Pros and Cons of Having Different Use Years

[Dlafarrell]

As an existing DVC member, I have been told that if I buy additional points off the resale market for another home resort, that I should make sure I have the same use year. While I understand the benefit of making it easier to manage points (borrowing, banking, etc), are there other reasons to keep the same use year? Anyone have contracts with different use years? Can you provide your opinion on your experiences?

Thank you!

 

[drusba]

We have two use years spread five months apart. Advantage: it allows us to go any time of year and avoid the cancellation/banking risk when going too close to end of use year -- by choosing contract year to use for a particular trip we don't have to worry about cancelling after the banking deadline has passed and losing points as a result because of cancelling too close to end of use year..

Otherwise, it creates no benefits different from having one use year. It creates one minor complication in that you cannot mix the two use years to get a reservation for a single night. For example if 40 points are needed for one night and you have 20 in one contract you want to use for it and 20 in the other, you can't do it without using up your one transfer per use year. In other words, when using both for a single trip we usually reserve some nights with one contract and other nights with the other and link the two. You,of course, have to follow two use years and obey two banking deadlines but that is not really much of an annoyance or complicated task.

 

[disneynutz]

We have 2 UYs, April and October. Our preferred vacation periods make great use of our October UY and not the April. Having 2 UYs is unnecessary work in my opinion.

Bill

 

[bwvBound]

We have 2 UYs, April and October. Our preferred vacation periods make great use of our October UY and not the April. Having 2 UYs is unnecessary work in my opinion.

Bill

Our OCT points work great for WDW vacations (Oct-Feb) ... but an APR contract would be better for our typical Disneyland trips (Apr-Oct). The OCT contract, for me, is too risky for our DL trips unless I'm working with a stack of banked points that are going to expire anyway.

 

[MinnieGi]

We have two contracts with 2 different UY's. Ours are Feb. and Oct. Both were bought resale. And although I'm sure it would be a breeze to tabulate vacation points with the same UY, it really doesn't cause me problems or any headache with the two different UY's.

 

[Dlafarrell]

Thank you all for the replies!

 

[PSC]

We also have two different use years (Feb / Aug) and two home resorts. One recommendation I would make for somebody considering two use years and two home resorts is to separate the points in any use year by resort.