Most popular use year?

[Pens Fan]

Now that our son is grown and we are no longer tied to school schedules (or even having him with us all the time), we've said, "So long, Florida summers - AKA surface of the sun vacations". Almost all of our trips will be in the fall and winter months so we picked Sept. It's worked well for us. There might be occasions when we plan trips past our banking window (just threw together a very last minute extended Memorial Day weekend trip with one week's notice ) but those will be outliers.

Bottom line - pick your UY for the month right before you will normally travel.

 

[Genie+]

We bought a small resale with a Sept UY. I thought we would’ve preferred Oct because our trips are >90% between Oct and May. But Sept works very well since we can ‘walk’ Oct trips easier. Plus the rare Sept trips we take would’ve been risky with Oct UY because very little room to cancel/reschedule (would have to find and take an available trip before Sept 30th, yikes). On the flipside, I feel better about May being our UY outlier even with our Sept UY April 31st banking deadline. If we were to cancel/reschedule a May trip outside 30 days we’d still be able to bank, and in the worse case of cancelling within 30 days we’d still have up to Aug 31st to complete a trip with those points ‘in holding’.

We’re adding on direct now and sticking with Sept UY. I think it will work best for us.

 

[MartyParty]

DVD determines how to allocate points to UY and no one knows why they do it the way they do as it’s equally distributed.

Here is some info from a few years go.
https://dvcnews.com/dvc-program/own...ty-of-disney-vacation-club-points-by-use-year

Thanks for sharing. Very interesting. Looks like at the older resorts Disney tried to keep all the UY evenly balanced. Newer resorts tend to be more weighted towards Feb and Dec UY (beginning and end of the years).

 

[Disney_escape]

We love Feb and Sept, mostly due to the lack of crowds and added benefit of cheap points on the charts. I agree with your feeling on the ridiculous heat in the Florida Summers, we live just outside of DC, so February gets us some warmer weather, and Florida is nice in late September. However…. We are traveling to the Poly on the 31st of July this year for a brief pool vacation, and to feel out whether we want to buy there next year, but won’t be going into the parks, and this isn’t our normal travel pattern.

Aug & Sept would probably work well. With a March 31st and April 30 banking deadline for unused or travel plan change. If you are doing a summer trip you will probably know by March or April.

 

[MartyParty]

For August UY, don’t be a fool and don’t forget to bank by April Fools!

 

[minniesfriend]

We have April bc we love to travel during the beginning of May and in Oct.

BUT

We also travel at Christmas time and a weekend or two at the beginning of the year, which are beyond our banking window. So now we are thinking of adding another UY to cover these trips. In retrospect, we should have purchased Oct.

 

[MsChristy12]

We have April bc we love to travel during the beginning of May and in Oct.

BUT

We also travel at Christmas time and a weekend or two at the beginning of the year, which are beyond our banking window. So now we are thinking of adding another UY to cover these trips. In retrospect, we should have purchased Oct.

I'm in a very similar situation as you! We have April UY because we prefer traveling during May. However, there are some years we will want to travel during the holidays (Nov-Dec), so now I'm thinking my add-on should be October. Although, I will also take April so it's easier to keep track. April was hard for me to find for my resort, but seems like Oct is even harder!

 

[intamin]

I'm in a very similar situation as you! We have April UY because we prefer traveling during May. However, there are some years we will want to travel during the holidays (Nov-Dec), so now I'm thinking my add-on should be October. Although, I will also take April so it's easier to keep track. April was hard for me to find for my resort, but seems like Oct is even harder!

Whooo fellow April UY people. I bought April because we also like travelling in May, it’s kind of the sweet spot for right after Spring break and before school gets out so generally low wait times, cheap point charts and for the most part good weather. April UY does actually still allow you to book December trips as well. Although it’s technically past the banking window if you cancelled in December, those points would go into holding anyways if you cancelled less than 31 days before the trip. So if you cancelled in November you’d be able to bank those points still since it’s before 12/1.

Also likely going to have kids in a few years so we’ll probably be going during the dreaded summer months as well and it covers that time.

 

[bp2412]

Prior to buying DVC we always went down (from CT) in September. The full week after the Labor Day week was our time to go, did it for numerous trip and figured we would when we bought into DVC. We bought resale and couldn't find the perfect August contract we were looking for so went with a June contract and figured that would be fine. Then we went 1 year in May for the Flower and Garden festival.... and now in our 4 trips as DVC members it's been 1 in September and 3 in May . Oh well, luckily no issues with needing to cancel so far so hopefully that stays the case!

 

[CarolynFH]

Prior to buying DVC we always went down (from CT) in September. The full week after the Labor Day week was our time to go, did it for numerous trip and figured we would when we bought into DVC. We bought resale and couldn't find the perfect August contract we were looking for so went with a June contract and figured that would be fine. Then we went 1 year in May for the Flower and Garden festival.... and now in our 4 trips as DVC members it's been 1 in September and 3 in May . Oh well, luckily no issues with needing to cancel so far so hopefully that stays the case!

Yes, when we bought our trips had been mostly Thanksgiving, so we chose to buy enough points to cover that week. We made one more Thanksgiving trip, then started going in early March. I’m glad the September UY they assigned us worked for both.

 

[MsChristy12]

Whooo fellow April UY people. I bought April because we also like travelling in May, it’s kind of the sweet spot for right after Spring break and before school gets out so generally low wait times, cheap point charts and for the most part good weather. April UY does actually still allow you to book December trips as well. Although it’s technically past the banking window if you cancelled in December, those points would go into holding anyways if you cancelled less than 31 days before the trip. So if you cancelled in November you’d be able to bank those points still since it’s before 12/1.

Also likely going to have kids in a few years so we’ll probably be going during the dreaded summer months as well and it covers that time.

Yeah that's exactly why we also like May. We have gone in both November and December before, I think weather wise it's better in November, but December is lower point charts. However, December is also a crazy time for DVC! We are pretty flexible, but the advantage of November is we should be able to do F&W at the same time if Disney keep it around similar schedule in the future.

 

[intamin]

Yeah that's exactly why we also like May. We have gone in both November and December before, I think weather wise it's better in November, but December is lower point charts. However, December is also a crazy time for DVC! We are pretty flexible, but the advantage of November is we should be able to do F&W at the same time if Disney keep it around similar schedule in the future.

Yep if it wasn’t for us wanting to be able to go to F&W we probably would’ve just gone with a Dec UY and we decided fall was more important to us than early Spring.

 

[cgodzyk]

We based our use year off of three things (we are from New Hampshire)

1. Follows the school year for our children who are young (Sept-June)

2. Being from NH, we would never leave here in the summer months when its actually warm here, and so much to do.

3. We bought at CCV with plans to go the week after thanksgiving or first week of december a lot of our visits.

So we went with September use year. Covers both Feb and April vacation. Easy for us to bank by end of April.

We are very similar!
1. Looked to follow the school year (but for grandchildren)
2. We also never want to leave NH in the summer. (That time is dedicated to boating on the big lake!)
3. We bought at CCV for the 1st week in December (and an alternating family trip either February or April vacation). Of course as a family with 7 grandchildren we need a 3 br. villa every other year!

 

[buzzrelly]

We have April bc we love to travel during the beginning of May and in Oct.

BUT

We also travel at Christmas time and a weekend or two at the beginning of the year, which are beyond our banking window. So now we are thinking of adding another UY to cover these trips. In retrospect, we should have purchased Oct.

We started with a December UY at BLT which was okay for our April trips, but then we started going more in October so we added on BCV with an April UY that we can use for both Spring and Fall trips. It's the perfect combo for us as it covers the whole year.

 

[Genie+]

We started out with a Sept UY, needed at BW if you want to walk those coveted Oct dates. Likely not to visit WDW in June/July/Aug. For ease we stuck with Sept for contract #2.

Oct UY seems better for our occasional May travel but if we cancel the trip under 30 days out, those points go in to holding regardless. As long as we cancel a May trip more than 30 days out we can still bank our Sept UY. All things considered Sept UY works best for us.