One of our main motivations for considering Vidanta is that it appears to provide an Exit Strategy from the timeshare treadmill.
There is no timeshare treadmill, there's just poorly informed owners that buy from the developer.
We currently own 37,000 credits as Diamond members of Worldmark, which entitles us to about 3-4 weeks of vacation per year at Worldmark and Wyndham resorts, depending on the quality of the resort (and exchange into RCI and NovaSol for a $249/week exchange fee). But we’ve been frustrated by two things:
(1) There are only a few Worldmark properties that really appeal to us (e.g., Kihei on Maui and a couple in Mexico), and we have a very hard time getting into those because you have to book them 13 months-to-the-day ahead of time!
If planning ahead is not your cup of tea, then timesharing is not for you, and you should sell
(2) We pay Maintenance Fees of $226 per month ($2,722 per year!), regardless of whether we use the vacation weeks or not. This is a financial commitment that will increase by about 5% every year (last year it seemed to go up 11.5%) and one apparently owes it for eternity. The “forever” ownership that was touted at the time of purchase as a huge benefit for us, our children and our grandchildren, is now turning out to feel like a liability we don’t want to saddle our children (or even ourselves) with. Even if we WERE to enjoy 3 weeks of vacation through Worldmark, that equates to almost $800 per week ($2,722/3) to stay at a place we had to reserve far in advance and may not match our preferences!
That is actually a bargain, per your own calculations, you are paying between $680 and $907 per week to stay at resorts that usually go for 2 to 4 times that amounts.
We are in our early 50’s, work demanding full-time jobs, and have children 5-15 who are not allowed to miss school, so it’s harder to be totally flexible about vacation time in the way a retired couple might be. When we take a week or two, we want it to be places we sincerely want to go.
I have 3 kids, all in school, I love timesharing because "When we take a week or two, we want it to be places we sincerely want to go." However, planning ahead is a must, and it seems you cant/wont do that.
Last year we lost 16,000 Worldmark credits due to their expiring when we didn’t stay on top of it. Every other year we can use something they call Personal Choice to “spend” the credits on hotels or flights or whatever (if booked through the Worldmark Travel Assistance), but the value per credit is only $0.045 (four and a half cents), and that doesn’t seem a good value for the credits, i.e., you paid $2,722 in Maintenance Fees and got back $1,665 in Personal Choice.
OMG, by letting your credit expire, you lost about $1120. Go to WMOWNERS.com and realize that people regularly pay 7 cents per credit, that's cash in your pocket every year if you so choose. And renting points is EASY. Just list the credits you want to rent on WMOWNERS.com, GET PAID first, then transfer the credits using your worldmark account page. Really, it's that easy.
Just for illustration, in the last couple of years we went to France and Thailand and San Diego and for various reasons didn’t even use the Worldmark credits because:
France - the Worldmark and RCI exchange options are located in the suburbs of Paris, a 45-minute metro to the center, and we ended up using VRBO at $179/night to stay a 10-minute walk from Notre Dame!
See above, get paid by renting your WM credits, then vacation where you like!
Thailand – There is a new Worldmark property up in the hills outside Patong that I’m sure is very nice, but it is 27,000 credits per week! That’s like paying $2,000 in Maintenance Fees to stay there one week! Instead we ended up paying $150 per night to stay across the street from the beach.
See above, get paid by renting your WM credits, then vacation where you like!
San Diego – We made travel plans only one month in advance and there was no remaining availability at Worldmark.
See above, get paid by renting your WM credits, then vacation where you like!
Vidanta caught my eye because it appears to offer an exit strategy from Timeshare purgatory. Vidanta contracts (and sales strategies) seem to be highly customized (and therefore complex), with many options and negotiation tools at play, but the pitch we heard was that with the elimination of a Maintenance Fee its replacement by a Usage Fee, the owner pays only for the weeks actually used. The main constraint or commitment in this regard is only that:
1. You have to use 5 weeks in the first 10 years
2. For weeks you want to exchange through The Registry Collection, San Francisco Exchange, RCI or others, you first pay the full Usage Fee, which varies by size of the unit, and then deposit it into exchange inventory. I think you may have to pay it by Feb of the year you plan to exchange. (Theoretically you could lose the week if you somehow screw up the use of the exchange credits.)
Once you pay the purchase price for the unit you “buy”, and then comply with paying the Usage Fee for 5 weeks in the first 10 years, you could walk away from the whole deal without owing anything more. Alternatively, if you find that you like Vidanta and the properties they exchange with, then you have the option to renew your contract every 10 years, for a max of 9 renewals totaling 100 years.
The Usage Fee works out to about $150 per night for a studio and $250 per night for a 1-bedroom. $250 per night is not cheap and nowadays there are a lot of alternatives out there (VRBO, hotel deals, etc) that are cheaper, especially for non-peak periods. However, from what I saw Vidanta accommodations really are 5-star, top quality and they are worth that or more. With Worldmark we are already paying $2,400 per year, so IF we manage to use it for 3 weeks of vacation that works out to less than $100/night. But for any year that we only manage to find 1 week at a Worldmark place we care to spend our vacation time, that works out to $240/night to stay at (what is usually) a mediocre resort.
DO NOT BUY FROM THE DEVELOPER, BUY RESALE (enough said). Whatever the developer offered, you could get on the resale market for 90% to 100% discount, whether in the TUG market place or in eBay. REALLY!
If I had never owned a Timeshare, I’d probably stay away and just vacation through “a la carte” decisions and the maximum flexibility now afforded by options like VRBO, which in my opinion threaten to render timeshares into outdated dinosaurs. But because we already own Worldmark shares and they represent a financial liability FOREVER, that’s troubling to us, and we are seriously considering trading in our Worldmark ownership for a Vidanta contract that commits us to taking at least 5 relatively expensive vacations there in the next 10 years, but thereafter we’re free to use our weeks, or not, with no other financial penalty.
DONT DO IT!!!!! I've been to Vidanta Riviera Maya at the Grand Mayan, it was one of the easiest exchanges I ever made. I also rented another 1bdr unit for $100 for an entire week through SFX during a quaterly special they run. Yes, $14 per day for a 1 bedroom suite. No timeshare presentation required.
I’m sharing this interpretation in hopes of having it vetted and evaluated by people who may have already been through the process themselves, and also to share with folks who might want to explore this option as an exit strategy that allows you to enjoy top notch properties in the near- to medium-term.
Here is one that sold on Friday for $9600. But even if he sold them for $10,000, he would still owe $28,000 on WM plus the $33,000+ for Vidanta. 
