I would stick with same use year for planning purposes. Only one contract number to manage etc.
Your situation is interesting since you say you may dump a contract once you get older but love BCV and BW. I personally love that whole area myself and stay there every chance I get (family loves split stays)
but I would have to think long and hard about buying at either of those two resorts if I didn't plan to run the contracts out until 2042. I think selling these contracts in 10-15 years would be difficult with so little time left on term.
The inverse to this argument is value today. Prices have been jumping up over the past 6-8 months and I believe they will continue to climb once Riviera goes on sale. Poly and CC sell for $176 pp new at the moment so I can't see Riviera selling for less than this amount. In fact, I expect the price to be around the $185 pp mark once the resort goes on sale, following the escalations Poly had seen over it's sales run.
That makes current prices for BCV and BBW rather attractive and I would argue that aside from the longer contract term, Riviera is ultimately the inferior resort from a location perspective.
Final thought - are you sure you are not just suffering from point addonitis as your signature suggests? I purchased two contacts this past summer - one new at Poly for 100 points and one resale at AK for 160 points. Both came fully loaded so I have 520 points to play with in 2018 and used 130 additional holding points to book New Years this year at WDW as well. With the New Years trip, I have now also booked trips for March and May at WDW and plan to book
Disneyland for August as well (all 2018). Each trip is around 7-8 days (split stays) and I had zero issues booking 1 bdrm units at both BCV and BW during all three trips. We are staying at BC from Jan 1-4th, at BW from March 17-20 and at BCV again from May 18 to 21st.
My point is, outside of needing the cheapest studio rooms during Food & Wine, booking at BC and BW doesn't seem too difficult. As you already own at BLT and have relatively easy access to Epcot via the monorail from that resort, why not just continue to add on points there? You get longer term, get a contract that will continue to escalate in value should you decide to re-sell in a few years time and still get the amount of points you need to book BCV or BW whenever you feel like it.
Good luck in whichever direction you decide to go in.
Thanks for your detailed and thoughtful points! Here's where I am going ...
Re UY and end date - I am back to leaning toward a separate UY so that I have the potential to transfer points between contracts if I want/need to. Also, right now our "non bankable times" are Oct-Nov-Dec-Jan. Which ordinarily wouldn't be much to consider since if we had to cancel a trip booked during that time, we'd probably just rent out the dedicated reservation. But now that we are on the verge of planning a Thanksgiving 2018 trip (which also happens to be YDD's birthday), I am thinking that we may want to go over Thanksgiving and/or Christmas relatively often, in which case, we'd probably want a different UY from February. All along, our plan was to use the 2 contracts separately, probably in alternating years, so yes it would be sort of a pain to have to manage separately, but the trade off would be a UY also better suited for fall/Christmas trips. The other time we are likely to travel is late August/early September for lower crowds, cheaper, and covers 2 birthdays. So an August UY would cover both and give us the most flexibility in case of cancel. As for my remark about possibly shedding a contract in 10-15 years - in 10 years my kids will be 16 and 12. It is entirely possible that we may not need to use so many points, if their school schedules get more rigorous. OTOH, we may find that we would like to travel in 2BR more, in which case we would probably use all or most of the points. I'm not terribly worried about the 2042 end date - either we'd keep the contract and DH and I would take some adults only trips in our sunset years (F&W, most likely), or if we sold we wouldn't expect to get much, or (more likely, if we didn't find a way to use the points) we'd rent them. My parents bought various timeshares (never
DVC, unfortunately!) when I was younger and we really didn't use them once my sister and I were out of college. Often it was hard to coordinate schedules with everyone's vacation time because we were all working. We are older parents, so DH and I will be retired in about 15-20 years, which is also around when both kids will be out of college. Which happens to get pretty close to the 2042 end date, so I expect a lot will be changing in the 15-25 years out time frame anyway.
Current prices for BWV/BCV and the Riviera effect: I see the demand for EP/HS area resorts (esp those in walking distance) will go up once the new lands in DHS open, once Riviera opens, and I thought WDW announced plans to revamp EP after DHS? If anything, that area will only get more desirable, so prices should remain stable or potentially go up. Since I love the area as it is now (and EP is actually mine and DH's favorite park), and love both resorts, buying a 2nd contract at BWV/BCV would essentially be a hedge against such price increases (and possibly increased demand). We may be in a lull right now because the new lands aren't imminently opening yet, but if Pandora type crowds are any indication, I expect it will be REALLY hard to get openings at 7mo at certain times of the year after DHS is fully open. Of course, the economy could tank, there could be all sorts of political things happening that make people not go to WDW ... who knows. But that's not a case for waiting, because the economy might never tank, etc etc. Unless something really really REALLY bad happens, DH and I have good job security and intend to keep taking vacations.
Addonitis: you definitely have a point there! We are a case of - we bought intending to stay in studios (because we'd previously stayed in deluxe hotel rooms), but since the contract(s) we initially bought were semi-loaded (or at least not stripped), and I got enough points to have the cushion everyone talks about so you're not stuck if you can't get a standard studio, we had more than enough BLT to stay in TPV studios over Christmas week, but not enough to stay in a std 1BR for that time. Frankly, if we had ended up with 40 more points at BLT total, we probably wouldn't be contemplating a 2nd contract, but DH was a little gun shy about overcommitting to DVC. So erred on the side of staying in smaller rooms, etc. THEN - a couple of things changed - 1) I admittedly hadn't done my research about the size of BLT studios and had fallen in love with BLT on the basis of a 2br LV that had great lake and partial fireworks views - 2) DH and I each have 1 parent who is terminally ill, with the other healthy, vital parent being the full time caregiver. Each of the ill parents has taken some serious steps down in the last 8-9 months, and so we are thinking forward to a time in the not-too-distant future when we may be taking WDW trips with our kids and one grandparent, in which case a 2BR will be necessary. If so, then we are definitely going to need all the points in a second, good size contract, and sooner rather than later. And - since each of our ill parents seems like they may not have more than 1-2 years left (and possibly less than that), we would likely be spending a lot more time with the surviving (grand)parents in the near future. So most likely future Disney trips would not be just DH, me and 2 kids.
You do make a good point for adding on more BLT points, and we certainly wouldn't rule it out, but I feel like with the timing and upcoming developments to the EP/HS area (and EP being our favorite park) it seems like that area may be the better place to add a 2nd home resort now.
Finally - in thinking about all this - I may have talked myself into BWV edging out BCV for now. BECAUSE - someone upthread said "BWV for the colder months, and BCV in the summer for SAB" - our likely summer travel is usually late, and 7mo availability in 1BR at BCV seems pretty easy. While winter holidays at either resort you'd probably need home resort advantage. So then it comes down to, would I prefer to use cheaper BWV points to book at BCV in the summer, or more expensive BCV points to book a p/g view at BWV in the summer?