Complaint Review: Bluegreen Resorts/Vacation Club - Boca Raton Florida

The *only* aspect of the Bluegreen system that limits you to reserving the last ten days is a special benefit called "Hot Weeks", which is available only to "Traveler's Plus" members and gives you access to any RCI reserved weeks still available ten days before check in, which are not necessarily Bluegreen resorts. The advantage to Hot Weeks is you can get into a really expensive resort with only 3000 points, so if you just want to be "on the beach in a nice resort" within the next few weeks, the odds are fairly good that if you check hot weeks every day, you can get there. The disadvantages are that you can't reserve until ten days before check-in, and you are picking from the RCI weeks no one else wanted or that someone just cancelled on. If you want to get into a particular RCI resort, your odds will be way better if you use RCI the way most Bluegreen owners do, and trade a week for a week. If you want tips on trading Bluegreen for an RCI resort, I highly recommend the Yahoo Bluegreen group, where you can get an explanation on how regular RCI trades work and tips on what to reserve with your Bluegreen points to get the RCI resort reservation you want. Although if you can only plan your vacations 10 days ahead of time I'm not sure how much help that would be; however if you can plan your vacations further back it'll give you a lot more choices. But if you can plan your vacations earlier than 10 days, you absolutely can get reservations from Bluegreen. ANY Bluegreen owner of any type can reserve ANY wholly-owned Bluegreen property starting eleven months out from check-in day, subject to availabilty. Technically, any Bluegreen owner of any type can make an 11-month out reservation on any Bluegreen resort, but practically speaking some of the Bluegreen "associate" resorts can be hard for the average owner to get into, because people who own enough points to qualify for "Premiere Membership" can get on the wait list earlier. It's a wait list and not a reservation before eleven months because the owner of that unit that week always gets first pick (all owners can reserve their own unit's week 12 months out). There are 26 owned resorts and 8 Associate resorts, I believe, and I'm not saying regular owners never get into the Associate resorts, because they do, just that their odds are not as good. If you reserve eleven months out, and if you are able to be flexible enough to shift your vacation back and forth a few weeks, you can get a reservation at the Bluegreen owned resort you want. You don't *have* to reserve that early, and few people really do, but that early you can be pretty sure of getting exactly what you want in terms of location and time. The more flexible you are, the later you can reserve and get what you want. If you want a particular resort but any date will do, you can get in way later than 11 months. If you want a resort for a particular date but don't care which, you can get in way later than 11 months. There are people who wait until a few months out and still get something they want, because they just want "a vacation at a nice resort" and they don't really care which resort they get into. If you want "a vacation near the beach" you can often reserve fairly late and get a Bluegreen reservation, but if you want "a vacation with a beachfront unit" you'll need to be reserving earlier to get it. Again, I highly recommend the yahoo Bluegreen group if you want to get the best use of your Bluegreen purchase. :)