Complicated booking question- Aulani

[clansac]

I hope I can explain this clearly!

We are planning on booking a trip to Aulani in Feb 2013 to celebrate my parents' 40th anniversary. We want to get a Grand Villa but we won't have enough points available. We'll have 320 (using one year, plus borrowing ahead a year) but we need 475.

Can we rent the extra points and still book one reservation? Or would I have to get a transfer from another member? Can we purchase that many extra from Disney for a one-time purchase?

Any other ideas how to make the math work, other than purchasing more points LOL!

 

[disneynutz]

Do you own Aulani points?

Bill

 

[Deb & Bill]

I hope I can explain this clearly!

We are planning on booking a trip to Aulani in Feb 2013 to celebrate my parents' 40th anniversary. We want to get a Grand Villa but we won't have enough points available. We'll have 320 (using one year, plus borrowing ahead a year) but we need 475.

Can we rent the extra points and still book one reservation? Or would I have to get a transfer from another member? Can we purchase that many extra from Disney for a one-time purchase?

Any other ideas how to make the math work, other than purchasing more points LOL!

Like Bill is inferring, your 320 points need to be Aulani points. Then you would need a transfer of 155 points from another member of more Aulani points so you can book at 11 months out. Otherwise, the GV may be gone by the time you can book at 7 months out.

You could use the 320 points a get as many days as you could with those points. Then see if you can get the rest of the nights for cash.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

You can only purchase up to 24 points per UY from Disney so that won't be enough to cover the rest of the reservation.

You could rent points and MS could link the reservation's together. That can get a bit complicated b/c both you and the person you are renting from need to be on the phone in order to give the OK to link and part of the reservation will always be outside of your control.

You could transfer in points and then that way you will have control of the points and it would be one seamless reservation.

Or - you could see if you could add on the rest of the days via cash. If there's availability with the member discount then it could be linked together with your point reservation.

 

[clansac]

None of them are Aulani points, they are all VGC points. Thanks for the tip on doing the rest in a cash reservation, that might be the best option.

I called Member Services and they seemed totally confused by what I was asking. I'm a little concerned that a linked reservation would be a disaster!

I don't fully understand how a transfer works. Another member would just transfer the points to us, which we would pay for in an outside transaction, correct? Then the points become ours to do with what we want?

I suppose it would also be an option to rent Aulani points for the entire reservation, and rent out our VGC points to someone else to make up the cost.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

None of them are Aulani points, they are all VGC points. Thanks for the tip on doing the rest in a cash reservation, that might be the best option.

I called Member Services and they seemed totally confused by what I was asking. I'm a little concerned that a linked reservation would be a disaster!

I don't fully understand how a transfer works. Another member would just transfer the points to us, which we would pay for in an outside transaction, correct? Then the points become ours to do with what we want?

I suppose it would also be an option to rent Aulani points for the entire reservation, and rent out our VGC points to someone else to make up the cost.

I've never had a linked reservation be a disaster so don't let that concern you and I've linked across 2 membership numbers more than once. I do recommend that you double check when checking in that they front desk has you checking out on the correct day and not at the end of your first "link". That's been about the only problem I've had and once I pointed out there were more days they were able to correct it right then and there. There were some horror stories back when people were segmenting for dining but that's a different situation from linking.

With a transfer the points do essentially become yours so that's the best way if you want to have full control.