My wife got an offer for 7500 AA miles, if we stayed at Marriott Vacation Club in Orlando, its $199 for 4 nights. Its called Marriott's Grande Vista Resort. Has any one done this? I knew some people did the one on oahu. Just curious, since my wife got the offer and I didnt.

Any thoughts or opinion would be appericated

They will require that you and your wife take a time share presentation.It lasts about an hour and there will be a hard sell sales job on you both to buy a week(s) in the Marriott chain of properties.

You are under no obligation to buy.

Get in front of a mirror and practice saying "no thanks"

Then again,you may be in the market to buy. Have fun . A good deal IMO.

I don't know anything in particular about the Marriott offers, but I was once solicited by a company out of Atlantic City - I checked into the offer as it seemed really good- they were offering a timeshare & a weekend stay for something like 100 bucks. When I read the fine print - it didn't state that the lodging offer was for the timeshare, but at "company-approved lodging" - so for 100 bucks, it could have been anything & not necessarily the timeshare place - so I passed. I recommend you find out all the details before you purchase.

I am pretty sure that the Marriott in Orlando does that...you could be in any number of hotels, including, if I remember right, a Fairfield Inn...which isn't such a good deal. Make sure you get into one of the nice ones guaranteed!

As someone who owns a couple of timeshares, I don't have the knee-jerk negative reaction. They work very well for my family.

That said, it's good to educate yourself before any meeting. Go to www.tug2.net for the Timeshare Users Group. You can look up resale ads for the Marriotts in the Orlando area to get a sense of just how high the markups are.

Not all salesman are going to be high pressure but some certainly will. You are under no obligation to suffer abuse. You may even decide you like the timeshare concept and Marriott does it very well.

Many people on the TUG board say that the best way to end a meeting is to let the salesman know that you are considering resales because of all you read on the TUG bulletin board. From what I hear, that pretty much ends the meeting. Their ideal customer is unedcated about the system.

Enjoy your vacation. I promise you'll come out of the sales meeting alive!

Another way to quickly end the meeting is to tell them you are on your honeymoon. Obviously this might work better in Hawaii than Orlando... Seriously: we did one of the deals with HH on the Big Island, and told the guy it was our honeymoon (which it actually was).

The salesman laughed and admitted that in his 25 year career, he'd figured out that honeymooners never buy. He gave us our "credit" without even doing the dog & pony show - we were out of there in 15 minutes.

To the point at hand: Marriott's timeshare presentations are tasteful by industry standards. Yeah, you will have to say NO a few times, but I wouldn't compare it to a company you've never heard of out of Atlantic City that probably uses every dirty sales trick in the book. I've done a couple of Marriott timeshare tours: they are not that bad.

Or tell them that you might be interested but are very busy at the moment because the court won't let you declare bankruptcy.

We've visited several Marriott resorts on promos, and have never had a "high powered" sales pitch. The offer should clearly state where your accomodations will be. Ours, from Marriott, have always been at the subject resort.

That makes sense. Naturally, they'd want to give you a taste of the actual product they want to sell.

Sticking prospects into a Fairfield Inn seems counterproductive. Unhappy guests probably don't buy many timeshares.

We participated in a timeshare presentation in Hawaii that was not at the subject resort. We had the presentation at the hotel we were booked at and were offered a tour of the timeshare facility after the presentation.

Were you at least offered a respectable hotel for your stay? I mean, if you flew out there for an MVCI presentation, did they at least put you in a mainline Marriott/Renaissance?

Come to think of it, I think the frequent HGVC and MVCI direct mailings I get for Kauai and the Big Island only promise rooms in the hotels, not apartments or villas in the timeshares, during my preview stay. So we're talking Marriott Kauai and HWV. I guess I can understand that. But if one of the chains teased me in with a low rate and then put me up in a roadside motel, I'd be pretty disappointed and probably not in a mood to do further business with them.