Help with Vidanta timeshare changes

[Shara]

Hello, my husband and I purchased a timeshare at Vidanta Nuevo Vallarta last year 6/2021. It is for the Imperial Jungle Aqua 1BR Suite 2 wks and an additional 2 wks for 10 years (I have no idea how that works, the paperwork we have doesn't look the same as what the saleman showed us). I was pregnant at the time and we were there on vacation and I was in a somewhat euphoric pregnancy state and didn't really understand what we were agreeing to. The main reason I decided to go ahead with the purchase was because the salesman told us we could rent out our extra weeks on Airbnb/VRBO, etc. We planned to vacation once a year and rent out the additional weeks. Due to the pregnancy/birth/work I never took the time to learn how to do the rental. We went to Vidanta Riviera Maya in August for a family vacation booked from a promotion when we first signed up. It was our first time back at a Vidanta property. We stayed at the Mayan Palace. I was not impressed with our room at all. I won't go into detail but the room was old and was nothing like the rooms we saw at Nuevo Vallarta. We put down $5235 and financed the rest and pay $341 a month. So far we are in at $10,009. After our trip in August we decided that we just want out. That was such poor quality in a room with a usage fee of $1100 (up from $1050 a year ago). If we get out now we lose the $10k we put in but we will save the next 46 months of payments which is $15,686. I contacted their customer service and they have come back with alternate memberships and I am very confused about what to do. We could keep our current membership with a reduced monthly payment to $214 (another $9844). The other option is to change the contract to an Imperial Jungle Aqua Master Room with usage of the Mayan Palace 1BD for 2 weeks a year and reduce the monthly payment to $107. I asked for clarification of use of the Mayan Palace and they said it would be through an addendum added called Seapack and would still include the 2 renewable weeks (I still don't really know what renewable weeks mean). I just emailed them and asked for a call back on Monday because I still don't understand what we have or what we should do! A monthly payment of $107 is much more reasonable but that means we would still end up paying $14,931 total for a Master Room. Is this a bad deal? I don't want to lose the $10k we put into it but if it will just be another waste of $5k then maybe we should just walk away? Our contract also includes an extra 2 for 1 golf (we don't play golf) and split weeks at Puerto Penasco. If anyone has any advice please help us out! Thank you in advance!

 

[amycurl]

I've asked the mods to move this to the Mexico forum. There are many expert Vidanta owners here who can probably talk you through what you purchased and what the alternatives that you've been offered mean going forward. I'm tagging @pittle, because they are the one owner I can remember off the top of my head.

 

[rboesl]

Mayan Palace buildings are some of the older buildings. Vidanta is not maintaining them because they expect ownerships to expire in 2 to 4 years. When that happens they will renovate them to the higher Luxxe level.

Vidanta contracts are a bit unusual. You will, usually, get 2 weeks whose usage expires after 10 years and 2 other weeks that continue on. After 10 years, and payment of the renewal fee, those 2nd 2 weeks are what continues on to be renewed every subsequent 10 years.

Usually the contracts allow you to book at the luxury level that's equivalent to what you bought into and all luxury levels below with the usage fee being on a "sliding scale" based on level booked. Just know that Vidanta typically sells what's next to be built and let's you use what currently exists.

I strongly suggest you sit down and study your contract. Don't skim! Everything is in there. But, it may take a couple of readings to fully understand it.

 

[pittle]

As rboesl says. Read that contract! I have underlined or highlighted numerous things in ours over the years. You need to understand what you bought. The salesmen lie and if it is not in the contract, you do not have it.

The page where they show what you have actually purchased is the contract. The part that says Registered weeks is what you actually bought. You mentioned Master Room. That is basically a Hotel unit - it may have a very small (dorm) fridge and a coffeemaker. It will not have a living room, dining area and small kitchen like a Suite does. A Master Suite is a 2-bedroom unit that is the 1-bedroom + the hotel unit.

Our current contract states that we have 2 GL - Master Rooms and 2 GL Suites and when used together we have 2 Grand Luuxe Master Suites. Those are our Registered weeks. The usage fees for these are listed and in another section your contract packet, it will state that the fees will go up each year (there will be a statement with a percentage or inflation mentioned.)

The Residence weeks are different from the Registered weeks. Those are ones that you can pay a usage fee and book a week for additional time at any of the resorts. These are the ones that you can rent out, but, you also have to look at when you can used those. Often December - April are not available for these weeks. So, if you wanted to rent one to someone, you would pay the same $1100 and then try to rent it for more than that. It is possible, but I would not consider doing Airbnb or VRBO because you would then have to pay them a fee too. It would take some work and you would not net much money for that.

We started at Sea Garden Level in 1999 and then upgraded to Mayan Palace level on our first visit. We had purchased a 2-bedroom Sea Garden and with it we could get a 1-bedroom Mayan Palace. We decided that we always wanted 2-bedroom units. We had several MP 2-bedroom weeks (most bought on the secondary market which is not a viable option now). Any way, we used some (plus more cash), to upgrade to Grand Mayan in 2006. In 2013, we upgraded to Grand Luxxe for 2 two bedroom units - we traded in 2 GM 2-bdr units + 3-2bdr MP units and 1-1bdr MP unit + more cash to get those. We upgraded because we had older MP & GM contracts that had renovation fees evey 5 years and we totaled up those on a pro-rated basis and that was what we would have paid without going at all for the 6 weeks we had. We are now as high as we want to go now.

Even though we own at the Grand Luxxe level, we have only been there once since 2013. We own other timeshares that we do go to, or we exchange into a Vidanta property for less money than the usage fees. We do have a wonderful benefit that we got back in 2007 as long term owners, now that my husband is 77, we no longer have to pay usage fees. (This is not longer offered.) So we are going to NV with family in 2023 and to the GM in Acapulco in January, and Puerto Penasco GM in May. We chose to split one of our weeks next year and stay in a GM 2-bedroom and a 1-bedroom GM unit so we could go to Acapulco and Puerto Penasco.

We are planning to stay in the PV Mayan Palace Marina location using a SFX exchange next year because we can get out and about easily. We will miss the balcony, but have stayed in MP units many times between 1999 and 2013. We like the smaller resorts better than the mega ones. RM & NV are getting huge and it is not easy to get out and about.

Look at the Vidanta website https://vidanta.com/ and you will be able to look at photos of the various levels of units. Because yours is not built yet, it will not be mentioned. That is the same with the folks that bought into the units that will be at the Vidanta World amusement park.