does your use year really matter?

[funnybunny921]

my guide told us it really didn't but i was under the impression it did. if it does can you explain why you think it makes a difference and how your use year effects how you vacation?

 

[kenny]

I think it really only matters if you need to cancel a trip. You can only bank your points the 1st 8 months of your use year. Depending on when you normally travel and when your use year is, if you had to cancel a trip, it may be beyond your banking window and you could possibly lose your points (if you couldn't use them or rent them).

For example, our use year is August. We usually travel Oct-Dec. However, let's say I plan a trip in July. my banking window ends March 31st. If after March 31st I needed to cancel my trip that was planned for July I could not bank my points. I would need to find another date before 7/31 or rent my points. Otherwise I would lose them.

make sense? Not sure if anyone else has another reason for use year being important.

 

[Tinkerdreams]

Well its the month that you get your new allocation of points. Also, due to the fact that you need to bank points if you aren't going to use them within the year. Other than that - no particular use.

 

[disneynutz]

IMHO your Guide is wrong. Your UY should be the month before the period that you usually vacation. We vacation Nov-April so our UY is Oct. With a Oct UY we have until May 31st to bank our points.

Should we have to cancel our vacation for any reason, illness, job, fight with the DW , we can bank our points to next year and not worry about losing them.

If we didn't bank our points we would have to vacation in June - September to use up the points or lose them. We really don't care for the warm summer and hurricane months.

 

[aurorafan]

Travel preferences may/will probably change though. We got a March UY when we bought, which doesn't work so well right now. Our oldest is still in elementary school, so we have no problem taking him out for a week in the fall/early Dec. to go to WDW. However, when he moves up to 7th grade (2 more years) we'll have to go with the school calendar, probably summer (we don't feel like fighting the crowds Easter week ), so a March UY will be perfect. If we have to cancel a summer vacation we have until Oct. 31st to bank the points, but if we cancel our Dec. trip we're taking this year at the last minute we have to use the points before Feb. 28th or lose them.

I really agonized over this before we bought, and then someone pointed this out to me and I relaxed. I realized that over the course of the next 48 years we'll change our travel preferences many times, so a use year becomes less of an issue .

 

[CraftyMouse]

IMHO your Guide is wrong. Your UY should be the month before the period that you usually vacation. We vacation Nov-April so our UY is Oct. With a Oct UY we have until May 31st to bank our points.

Should we have to cancel our vacation for any reason, illness, job, fight with the DW , we can bank our points to next year and not worry about losing them.

If we didn't bank our points we would have to vacation in June - September to use up the points or lose them. We really don't care for the warm summer and hurricane months.

Ditto! Our Use Year is October and we usually vacation in Oct. or Dec. If we had to cancel we could still bank all of our points or make other arrangements to use them within the year.

An example of UY working against you...we were supposed to go on a DCL cruise out of LA last summer. Six weeks before we were to sail, DH broke his leg and we had to cancel. We had four nights reserved, on points, at Disneyland. They were borrowed points so at that point I had 2 months to use them or lose them. So you want to make sure your Use Year is not at a time of year that is just after when you usually vacation our you could end up in a situation where you may lose points.

 

[jbrowna]

DW and I, being empty nesters, are very flexible in our vacation dates, and we also like to plan well in advance, so UY probably doesn't matter as much to us. That being said, we have found that our December UY has worked well for us, since it is usually so little in demand. If we want to do an addon, we have found that -- while a lot of other UYs may be unavailable -- December is almost always in stock.

 

[funnybunny921]

Thank you guys! right now we have vacationed all over the map (Feb, April, Aug, Dec) so I think the use year won't matter, but looking ahead with having a family i see how it could make a difference. with a december uy (what they are selling right now for AKV) we have to decide to bank by july 31, which isn't bad as it gives you the first 2 months of summer vacation to use it. And really since the times we go in august it's the first week, we would probably know before the banking deadline if we were cancling the trip.

Thanks for explaining and letting me talk it through.

 

[ACDSNY]

It mattered enough to us that we are selling some of our Feb UY points in order to purchase GC in with Aug UY. We used the AKV min. buy in of 100 points to start a new Aug UY as we travel in the Oct - Dec which was after our banking deadline for Feb. Most of our trips take close to 400 points (including banked or borrowed points) so it could cause us a large loss if we needed to cancel.

 

[Dean]

I've always thought it mattered, even more so with the new banking rules. I feel it matters enough that I'd rather have 2 UY (and pick which UY for a given trip) if I were staying throughout the year to give the added protection of the banking window.

 

[lisareniff]

I also think it is beneficial to have a well placed UY. This is not just for outright canceling the whole trip but if you need to cancel one day for better flight prices or you are waitlisted for a resort that uses less point and need to bank the extra points, and so on. It gives you much more wiggle room.

I also like to look at it as choosing a UY that is right after a couple months that you would not use a DVC resort. For us, we would never travel to WDW (or VB and HH) in the summer. It's too hot for us in FL and summer is too sweet where live. For us this dead zone of June-Aug (maybe even Sept) is the perfect buffer at the end of our UY of Oct.

 

[honeymo78]

We have a Dec UY, not ideal for our yearly Oct vacation, but great for our other vacations. Our anniversary trip every Oct is pretty much set it stone, it would take a heck of a lot to make us cancel it, something that would make losing our points seem trivial. However, the other trips we plan (Jan, Feb, March, May) are much more variable and more likely to be cancelled or dates changed around. I prefer my UY to work around those more variable vacations rather than the one we "know" isn't going anywhere.

 

[Inkmahm]

Ditto! Our Use Year is October and we usually vacation in Oct. or Dec. If we had to cancel we could still bank all of our points or make other arrangements to use them within the year.

An example of UY working against you...we were supposed to go on a DCL cruise out of LA last summer. Six weeks before we were to sail, DH broke his leg and we had to cancel. We had four nights reserved, on points, at Disneyland. They were borrowed points so at that point I had 2 months to use them or lose them. So you want to make sure your Use Year is not at a time of year that is just after when you usually vacation our you could end up in a situation where you may lose points.

Same here, we have Oct UY and usually travel in Oct and Dec but also in March. That works well with the 8 months of being able to bank points. For next year, we're booking 4 days at Disneyland in August. I hope neither of us breaks our leg because we'd be in the same boat as you with points that had to be used by 9/30/09 or lost! We rarely would use points in August though, this is a special trip.

 

[OneMoreTry]

UY matters.

Buy a UY that begins just before the time you plan to travel most.

If you cancel any time within the 4 mos before your use year, you might lose all those points because you can't bank them to the next year.

 

[meriface11]

we just bought when we were down on our annual september vacation. they offered us december UY for AKVs, and when i hesitated upon my concern that our banking window would be in the spring, they were able to give us september UY. while i know that our vacationing habits may change in the future, i was strongly contemplating going for a SSR resale to try to get a different UY. needless to say, i was relieved when they offered us september.

 

[funnybunny921]

we just bought when we were down on our annual september vacation. they offered us december UY for AKVs, and when i hesitated upon my concern that our banking window would be in the spring, they were able to give us september UY. while i know that our vacationing habits may change in the future, i was strongly contemplating going for a SSR resale to try to get a different UY. needless to say, i was relieved when they offered us september.

i am confused... i thought a december uy was july 31 for banking?!?

 

[Buckeye Fan]

i am confused... i thought a december uy was july 31 for banking?!?

You are correct. The banking deadline for a Dec UY is July 31. About a year ago, DVC changed the banking rules, so I'm assuming the person responding is thinking of the old banking rules.

Best of luck on the UY decision. It has been a big pain in my backside, not because of cancellations, but because of when banked points expire. DH is a teacher, and we have an Aug UY. When we bank, we have to use points by July 31, or they expire. So, a few years in a row, we've HAD to travel in July when we would have preferred to go in August. With our travel habits, a Dec UY would have been ideal.