Newbie Question: Banking and Covid

[AliceIn]

I am a new member, we bought in September with a December use year. We had 250 points from 2019 that were immediately manually banked by Member services when our account was created. We have a trip booked for December 4, 2020. My state is currently having a major Covid surge, and there is a high potential for another stay at home order going into effect. We recently had all in person restaurants close.

If I need to cancel due to not being able to travel, will the points that I used for the December trip go back into my banked points? We really want to go on this trip as it's our 20th wedding anniversary. We will postpone if we have to, but we have a trip with our family planned for Summer 2021 that uses our 2020 points and I don't want to lose out on either trip.

I realize that Disney can change policy at any time, but what has the experience been so far for the pandemic?

 

[Sandisw]

Normally, when you cancel less than 31 days out, the points from the trip become restricted holding points. It means all points expire at the end of the UY of the trip, and can not be used to book trips more than 60 days from check in,

Right now, they are waiving that but we do not know when it could stop.

Lets assume if you have to cancel, holding is still being waived, Since the Dec trip is in your Dec 2020 UY, points will be retrieved d to your account in the same way used in the reservation

Banked 2019 points will still be banked and will expire November 30th, 2021. Any 2020 UY points used, will be back as 2020 UY points.

If you were to cancel, what you would want to do is modify your summer 2021 trip, without changing a thing, so that I would reallocate the banked 2019 points into that trip, and then free up your 2020 UY points. You can also call Ms and ask them to do it,

Just know it is not done automatically, if you cancel the trip with banked 2019 points but don’t modify to reallocate, your summer trip will use your 2020 UY points. So, be sure to get them swapped if you end up not going.