11 and 7 month reservations

[tom1944]

Do I understand this correctly

If I purchase contracts at 2 different resorts I get the 11 month reservation window for each but only at the home resort.

If I book at one at 11 months my points for the 2nd contract can only be used at the non home resort at 7 months

 

[CarolynFH]

Correct. Owning at two different resorts does not allow you to use points from both resorts to book one of them at 11 months. The home resort advantage is exactly that.

 

[tom1944]

So is it common to book at both at 11 months and then see if you can move to one resort at the 7 month window?

 

[CarolynFH]

Yes, standard advice is to book your home resort(s) at 11 months and then try to change at 7, so that if a 7-month change isn’t possible, you at least have a place to stay.

 

[sndral]

So is it common to book at both at 11 months and then see if you can move to one resort at the 7 month window?

There’s no one ‘common’ way to manage it, IMO.
I think most hoping to switch to a non home resort at 7 months book their home resort at 11 months so they’ll have a back up plan in case they can’t get what they want at 7 months. How successful you are w/ changing at 7 months depends a lot on when you are going & which resort you are trying to book. If you’re going during high DVC demand times it’s harder to switch at 7 months than lower demand times.
Some folks prefer split stays & stay at each of their home resorts.
We own at 2 resorts & alternate years, this year we are staying at the VGF & banked our AKV points. Next year we’ll stay at AKV & bank our VGF points.

 

[tom1944]

There’s no one ‘common’ way to manage it, IMO.
I think most hoping to switch to a non home resort at 7 months book their home resort at 11 months so they’ll have a back up plan in case they can’t get what they want at 7 months. How successful you are w/ changing at 7 months depends a lot on when you are going & which resort you are trying to book. If you’re going during high DVC demand times it’s harder to switch at 7 months than lower demand times.
Some folks prefer split stays & stay at each of their home resorts.
We own at 2 resorts & alternate years, this year we are staying at the VGF & banked our AKV points. Next year we’ll stay at AKV & bank our VGF points.

Thank you

That makes sense

We can decide if like split stays and if we do not we can always bank points for one resort and borrow the next year for the other

 

[DVCsloth]

There’s no one ‘common’ way to manage it, IMO.
I think most hoping to switch to a non home resort at 7 months book their home resort at 11 months so they’ll have a back up plan in case they can’t get what they want at 7 months. How successful you are w/ changing at 7 months depends a lot on when you are going & which resort you are trying to book. If you’re going during high DVC demand times it’s harder to switch at 7 months than lower demand times.
Some folks prefer split stays & stay at each of their home resorts.
We own at 2 resorts & alternate years, this year we are staying at the VGF & banked our AKV points. Next year we’ll stay at AKV & bank our VGF points.

That's kind of what we do except we have 3 resorts VGF, CCV and recently added Riviera. Sometimes at 7 months, we will modify our reservations if we want to add more nights or larger accommodations. Just need to watch that none of my banked points expire. Sometimes I will just grab the nights if available and call MS to merge them properly. It's a little bit of extra planning, but it allows us to visit different resorts if we want to try for a non-home resort.