2 Use Years... 6 months apart?

[DizGirl20]

Is it just plain crazy to have 2 different use years (at 2 different resorts)... 6 months apart? It would be February and August. Sigh.

 

[Sandisw]

I had two UY's for a very short time and I didn't like it. But, I also only had 50 points in one of them and that made it more difficult.

When you have 2 UY's, it is two different memberships. That means you can not combine points for a single nights reservation without using up your once per UY transfer.

So, in my case, I had a 130 points in one UY and 50 in the other. To book my typical 5 or 6 nights a year, I didn't have enough points to do it without borrowing, something I did not want to do.

Now, if the contracts had enough points to achieve what you want and you plan to use them for different vacations, it might be easier to manage.

IMO, it's not worth it to have two memberships.

 

[Mamiamjo]

I had two UYs but ended up selling my smaller contract. After the point reallocation my second UY points couldn't get me the Sun-Thurs ressie anymore so I sold them and I'm now looking for a similar sized contract with the same UY as the contract I kept

Of course having two different resorts and using the two for booking home resort preference might make it easier?

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

If it is then I am! Apr and Oct here. I don't find it that difficult and it's nice to have different UY's if you don't always travel at one set time of the year. I am able to use points that allow me to stay within a banking period should I ever have to cancel. I mostly wanted the Apr for VGC travels but am finding it beneficial for me overall.

Are you looking to do this or is this what you already have? I'd say some would depend on the size of the contracts and why you have or want the two UY's.

 

[disneynutz]

I agree with Sandisw. We still have 2 and when the resale market recovers a little we will have one.

Bill

 

[Granny]

I've got two use years (February and October) at two different resorts. I haven't found it to be a problem or a challenge at all. I would think that for those who like to make a lot of short-range bookings it could be challenging, but then again so is one use year in that scenario.

I used to use Caskbill's software to help keep tabs but now I use an Excel spread sheet and it works fine.

It is also helpful that the DVC Member website has been upgraded to remind of banking windows and available booking windows.

I wouldn't worry much about the two use years unless you feel it would make things too challenging for you. In that case, you wouldn't want to feel stressed out about planning your points for the next 30-40 years.

 

[disneydawn6]

I did it on purpose. Dec and June... So I use my June use year points for my Oct and Nov reservations...

 

[Simba's Mom]

I was wondering about this also. We have an August UY and are currently looking for about 100 points at HHI (we already have 50 there, but as a PP said, this reallocation of points has changed the "usefulness" of that for what we wanted). We were wondering if we should limit our search to just August UY or look at all UY, regardless of how close to August.

 

[RobDoc]

Why not look for the HH points with a spring Use Year for those summer trips? We have Feb and June at HH and had March and Sep at OKW and both work very well. While it does take a little more point tracking, the member site and a simple checkbook program really simplify the accounting of those points and we've never had a problem or lost any points (yet).

Go for it!

 

[bwvBound]

Is it just plain crazy to have 2 different use years (at 2 different resorts)... 6 months apart? It would be February and August. Sigh.

While we have only 1 UY now -- I think there are some very valid reasons to maintain 2 UY depending on your anticipated travel patterns or purposes.

We currently have 3 contracts at WDW but intentionally kept the same OCT UY. Selecting "our" UY was a huge concern for us in the initial purchase and we've been quite happy with our choice. However, now that DVC has a resort at Disneyland ... we are considering picking up an APR UY contract as our travel patterns for California and Hawaii will be different than our patterns to Orlando.

• WDW? Mostly Fall and Winter travel between Oct-Feb. Our OCT UY is perfect.
• California and Hawaii? Mostly Spring, Summer, Fall travel between May-Oct. An APR UY would be a better fit.

(My apologies to Vero and Hilton Head enthusiasts. While both are lovely properties, I don't see us visiting them sufficiently often as to factor them into our travel patterns.)

 

[mikron2]

We have 7 memberships with 3 use years, tough to keep track. 5 in Feb, 1 in Dec and 1 in March.

 

[dcfromva]

I find it easier to keep track of the contracts with different UYs.

The contract that has 2 resorts on it is more difficult for me to keep track of things. One problem is I can't tell which points go to which resort for the purpose of the booking at the 11 month point. It becomes expecially tricky when there has been banking and borrowing action going on. Even though I had enough points to cover a reservation I wanted to make--I knew they weren't all the right kind of ponts (they were a mixture of BLT and VGC) I had to go into the contract details (there are several smaller contracts) and trace the details to actions and reservations to figure out how many points I needed to borrow for an upcoming reservation.

While the W-L rules are subject to change over time--right now you only get 2 W-Ls no matter how many points you own if they are on the same contract. If you have two UYs, you get 2 WLs for each UY which is also something to consider.