Saturday, January 07, 2006
Due to family pressure, today I had to visit another idiot center. This time, we visited the original Universal Studios amusement park, not the Islands of Adventure that we went to yesterday. The discount pass that we bought (which is a whole different story), is valid for 7 days to both parks, but anyone willing to spend more than 2 days in these parks must be insane. Yesterday was more than I could handle, but today we were back for more rides. Shrek was probably the only one that was memorable and funny, most of the rest was just crap. The "Back to the future" ride takes its visitors to the year 2015, and it is 2015 as imagined in the late 1980s or whenever the Back to the Futures ride was invented.
Anyway, the different idiot parks in Florida do not provide any opportunities to learn anything at all. They are completely devoid of any intellectual or actul information of any kind.
In the morning, we went through a timeshare presentation by Sheraton here in Florida. While we did so in order to get cheaper tickets to Universal Studios (saving about $100 in total), the promised breakfast presentation of 1.5 hours ended up lasting more than twice that long. As with timeshare presentations in Europe, you are presented with random figures on a piece of paper, and professional salespeople do their best to convince you that it is a great deal. We were offered a 2 week timeshare, admittedly in a nice 2 bedroom apartment, for about $38,000. Close math tells you that this values the vacation apartment to approximately $1,500,000, which speaks of a big real estate bubble. In addition, you are promised all kinds of points from Starwood, but there is not written documentation as to how you can use any of what you are buying.
Anyway, as posted in a previous entry, I am extremely disappointed by Sheraton. Even more so, the incompetent and hopeless souls selling their timeshare packages seem to believe that their customers are idiots. Perhaps that is for the best, as you probably need to be an idiot to buy a timeshare property in Florida with its inflated bubble real estate properties.
Hilton might suck as well, but there is no Paris Sheraton. Screw you, Starwood. More on this later.
Anyway, the different idiot parks in Florida do not provide any opportunities to learn anything at all. They are completely devoid of any intellectual or actul information of any kind.
In the morning, we went through a timeshare presentation by Sheraton here in Florida. While we did so in order to get cheaper tickets to Universal Studios (saving about $100 in total), the promised breakfast presentation of 1.5 hours ended up lasting more than twice that long. As with timeshare presentations in Europe, you are presented with random figures on a piece of paper, and professional salespeople do their best to convince you that it is a great deal. We were offered a 2 week timeshare, admittedly in a nice 2 bedroom apartment, for about $38,000. Close math tells you that this values the vacation apartment to approximately $1,500,000, which speaks of a big real estate bubble. In addition, you are promised all kinds of points from Starwood, but there is not written documentation as to how you can use any of what you are buying.
Anyway, as posted in a previous entry, I am extremely disappointed by Sheraton. Even more so, the incompetent and hopeless souls selling their timeshare packages seem to believe that their customers are idiots. Perhaps that is for the best, as you probably need to be an idiot to buy a timeshare property in Florida with its inflated bubble real estate properties.
Hilton might suck as well, but there is no Paris Sheraton. Screw you, Starwood. More on this later.
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Take the freebies and leave the rest. Timeshares are one of the worst investments you can ever make.
You are quite right, though we were hoping that a presentation by Starwood would be of better quality than some of the crazy small companies that you come across. However, we were proven wrong.
Hi janhoo,
I gotta say, I like your style! I'm considering subscribing to this blog.
About timeshares- you can expect an arduous timeshare sales presentation from any resort developer or big hotel company... even the high-falutin ones like Hilton, etc. It's an outdated practice from the bad old days when people were conned into buying worthless swampland on a constant basis. The industry is changing, but it's an uphill battle, and frankly the big boys aren't helping as much as they could.
You know the reason that timeshares are so expensive? Every resort tacks on marketing costs to the price of any new timeshare. They have to, to pay for all the free toasters, booze or whatever, and the staff to distribute these items. From what I've seen, these costs can be as much as 100% of the timeshares actual value. Once you buy one of these timeshares... well, it's like driving a new car off the lot: instant, massive depreciation.
Not to sound too advertorial (I do this stuff all day at work, which is why I know so much about timeshare) but one can circumvent all this crap by buying timeshare on the resale market for a fraction of the developer's original asking price. Plus, there's no 72-hour timeshare sales presentation to sit through.
Anyway, thanks for the good post. Your readership just increased by one.
Regards,
Ian
I gotta say, I like your style! I'm considering subscribing to this blog.
About timeshares- you can expect an arduous timeshare sales presentation from any resort developer or big hotel company... even the high-falutin ones like Hilton, etc. It's an outdated practice from the bad old days when people were conned into buying worthless swampland on a constant basis. The industry is changing, but it's an uphill battle, and frankly the big boys aren't helping as much as they could.
You know the reason that timeshares are so expensive? Every resort tacks on marketing costs to the price of any new timeshare. They have to, to pay for all the free toasters, booze or whatever, and the staff to distribute these items. From what I've seen, these costs can be as much as 100% of the timeshares actual value. Once you buy one of these timeshares... well, it's like driving a new car off the lot: instant, massive depreciation.
Not to sound too advertorial (I do this stuff all day at work, which is why I know so much about timeshare) but one can circumvent all this crap by buying timeshare on the resale market for a fraction of the developer's original asking price. Plus, there's no 72-hour timeshare sales presentation to sit through.
Anyway, thanks for the good post. Your readership just increased by one.
Regards,
Ian
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: 7:05 AM
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