pooling points and linking resvervations

[MilesMouse]

I'll do my best to explain the end goal and my thoughts of how it works in my head. I'm hoping someone has either done this same style of booking or similar to it. My family, my parents, and my sister's family all bought into DVC last year with a Sept UY (3 individual contracts). None of us has taken our first trip using DVC yet and we're planning on doing a bigger family trip in Summer 2020 to Aulani.

So, our scenario is this..we each have our individuals contracts that we'll be banking points forward to combine with 2019's UY and possibly borrowing some from 2020 UY. Each contract on it's own isn't enough to get a week in a 2 BR but when combining everyone's points we'll be trying to do 2 2-BRs. What we think we have to do is book as many nights as possible with each contract and then have member services link reservations together. We've talked to member services on our welcome home call and brought this up and they made it sound like it's doable this way. We initially thought we could just do one time transfer of points to one person and have them book everything but the fine print doesn't allow that. Just wondering if anyone has ideas or experience in this area.

 

[Halle]

You have the right idea. I own multiple contracts and have done what you want to do. I did call MS to book the trip.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

Yes, you can do what you are outlining. One caveat is that they still won't guarantee that you won't have to change rooms. It's quite unlikely that would happen but reports do pop up now and then where members did have to change rooms when they had linked reservations. We've frequently done that though and not had any issues up until this April. We got it straightened out so we didn't have to move but it was close.

You also might consider transferring points so you have the points from 2 of the owners together and just have to link to the reservation made by the third person. Or transferring enough so that at least 1 of the 2 bedrooms is all in a single reservation and you just have to have linked reservations on the second room. If you do a transfer you'll need to remember that transferred points cannot be borrowed. And if you were going to use banked 2018 points that they need to be transferred before they are banked.

 

[MilesMouse]

Yes, you can do what you are outlining. One caveat is that they still won't guarantee that you won't have to change rooms. It's quite unlikely that would happen but reports do pop up now and then where members did have to change rooms when they had linked reservations. We've frequently done that though and not had any issues up until this April. We got it straightened out so we didn't have to move but it was close.

You also might consider transferring points so you have the points from 2 of the owners together and just have to link to the reservation made by the third person. Or transferring enough so that at least 1 of the 2 bedrooms is all in a single reservation and you just have to have linked reservations on the second room. If you do a transfer you'll need to remember that transferred points cannot be borrowed. And if you were going to use banked 2018 points that they need to be transferred before they are banked.

That makes sense. We're probably stressing more than we should since we're booking at the 7 month window but we're flexible enough on dates that we're just trying to get any consecutive week in July. Hopefully our room category helps get what we want too.

I wish we had known/thought about the transferring to one person ahead of time since we had banked everything already.

I appreciate the help all around.

 

[OKW Lover]

We do exactly what the OP has proposed when we go to Aulani. Its worked out well for 5 visits so far.

 

[bobbiwoz]

We did a conference call with our cousin. I booked 5 nights, she booked two nights. We never saw the whole 7 night reservation on either of our Member Web page. They gave us new key cards after our first 5 nights.

It was a great 7 night Aulani stay in a GV.

 

[OKW Lover]

They gave us new key cards after our first 5 nights.

Recently, we had a long reservation that involved two different actual members, one of whom had 2 different contracts. So, there were 3 separate linked reservations. We had to go down a do a paper check-out/check-in at the start of each. I found it annoying because it takes not only my time, but also the CM at the front desk time to close out the old reservation, re-enter our CC info and print out new cards.

 

[bobbiwoz]

For our trip, a CM brought our keys up. However if we wanted continued room charging we had to go down. For the two nights, I think we all just did without charging.

 

[MilesMouse]

I appreciate y’alls real life experience with how things were handled. It sounds like we’ll be able to do the reservation without any major problems, we’ll just have to roll with the little nuances here and there. I mean, we’ll be at Aulani so how hard could life really be?