Worldmark owners-odds of getting Fairfield affiliate resorts?

[hellorobbo]

Some background on my situation - I have long wavered on whether to purchase timeshare weeks. The issue is that we have vacationed in Orlando for the past few years (we're in our thirties with two young kids) and I could always rent weeks very cheaply and to me, it did not make sense economically to purchase a timeshare to vacation in Orlando. Our vacation patterns are changing which has caused me to begin my research once again.

All the great info on TUG has led me to focus on Worldmark. Overall, most Worldmark owners generally seem to be happy with their purchase. I particularly like what I have read about the lower management fees, flexibility of the system, and that they are good traders etc.

My concern is Worldmark's North American resorts are located primarily on the West coast. I am in Toronto and I have read many TUG members posts suggesting you purchase weeks within an easy one days drive from home. I am not sure what our future travel patterns will be but it will obviously be easier to travel to east coast resorts (but we will also likely travel to the west coast). Of course some of you will suggest I look at Fairfield or Bluegreen etc. but I get the sense that most prefer Worldmark over these two. Bluegreen has the added uncertainty of the David Siegel situation.

I realize Worldmark owners also have access to 9 Fairfield affiliate resorts (east coast primarily) so my questions is:

How likely would I, as a Worldmark owner, be able to get the Fairfield affiliate resorts?

 

[spatenfloot]

There are only 1 or 2 units in each of the available FF resorts for WM to use. However, you can always exchange into east coast resorts using RCI or Interval. WM also has plenty of units in Orlando since it is a WM resort.

 

[HudsHut]

http://tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?p=215279#post215279

In this thread, post #5, I discussed when I was observing the 12 Fairfield resorts being loaded into WM inventory.

I have this update --
Last Friday's inventory load was through June 23, 2007.
The past 2 weeks, the Fairfield inventory has been loaded on Friday mornings around 9 am PDT.

The most sought after resort is FF Waikiki which is snapped up within a very short time of being loaded. And the summer weeks are the East Coast resorts are popular too.

Once you decide what week you want, you have to calculate when it will be loaded and be online, constantly checking until the load occurs.
---
WorldMark trades very well. You should have very good success in using II to get into Eastern resorts.

 

[hellorobbo]

Thanks for your responses. So just to confirm, only one or two units at each of the Fairfield affiliate resorts are available to Worldmark owners. for ex. Fairfield Ocean Boulevard at Myrtle Beach may have 250 units (no idea what the real # is but use 250 for this example) but only two of those are available for each week of the year to the 230,000 Worldmark owners.

If this is the case, you obviously don't want to count on getting any weeks at the Fairfield resorts even with great planning and knowing when the weeks are loaded etc. The odds are simply stacked against you

 

[HudsHut]

Yes, the agreement is that 1 or 2 units have been set aside at each of the 12 FF resorts for WM owners.

It's not as bad as it sounds, since the vast majority of WorldMark owners are unaware
1) that they can reserve the 12 Fairfield resorts with no exchange fee
2) of when the weeks are being loaded

With the information I have given you, you would have a very good chance of getting the week you wanted, assuming you were able to monitor the online availabililty on Friday mornings and reserve immediately thereafter.

However, there is no guarantee that the "affiliate" program will continue. We have heard nothing to the contrary, and we believe it will continue, but there is always the disclaimer that it could be discontinued.

Feel free to join us on the WorldMark Owners' forum:
http://www.wmowners.com/forum/