You can book your home resort 11 months prior to your check out date no matter what use year you buy. Use year has nothing to do with when you may call for the reservation.
Use year is the month your points are renewed each year, and it determines your banking deadline. Banking deadlines can be important if you have to cancel a vacation and won't be able to reschedule it before the end of the use year.
For example, let's say you want to vacation in December, 2008. No matter what use year you have you can reserve your villa in January 2008 (assuming you want to stay at your home resort).
If you had an August use year, you would use 2008 use year points for that vacation. Your banking deadline for 2008 points would be the end of the 8th month following August 2008 or March 31, 2009. So if you have to cancel the Christmas vacation and do it at least 31 days in advance, you could either reschedule your vacation for sometime prior to July 31, 2009 or you could bank the points into your 2009 use year. You'd have to call to bank before 3/31/2009, but if you do, the points would then be good for vacations between 8/1/2009 and 7/31/2010.
Now let's say instead of August, you had a February use year. You would still be using 2008 use year points for a December 2008 vacation. But now your banking deadline is September 30, 2008. If you called to cancel your Christmas vacation after 9/30/2008, but at least 31 days prior to arrival, you could not bank the points. You are past the banking deadline. If you couldn't reschedule your vacation before 1/31/2009 (the end of your 2008 use year), you would lose the points.
If you regularly travel at the same time each year, it's best to have a use year that is a few months prior to that time. But keep in mind that your travel habits may change over the course of a membership. What starts out "perfect" may end up not so perfect. Also, if you don't cancel vacations, your use year won't matter at all.
Deciding to buy (or not) can be quite a journey - good luck with yours!
I have been reading all week and today I helped a customer who worked for Disney. I asked her what she did and she said timeshares! It's a sign. My boyfriend laughed..
