Does UY really matter?

[danjoealexis3006]

Hi all! My dh and I are looking to purchase resale soon. We usually travel in March/April and Oct/Nov..So what UY month should we be looking at?

 

[MamaBear12]

I would go with an October UY given your travel times. September could work as well.

 

[_auroraborealis_]

October would be a good one.

UY really is about a failsafe for cancellation more than anything else.

 

[Debbie Jean]

October would be a good one.

UY really is about a failsafe for cancellation more than anything else.

I definitely would agree with October.

And for what it's worth, use year doesn't matter... until it matters! No one anticipates cancellations. Picking the right use year is at least one less thing to have to worry about when life happens.

 

[skippytx]

I have 2 opinions regarding use year that some folks might not agree with

1) I would recommend buying a popular use year. If you look at the breakdown of the number of points in different UY at certain resorts, some of them are kinda rare. For instance April (5.8% of total BLT points) and October UY (5.1%) at Bay Lake or March (5.8%) at Grand Floridian. It probably doesn't matter for most people, but adding on more points at those resorts can take a little longer than usual due to the relatively small percentage of points for those UY. A Feb BLT or June VGF will be much easier to add on to. Selling a rare UY though shouldn't be a problem.

2) I really dislike later in the year UY, the idea of paying dues in Jan, but not getting the points for 9 or 11 months just bugs me. It's not rational, but it does.

A March use year would work, Feb might be pushing it, but depends if you need to be able to cancel and then still bank your points or not. For many folks it's not something to worry about, but life happens.

 

[D-Trick]

2) I really dislike later in the year UY, the idea of paying dues in Jan, but not getting the points for 9 or 11 months just bugs me. It's not rational, but it does.

On the flip side, having a late UY allows you to purchase an addon/direct contract later in the year while still getting last year points... and only being on the hook for much less in prorated dues. Still minor, but with MFs increasing in the coming years this is something to take into account.

 

[lovin'fl]

Honestly, UY does not matter too much. Unless you are one to cancel trips often. Then you want a UY that will allow you to still bank your points from cancelled trip (with the idea that you might not be able to re-use within that UY and need to bank). We have 2 UY (which I REALLY don't recommend having 2, but that's for another thread)...June and Aug. Got June first without paying much attention to UY. We go all over the calendar but have done a lot of Aug-Dec trips. So June and Aug hasn't been too bad. But anytime we cancel, we just rebook. We do DVC about 3-4 times a year (WDW and HHI) so we can just rebook for a few weeks later. Never had an issue, can always find a way to use our points. But ideally, you want the UY to be right before your typical travel time. Our Aug is a pretty good one and actually Sept would be best because we likely won't be doing Aug trips anymore (had to for years because our DDs played travel softball and only had like 2 weeks in Aug and then Thanksgiving and Xmas weeks off of softball to go on vacation). That brings me to another point...your travel times will change over the years. When we bought, 2006, our 3 kids were in year round elementary and we could do vacays on that Sept-Oct three week intersession. That was fabulous. But then we moved to traditional school schedule, so June- Aug or holidays...but then softball so only Aug or Xmas really. Now they are all off to college and we do March spring break with DDs and Oct F&W with SIL and BIL (and DS this year as he'll be done college). Been doing HHI in May.

 

[stuartsong]

I you are a new owner and not very familiar with DVC use year, I would recommend February use year. This is only due to keeping the use year and calendar year as similar as possible.

 

[Lorilais_mommie]

we love our oct UY! We are from the north east and it is way to hot for us june, july, and august. Since our banking window is the end of may it works out perfectly. should we ever need to cancel we will still be within our banking window. the only down side is oct is a rare UY. we have been looking for resale and had to start looking at AUG and sept. UY but there were no Oct UY out there at the time.

 

[Dean]

Hi all! My dh and I are looking to purchase resale soon. We usually travel in March/April and Oct/Nov..So what UY month should we be looking at?

To answer one question, UY can be VERY important for some and not so much for another. For many it's worth a good yeas worth of points. For the dates you list Oct will be slightly better than Mrch but not that much. That assumes the volume of travel is roughly the same and the risk of canceling is roughly the same. Any minimal timing advantage of Oct could go away completely if you're more likely to travel in the spring or your risk of having to cancel is more for spring than fall.

 

[arminnie]

I was glad to hear that October BLT might be a good thing to have. As that is what I am going to be selling eventually. (Please no one contact me about this. I'll list with a reputable broker when I sell and anyone will be able to find the listing.)

But TBH October was not that great for me because I tend to bank points so I always have a nice pile of them available. I was taking my father on an extra nice trip in September one year when he had to have surgery. As they were banked points they were going to expire before I could go again. I ended up letting my sister use them for a trip to DC that she was going on. Just recently I had 230 banked points that I needed to use ASAP that we used to extend a September trip (also booked with banked points from another contract). We splurged on a Poly Bungalow for two nights which was a ridiculous use of points - but it was better than losing them.

As I tended to bank points and totally avoid summer sometimes October was a pain in the neck for me.

 

[danjoealexis3006]

Thank you everyone for your input!!!

 

[4luv2cdisney]

I was glad to hear that October BLT might be a good thing to have. As that is what I am going to be selling eventually. (Please no one contact me about this. I'll list with a reputable broker when I sell and anyone will be able to find the listing.)

But TBH October was not that great for me because I tend to bank points so I always have a nice pile of them available. I was taking my father on an extra nice trip in September one year when he had to have surgery. As they were banked points they were going to expire before I could go again. I ended up letting my sister use them for a trip to DC that she was going on. Just recently I had 230 banked points that I needed to use ASAP that we used to extend a September trip (also booked with banked points from another contract). We splurged on a Poly Bungalow for two nights which was a ridiculous use of points - but it was better than losing them.

As I tended to bank points and totally avoid summer sometimes October was a pain in the neck for me.

This is a perfect example of why UY can be very important. If you frequently travel in Sept, Oct is a horrible UY. We frequently travel in November, so it is a wonderful UY.

After considering when you mostly travel, think about when you DONT travel, turn it around and think is there any time of year I'm pretty sure I'll never want to or be able to . Maybe a certain month or two or three is a busy season at your job. Both my husband and daughter have jobs that don't allow much time off in summer months and we don't enjoy Florida weather in the summer either. So Sept /Oct were our ideal UY. An added bonus is availability is better in summer so if we had points we had to use last minute late in our UY, we'd probably be successful booking something. Even if in a holding points situation or simply the points were previously banked or we missed our banking window. We could rent them if we couldn't use them .

Seems like most agree OP would do best with March or Oct. My next question would be, how likely are you to visit in Dec -Feb vs May-Sep. That might help you decide between the 2.

I can attest to the fact that Oct UY can be hard to find. That would be the negative but I think it's otherwise perfect for us. Ideal for travel Oct -May and if you're stuck with points at risk of losing you should be able to book something last minute with them easily June- Sept.

 

[chainkid]

I have a Sept use year and I have never lost even one point as I travel mostly Oct thru mid Dec. To me use year was very important and I made sure all my 5 contracts had same use year. it makes it a lot easier to plan and not get confused but then I'm a simple gal and like things easy LOL

 

[DSLRuser]

we normally travel in March or June. August use year has never been an issue at all. only matters if you get multiple contracts.

 

[Alan Goldschmidt]

From what I understand, the start of the UY doesn't affect the ability to make reservations 11 months out at the home resort? For example, if someone liked to travel in January, it makes no difference whether the UY begins in Dec, Jan, or Feb for booking purposes. However, if the UY year commenced in December (let's say 2020), they can use those points to book for January 2022, but then if they need to cancel their reservation beyond November 2021, they would lose their points. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks.

 

[bwvBound]

From what I understand, the start of the UY doesn't affect the ability to make reservations 11 months out at the home resort? For example, if someone liked to travel in January, it makes no difference whether the UY begins in Dec, Jan, or Feb for booking purposes. However, if the UY year commenced in December (let's say 2020), they can use those points to book for January 2022, but then if they need to cancel their reservation beyond November 2021, they would lose their points. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks.

Points from a Dec 2020 UY can be used to book Jan 2021 but not Jan 2022 unless the Dec 2020 are first banked to Dec 2021. If the Jan 2022 reservation is cancelled beyond Nov 2021, the member will have up until Nov 2022 to use or lose the points.

As for the first sentence of your post, UY does not affect the ability to book reservations 11 months out at home resort provided the reservation does not cross a UY. Using your same Dec UY example, the member cannot use Dec 2020 points from a single UY to book a new reservation that starts in Nov 2021 but ends in Dec 2021. Instead they would have to split the reservation into one part against "Dec 2020 UY points" (through the end of Nov) and another part against "Dec 2021 UY points" (including 2020 points banked into 2021) for the portion starting Dec 1.

Phew, I hope I kept all those dates straight ...

 

[Dean]

From what I understand, the start of the UY doesn't affect the ability to make reservations 11 months out at the home resort? For example, if someone liked to travel in January, it makes no difference whether the UY begins in Dec, Jan, or Feb for booking purposes. However, if the UY year commenced in December (let's say 2020), they can use those points to book for January 2022, but then if they need to cancel their reservation beyond November 2021, they would lose their points. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks.

As noted it doesn't matter as long as you don't cross the UY. But what does matter is if you need to change or adjust. Late in the UY you have little to no time to change and no ability to bank once you reach a certain point. IMO it's all about risk management.