... my mother-in-law inherited a one week two bedroom timeshare from my wife's grandparents. Now my mother-in-law is looking to get rid of it as she does not travel often and would like to stop paying the maintenance fees.
She asked us if we were interested in having it, and I am trying to figure out if it is worth it for us or not. While we do enjoy going to the resort in Escondido, I don't see us wanting to go there every year, so the exchange idea is interesting. Especially the exchange to Disney resorts. Is that something that is easy to do, or is exchanging to a Disney resort nearly impossible to achieve?
It sounds like your mother-in-law owns a deeded one week, two bedroom unit in Escondido: fixed week, fixed unit. Is that correct?
A fixed week, two bedroom Escondido unit trades very, very well in RCI (in II, too, and you would have a choice which of those you joined). So you would not be limited to staying in Escondido. As
@Shankilicious said, there's an exchange fee of about $240, and you'd have to pay for your RCI membership every year, too.
Your mother-in-law's fixed week, two bedroom is the equivalent of 240,000 Welk Platinum Points. Welk Platinum Points do NOT translate directly into RCI points. Last I checked, which was many years ago, depositing my two bedroom lock-off got me about 60 RCI points. You can get some good trades with 60 RCI points! Also, any benefits that your MIL has would go to you. It's only when you climb up to 420,000 Platinum Points that there are benefits which don't transfer in a sale.
But I don't think your mother-in-law needs to sell the timeshare to you, all she needs to do is call Owner Services to change the title. There may be a fee for this, I'm not sure; based on buying my aging aunt and uncle's 240,000 points, there was a fee of about $300-$400 for the transfer. If Owner Services balks at her giving you the timeshare, have her add the two of you to the title, so that it's held in all three names. A side effect of this is that only TWO of the people on the deed may have membership cards. When we bought our first Welk two-bedroom lock-off, our daughter was going to college in San Diego. We included her on the deed and let her have one of the two membership cards so that she could get day use. Eventually we filed a quit-claim deed, taking her off the title. Eventually, you could do the same.
I apologize that I have no experience with trading for Disney timeshares. As
@Shankilicious mentioned, 240,000 Platinum Points do not qualify for trading for Disney through Welk's Experience Collection. You can, as he says, deposit your Welk timeshare into RCI and try for Disney that way.