost all of them clear this bar, which is why clearing it on its own does not make a villa a standout.
Is it well priced for what it is?
This is the star rating, and it answers a different question. We work out the effective cost per point, then compare it with every comparable stay we have on record: the same resort, the same kind of room, the same sort of season. Five stars means best-priced of its kind right now. One star means the opposite.
So the rating is relative, not absolute. A villa can beat the cash price and still be an ordinary example of its kind. Telling those two apart is the whole job, and it is what the stars are for.
What we watch
Throughout the day, and once overnight. Every price change and every disappearance goes into the record, so a villa’s history shows what it has actually been doing, rather than only where it stands this morning.
What we do, and what we don’t
The ratings are independent
Nobody can pay us to raise a rating, and we publish the low ones next to the high ones. A rating is only worth reading if it says the same thing to everybody.
We hold no money and touch no booking
The villa is yours to book with whoever is listing it, on their site and under their terms. We are not a broker, and we are not a travel agent.
The cash price is an estimate
We build it from published rate calendars, not from a booking made on the day. Rates move without notice, and rooms are not always available at the rate we hold. Worth checking yourself before you book.
We rate the price, not the reservation
We do not confirm that a reservation exists or check who is holding it. And a villa leaving a site is our evidence it was taken, which is a strong inference rather than a receipt. Confirm the details with whoever you book through.
Every villa we can find, checked against the cash price and rated. Keep the ones you like. Save the searches you care about.