planning dilemma, help!

[snoopy5386]

We have a trip coming up this December, from Sunday the 4th - Friday the 9th, but we have to fly in on Saturday the 3rd due to crappy flight times on the 4th.

I was originally going to use some starwood points to book an airport hotel for that first night and do a dummy ressie for Magical Express for Sunday morning.

But now we are in a situation where we have *** points to use and I'm not sure how to spend them. Right now we've got *** pts left on our 2011 June use year. Originally we were going to bank these and use them for a trip next fall. But now we are going to stay with my inlaws at Bonnet Creek instead and we have these points floating around. Our next trip using DVC isn't until 10/13, so if I bank the points they will expire before then.

The question now becomes what to do with these 44 pts? Rent/transfer them? Add on to our current trip? Book a new trip?

To complicate things we are currently booked in a value one bedroom at AKV for 95 pts, but we are waitlisted for the beach club where I really, really, really want to stay so I don't want to cancel the wait list. If the waitlist comes through, the points cost jumps to 135 pts and then our 44 "extra" points drops to only 5 "extra" points.

I have been calling to check availability to add on a night either before or after our currently booked December trip and when I just called they had a night available at the Boardwalk for the night of the 3rd and Saratoga Springs the night of the 9th. I booked the Boardwalk for now, but I'm not sure to keep it or not. If I keep it and our waitlist goes through, not only are all of our "extra" points used up, we end up borrowing 27 points from our next use year. We only have 100 points on our contract so I am not sure I want to do that.....

So, what to do???? Keep the boardwalk and risk the waitlist? Cancel the boardwalk and just use Starwood points for the night of the 3rd? Use Starwood points for the night of the 3rd and book Saratoga for the night of the 9th? Do something else?? AAAHHHHH!! We won't be arriving until midafternoon on the 3rd, so I feel the Boardwalk room would be kind of a waste.....

 

[tink'smom2B]

I don't have any advice, just wanted to say that your trips sound just like mine! We either have too many points or we are borrowing from next year, or even renting more points from someone else! This past Easter, we had a perfect 10 day vacation figured out. Then I decided to change something because of our flight. Bam! We ended up changing rooms and had points left over that we had borrowed. MS didn't use our borrowed points first and we had points that will expire next month. We rented some out and will lose the rest. We now have points in an RCI exchange and I can see we'll probably have more trouble with that. Good Luck with whatever happens!