Is a February use year a good plan?

[Ike&Jakesmom]

Just made an offer for an Old Key West resale, seller has agreed to the offer. Before we continue, I want the advice of the experts! Our primary travel will be in September, I know we will have to bank by the last day of September, and any reservation in that month would have to be cancelled before the 30 day mark to be able to bank those points. Is this putting the banking dedline too close to our travel time? I have really been looking for a March or April use year. What do you pros think ?

 

[DVCconvert]

Is this putting the banking dedline too close to our travel time?

For my personal comfort zone, it would be too close to routinely plan on traveling in the last month of bankable time....it can be done....and you might get the 'super secret one time exception' for a problem, but if you're buying for 30+ years of use, I'd proably try to find another contract.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

It'll work. If it's a good deal and what you were looking for you should be fine. But ideally for majority of the travel in Sept I'd be looking for an Aug or Sept UY with consideration to what other times of the year you might also go.

 

[disneynutz]

We have had a couple of emergencies that have caused last minute cancellations so I am glad that we chose the best UY for our normal vacation times.

Bill

 

[kristenrice]

The biggest problem you'd run into is if you had to cancel within 30 days. Your points would not be bankable and you'd have to use them sometime in Oct/Nov/Dec/Jan on only 60 days notice. Those are probably THE busiest months in the DVC system so your chances of using the points are slim at best.

If the contract is what you're looking for, I wouldn't hesitate to take a Feb UY at all. I like ours since it is the closest to the beginning of the year and I can keep it straight in my head. The December UY was too much to wrap my head around.

 

[HookdonWDW]

My advice is to think about the future and not just right now when planning your "best" use year. When we wanted to travel when our kids were in the 5-9 age range, vs. their current 17-21 age range is much different. I'm sure that when ds leaves the nest for college next year, our WDW trips will change again.

 

[Ike&Jakesmom]

Thanks for your replies! I think an April use year is what we need, we would travel anywhere from May-October, primarily September at this time. We did Disney last year in December, we froze our hinnies off ! So, I don't think we would ever travel there in Jan., Feb., or March. We do homeschool our boys, so no worries with having to vacation during school breaks ! Thanks for all your advice, I just need to exercise patience and wait for the right contract to come along.

 

[DVC Grandpa]

We have a February use year and only travel during the winter months (November thru February) and up until this year everything has gone OK. Unfortunately this year things have not worked out. We made our reservations at the eleven month window and then banked the balance of our 2011 points on September 30. Now we have been informed that one of our traveling guest may not be able to make the trip therefore now if we cancel the points will go into a holding account and will be only good until
January 31, 2012, just beyond our current November December traveling plans. If I had to do it over again I would like to have a Fall use year date rather than one that is just after our normal vacation winter time frame.

 

[DenLo]

I've come to the conclusion that what is a good UY for when you join the DVC may not be a good UY even 3, 5 or 10 years down the road.

How firm is it that you will always travel in September? Will something happen in the future that you'll travel other months? Think of the grandchildren (or other family members) going to WDW with you. Otherwise a February UY is okay but not the best for your September travel plans. The best UYs would be June, August or September for traveling during September. However, if you decide you want to go to the Flower and Garden Festival then those UYs wouldn't be good for that trip either.

Like I said choosing a UY is not always the easiest decision to make.

 

[Sandisw]

Thanks for your replies! I think an April use year is what we need, we would travel anywhere from May-October, primarily September at this time. We did Disney last year in December, we froze our hinnies off ! So, I don't think we would ever travel there in Jan., Feb., or March. We do homeschool our boys, so no worries with having to vacation during school breaks ! Thanks for all your advice, I just need to exercise patience and wait for the right contract to come along.

This sounds like a good idea, given your current and possible future plans. Feb UY would not be ideal if you say that you don't forsee ever wanting to go in the winter time.

As mentioned, if you ever had to cancel one of those trips with less than 30 days, you would be forced to go during the winter and those are such busy DVC times that getting rooms with 60 days notice would be tough.

We bought UY's based on when we anticipated traveling now and in the future and are happy that we thought about this before we purchased.

 

[gatorskin76]

I am not sure if I understood the original post, but this is probably something you should have worked out before you made an offer.

 

[Song of the South]

I was initially concerned with finding an August or September UY with our desire to travel primarily in the fall. But found a good deal with a February UY (it is the most common one I believe!) and went with it. Someone on here posted something that rang true for me and made a Feb UY okay. Something like, "How many vacations have you had to skip or cancel?" For me the answer was none. Have I been sick on vacation, yep. Have I left things at home that probably needed my attention because I had planned a vacation that I then took. Absolutely. But, I'm the kind of person that follows through with my plans if I am able. So, the risk in my mind was minimal of "losing" points. But if I lose points, so what? Yes, it increases the cost of ownership but I'm not out anything extra oop (unless I've already bought plane tickets and such). So, with my own philosophy about travel and past experience we went with Feb UY.

We too plan to homeschool and so can take advantage of various travel times! Yahoo!

Oh, and although it was just one night, we had no problem booking a room for January 2012 yesterday when we were able to make reservations for the first time. Our contract came with a few points that would expire with the new UY so we wanted to try to use them. That gives me some hope that if I ever wind up with points in "holding" due to a canceled September vacation there is hope of being able to reschedule.

All the best finding the right contract for your needs!


SotS

 

[dzorn]

Just made an offer for an Old Key West resale, seller has agreed to the offer. Before we continue, I want the advice of the experts! Our primary travel will be in September, I know we will have to bank by the last day of September, and any reservation in that month would have to be cancelled before the 30 day mark to be able to bank those points. Is this putting the banking dedline too close to our travel time? I have really been looking for a March or April use year. What do you pros think ?

If you mostly travel in September I would go with a September UY.

Denise in MI

 

[Mickey'sApprentice]

Before DVC, we generally travelled November - February.

Not knowing, we bought a contract with a February UY.

It has been 5 1/2 years, and it has mostly worked out. We did have to re-book a Thanksgiving trip to Hilton Head to an 18 degree MLK Jr. Weekend trip. We have also become more open minded about when we travel.

We still like Winter, but have now travelled in March, April, July, and September as well.

 

[hauntedcity]

I've come to the conclusion that what is a good UY for when you join the DVC may not be a good UY even 3, 5 or 10 years down the road.

That is the truth! Before we had kids, our main time to go was November or December. Now, with kids in school, the time has shifted to the summer months. Next year, our school may go to the "year round" schedule, which would probably make our "sweet spot" October for a fall break.

 

[disneydenisel]

We always travel to WDW in November and we have a February UY because it was what was available resale at the time we were looking. I have never had to cancel a WDW trip (yet), but I do realize that it's not the best UY for our travel time. However, it is working out fine and mostly we are in borrow mode anyhow , so it is okay.

For our second resale (VGC), I have a June UY which is perfect because we travel in June-December so that is just the best UY for our needs for that resort.

Good luck with your search!

 

[lovin'fl]

When we bought our points in 2006, we had no idea the importance of UY and we picked the best deal which happened to be a June UY. It has worked well for us and we've travelled all over the calendar...Jan, Sept, June, July and now Dec (in less than 3 weeks ). We cancelled a trip for this past August and rebooked it to this coming Dec...so no problems using or losing points. We are looking at adding on @ 75-100 HHI points and we don't care what UY it is...we want the best deal and will have no problems making the UY work.

 

[mikron]

We own 7 memberships and 5 are Feburary. 1 is December and 1 is March. IMO any use year at the begining of the calander year is easyer to follow with banking, transfering and renting.

 

[debbieandroo]

Although I did a ton of research trying to figure out the best UY for me [mostly wanting to travel Oct-Jan], I ended up with a Feb UY. This got a little sticky when I was planning my November trip and had to do a lot of waitlisting to get rooms all in the same resort. I ended up with a few points in holding that had to be used by the end of January. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was able to easily snag a few days at HH, just a solo treat for myself right before going to Atlanta to visit family.

So, for me, even if I did have some straggling points, I was able to use them at HH. Might not be such a bad use for them and nice post-Christmas break for me.

Next year, I'm looking at trips in May and January - that last might be a little sticky again if folks have to cancel at the last minute. We'll see!

 

[luckyman_apd]

WOW. This is never something I had never thought of before. I am considering a 100 point resale, but we haven't settled on a resort yet. We are considering BLT, VWL, and then all others. BLT is gonna cost more upfront and gives us the location to MK we prefer and lower dues...VWL gives us a decent location with a ferry to MK (obviously our favorite park) but among the highest dues. That is something for us to work out, but the UY isn't something I even thought about. Because of my work schedule and our own Disney needs, we would travel in the summer from late June to August, or first week in November. What would be a good UY month for us to look for?