Which use year for us?

[puffkin]

Trying to do an add on and trying to figure out if there is an advantage or not to keeping same use year.

We have 2 contracts currently, 150 at SSR and 100 at AKV. Both with June use year. We are looking at doing another 100-120 point add on, most likely at SSR. We travel all different times of the year but usually late April/early May, late summer, October, early December. We like staying at all the resorts for different reasons, so 11 mo booking at a particular resort isn't a huge issue for us.

Am I limiting myself by only looking at June resales? I would probably be making independent reservations for our trips per contract which is basically what I do now. IE I only use the AKV contract for one reservation and only use the SSR for the next. I rarely transfer points between the two contracts...actually I think I've only done it once in the 6 years I've had both. I don't mind having seperate membership numbers or banking deadlines. Any thoughts?

 

[a742246]

Trying to do an add on and trying to figure out if there is an advantage or not to keeping same use year.

We have 2 contracts currently, 150 at SSR and 100 at AKV. Both with June use year. We are looking at doing another 100-120 point add on, most likely at SSR. We travel all different times of the year but usually late April/early May, late summer, October, early December. We like staying at all the resorts for different reasons, so 11 mo booking at a particular resort isn't a huge issue for us.

Am I limiting myself by only looking at June resales? I would probably be making independent reservations for our trips per contract which is basically what I do now. IE I only use the AKV contract for one reservation and only use the SSR for the next. I rarely transfer points between the two contracts...actually I think I've only done it once in the 6 years I've had both. I don't mind having seperate membership numbers or banking deadlines. Any thoughts?

I would buy a feb or mar UY to use for your April/May trips this way if you have to cancel that trip you can still use the points for your later trips.

 

[Sandisw]

I went through the same thing a few years ago and decided to go with a different UY because we were going to be doing 150 points and figured it was large enough that I could just treat it as though that was my only membership.

Plus, we had plans to use it for our split stays and it worked out. Since buying, we have now added going Memorial Day and our original June UY isn't really ideal for that.

So, given that you are considering a bigger add on and you do go at a time where June UY is not ideal, I would definitely look for a contract that works better with those April/May trips. Dec, Feb, Mar or April would work very well.

I know own Dec and June and feel that it works very well for my travel times!!

 

[lovin'fl]

Recently, when we were looking to add on small contract (have 200 OKW with June UY and 75 HH with Aug UY) we were looking to add onto HH and would only do Aug UY (we did briefly consider a 150 point HH contract with Dec UY...but decided against it when we added up what our MF would be in total every year). I think if you are going to add on a small (up to 75 points) contract at the same resort you already own at, then you should try to keep the same UY....especially if you are adding onto an existing small contract (like if we added on 55 to our 75 HH...I'd want it to be same UY so we could actually book a nice HH trip all in one reservation). We added on 100 AKV points and they happen to have our Aug UY...so for us. But for you, OP, you have 2 nice sized contracts and want to add on another nice sized contract...it would be ideal to get a June UY, but we have used both our contracts to book a resie (2 linked resies) and it's not all that big of a deal.

 

[Kidanifan08]

I would be in favor of keeping a June UY. Only your Apr/May plans are at risk with a June UY, while all of your other travel times fit fine in that UY. Now, if you have a situation where you may have to cancel trips at the last minute, then maybe having some separate points for your Spring trips would make some sense.

If you have kids (and it appears appears you do), you will find that mid to late summer becomes a very popular time for you to travel, and perhaps Thanksgiving, Christmas and Fall or Winter break. If you buy SSR, you can use all of your SSR points as one contract to make a reservation (i.e. long summer trip). If your second SSR contract has a different UY, the only way to use the points together is to transfer points from one SSR to the other. Currently, you can't see transferred points on the member website, so then you are not able to use those transferred points to book online.

If you were looking to get 50-75 points for BCV or BWV for F&W every other year, then I would say a different UY would not be a big deal. But since you already own SSR and the majority of your travel times work with that UY, I would stick with June, IMHO.

 

[a742246]

Keep in mind if you have a May reservation and you have a last minute cancellation you have a strong chance of losing those June points. If you have an early UY say March a last minute cancellation you will have holding points but they will be available until next February.
Plus you have better chance of getting a better deal if you have a 3or 4 UY option then a 1 month(June) option.

 

[puffkin]

Thanks everyone for the insight. The more I think about it, the more I think a Winter UY makes sense for us. That way we can try to book any spring trips on that contract and use our other contracts for the trips taken at other times of the year.