Member Services is going to love me!

[BirdsOfPreyDave]

I'll be calling on Monday with the most complicated booking I've made to date. It's just an 8-night trip, but it will be complicated none the less. The trip straddles our use year anniversary date, and will use points from four different use years. It will involve previously banked points, current points from two use years, and two different borrowing transactions to get the points in the right spot. I'll also be adding a cash night.

Cross your fingers for me that I get a good cast member.

At one time there was a system limitation that wouldn't allow you to have a single reservation number for dates that crossed use years. Does anyone know if that's still the case? When I call on Monday, I'm not sure if I'll only be able to book through 7/31 and have to call back on the 1st to book the rest, or if I'll be able to book the first 7 nights and call back the next day to add the 8th.

 

[CarolAnnC]

Yikes, good luck with all that, lol. Personally, I would tell the CM right off that you have a complicated situation and if she is not a seasoned vet, she may want to hand you off to someone who is or even a supervisor. Oh, and take notes on who you actually do talk to.

Not the same as your situation, but I did run into something this past year that fell under a system limitation, and got even a supervisor who was not aware of the "fix" that could be done. We got through it, but it was painful for both of us, lol.

Good luck!

 

[Disneypapa]

Wow, good luck with your booking.

 

[Deb & Bill]

If you didn't transfer points between the different contracts, you will have to make another call to book the days with the different contracts. For example, I booked nine nights at BLT, seven with one contract and two with another. Transferring wouldn't work because I needed to borrow points from the smaller contract. I had to call back when I was seven months out from the last two nights of our stay to add those because they were with a different contract.

On another stay, I had to very carefully transfer a specific amount of points from the smaller contract to the larger to be able to book six nights. Borrowing would not have gotten me enough to book two nights with the smaller contract. When I told the CM how many points to transfer, he went ahead and transferred all of them. He had to get a supervisor to untransfer the points that weren't supposed to be transferred.

Good luck.

 

[RobDoc]

If you are calling right at 11 months using the Home Resort Priority, you will be able to reserve the first 7 nights of your reservation and will need to call back the next day to add the 8th night. If you are calling already within 11 months then you can make the entire reservation at once if all of your points are from that resort.

If you are calling within 7 months, you may be able to reserve the entire stay with one call on Monday. Using points from a Use Year that crosses your Use Year anniversary should not be a problem for MS to manage - but if there is any issue with the rep don't hesitate to ask for help from their supervisor.

Enjoy!

 

[BirdsOfPreyDave]

If you didn't transfer points between the different contracts, you will have to make another call to book the days with the different contracts. For example, I booked nine nights at BLT, seven with one contract and two with another. Transferring wouldn't work because I needed to borrow points from the smaller contract. I had to call back when I was seven months out from the last two nights of our stay to add those because they were with a different contract.

On another stay, I had to very carefully transfer a specific amount of points from the smaller contract to the larger to be able to book six nights. Borrowing would not have gotten me enough to book two nights with the smaller contract. When I told the CM how many points to transfer, he went ahead and transferred all of them. He had to get a supervisor to untransfer the points that weren't supposed to be transferred.

Good luck.

It's all one contract, it's just that the trip will be in two different use years. The first 5 days of the trip will be the last 5 days of our 2012 use year, and will use 2011 banked, 2012 current, and 2013 borrowed points. The last 3 days of the trip are the first 3 days of our 2013 use year and will use 2013 current points, 2014 borrowed points, and one cash night. (At the 7-month point, I'm hoping a matching room will be available for points so I can swap the cash night for a points night using non-home resort points. If not available on points, we'll leave it as cash because we don't want to do a split stay for this part of the trip. It's the first visit with the grand kids, and we don't want that distraction.)

Using points from a Use Year that crosses your Use Year anniversary should not be a problem for MS to manage - but if there is any issue with the rep don't hesitate to ask for help from their supervisor.

Good to know that this isn't an issue any more. I remember some reports of people having problems with this shortly after the software change.

 

[MousekeTom]

At one time there was a system limitation that wouldn't allow you to have a single reservation number for dates that crossed use years. Does anyone know if that's still the case?

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the signature line. About a month ago I tried to book a stay across my use year on line and couldn't do it. I received the following message:

Your travel dates may not overlap two Use Years. Please contact Member Services at (800) ******** to help you book your stay.

I ended up booking two reservations on each side of my use year and having MS link the reservations. I don't know if their system has the same constraints, but it might. Either way you should still be successfull in getting what you want. I would be tempted to do it one step at a time, transfer and check, bank and check etc.

 

[erionm]

I ended up booking two reservations on each side of my use year and having MS link the reservations. I don't know if their system has the same constraints, but it might. Either way you should still be successfull in getting what you want. I would be tempted to do it one step at a time, transfer and check, bank and check etc.

Because DVC accounts for points on a UY basis, reservations can not span UYs. If you had called MS, they would have booked two separate reservations for you. That's normal procedure.

 

[BirdsOfPreyDave]

Because DVC accounts for points on a UY basis, reservations can not span UYs. If you had called MS, they would have booked two separate reservations for you. That's normal procedure.

That's what I thought. The question I had was on the timing of booking the 2nd reservation. Will they do it all at once at 11 months from our check-in date (as if it's a single 7-day reservation), or do I need to call back 11 months from August 1st to book the nights that fall in the next use year?

 

[erionm]

That's what I thought. The question I had was on the timing of booking the 2nd reservation. Will they do it all at once at 11 months from our check-in date (as if it's a single 7-day reservation), or do I need to call back 11 months from August 1st to book the nights that fall in the next use year?

MS can do it on one call at the 11 month window for a 7 night reservation that spans UYs.

 

[delmar411]

can this not be done online? And then just send an email to MS asking them to link the 2 reservations? It doesn't seem to be terribly complicated of a reservation but maybe I'm missing something.

 

[BirdsOfPreyDave]

I called MS, and the cash night is what's going to mess me up. To make the points work the way they have to, the cash night must be 7/31/13 -- in the middle of the trip. That means I'll have a 2012 points reservation -> a cash reservation -> and a 2013 points reservation. She told me there's no way to book that all together. It will wind up being three different bookings that I'll need to book on three different dates, each 11 months from check-in. So I will do it online for the two points bookings (which will allow me to make sure the points are pulled from the right place), then will call MS to book the cash night and link everything together.

It's not that complicated now. What was complicated was when I was holding out hope that I could call 11 months from the first check-in date and book everything at once.

I was going to add the dining plan now to get the payment out of the way before Christmas. I think I might just set the money aside, though, and wait until after the 7-month window opens. If I can swap the cash nights for non-home points, I don't want the dining plan to get screwed up.

 

[csharpwv]

If we had really thought about our usage, we would have never bought December use year for precisely this reason!

Nearly every year we find ourselves at WDW the week after Thanksgiving, which happens to run in to the first week of December.... which happens to be the beginning of our use year!

We own at 4 resorts, and have stuck with December for our UY for all of the contracts just to keep it simple. It works for HHI since we will likely always use it in the summer.

But the first year we had three contracts to juggle we ended up with everything all fouled up
Thanks to a really nice CM at Member Services we got everything worked out, and didn't lose a point thanks to juggling points from one place to another, and back to the reservation.

But luckily we have never had to do a cash night.

We are never very selective about where stay, we stay where we can when it is just the two of us. When we are having family or friends along we call at 11 months exactly to book at our home resort so we get exactly what we want.

 

[BirdsOfPreyDave]

But luckily we have never had to do a cash night.

I've only ever had to do it once, before. And in that case, the waitlist for the points night came through. That was at vero beach, so not many options for split stay without one heck of a commute. Cash night was the only option.

We are never very selective about where stay, we stay where we can when it is just the two of us. When we are having family or friends along we call at 11 months exactly to book at our home resort so we get exactly what we want.

That's us to a T. When it's just the two of us, we don't mind split stays. In fact, it's become the normal way we do vacations, now.

In this case, though, we made the mistake of telling everyone that we were going for 8 nights with a Magic Kingdom view, only to realize later we were 30 points short. Doh! (I'm sure I'm not the first one to do this, but I priced out 7/27 - 7/31 and 8/1 - 8/4. Oops, doing it that way skipped a room for 7/31.)

It's the first trip for them all, and with a 1 y/o and 3 y/o, we decided not to play with the possibility of packing up and changing resorts. I'm just going to book the night on cash. If I can get it with my SSR points in January, that's great. If not, we'll leave it as is.