To Those With 2 Member #s - Booking Questions

[Breyean]

I currently have two contracts, different home resorts with the same UY. I'm looking for another smallish contract for VGC, which are a little harder to come across than some of the other resorts. Partly because it's so small; partly because it new enough owners aren't in a selling mood yet.

Anyway, my questions relate to having two UYs, and two member numbers, because the answers might help me decide whether to try for a VGC contract in another UY or to wait for mine to come along.

1. From what I can gather from reading similar threads on these forums, when booking a reservation I could use points from each member number by simply telling MS to use the second should the first fall short of points. The reservation made w/b linked and I wouldn't even notice the difference. This assumes, of course, booking only within the 7 month window since there w/b 2 or 3 home resorts involved. Does that sound right?

2. Should I need, say 50 points for the last night of my stay (a GV, of course!) and I have only 47 left in the first account, I could either use the one time annual transfer to move the 3 points from the second account to the first, OR I could use 50 from the second account (if I have them available) and bank the 47 from account one, thus avoiding the need to do a transfer. Or I could buy the temp points Disney sells for the 3 I needed. Am I still on target here?

3. If you have two member numbers, like I would, one with the bulk of your points and the second with a much smaller number, can you do the annual transfer to move all the points to the main account and then do all your bookings from there?

4. If you do #3, does the home resort for that second contract also move with the transferred points? So if VGC was my second account, by moving all the points into my primary account negate the home resort booking privileges at VGC, which is why I'm looking to buy there in the first place?

Thanks to any experts out there willing to help!

 

[appleorchard]

We just did this with the purchase of a small BWV add-on with a different UY than our current BW points. Just to complicate things, we also have points at BLT with the same UY as our initial BW points.

We haven't booked anything with the new points yet, but I think you've got it right in #2. If we don't have enough points in the August BWV acct to cover night, we can't just take points from the Feb. BW acct; we have to transfer them. Transferred points retain their original UY, so we can't transfer Aug. BW points to our Feb. BLT acct and have the now turn into BLT points-- they're still BW points.

To leave our transferring ability open for the possibility of falling short of points, we plan to bank the Aug. points for 2011 and then go from there. We're in perpetual borrow mode, so we're unlikely to ever to have to bank them again, but if we have a few stray points, we will.

You can also do the one-time per year transfer directly from Disney, but only at the 7-month window.

Hope that helps--it took us a long time to sort it out before we jumped on this contract! Good luck!

 

[DOCDDS]

I currently have two contracts, different home resorts with the same UY. I'm looking for another smallish contract for VGC, which are a little harder to come across than some of the other resorts. Partly because it's so small; partly because it new enough owners aren't in a selling mood yet.

Anyway, my questions relate to having two UYs, and two member numbers, because the answers might help me decide whether to try for a VGC contract in another UY or to wait for mine to come along.

1. From what I can gather from reading similar threads on these forums, when booking a reservation I could use points from each member number by simply telling MS to use the second should the first fall short of points. The reservation made w/b linked and I wouldn't even notice the difference. This assumes, of course, booking only within the 7 month window since there w/b 2 or 3 home resorts involved. Does that sound right?

2. Should I need, say 50 points for the last night of my stay (a GV, of course!) and I have only 47 left in the first account, I could either use the one time annual transfer to move the 3 points from the second account to the first, OR I could use 50 from the second account (if I have them available) and bank the 47 from account one, thus avoiding the need to do a transfer. Or I could buy the temp points Disney sells for the 3 I needed. Am I still on target here?

3. If you have two member numbers, like I would, one with the bulk of your points and the second with a much smaller number, can you do the annual transfer to move all the points to the main account and then do all your bookings from there?

4. If you do #3, does the home resort for that second contract also move with the transferred points? So if VGC was my second account, by moving all the points into my primary account negate the home resort booking privileges at VGC, which is why I'm looking to buy there in the first place?

Thanks to any experts out there willing to help!

I would leave everything in place and work within each member number without doing a transfer..it may involve banking or borrowing but transfer should be your last option since you can only do it once. Regardless of where those points are moved, they will still retain the HR and use year so, if the memberships are different Resorts, the 7-11 month restriction will apply. You will not be able to combine the points outside of that 7th month window to make a reservation. Inside the window, everything can be combined.

Confusing??? I hope not

Gary

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

I currently have two contracts, different home resorts with the same UY. I'm looking for another smallish contract for VGC, which are a little harder to come across than some of the other resorts. Partly because it's so small; partly because it new enough owners aren't in a selling mood yet.

Anyway, my questions relate to having two UYs, and two member numbers, because the answers might help me decide whether to try for a VGC contract in another UY or to wait for mine to come along.

1. From what I can gather from reading similar threads on these forums, when booking a reservation I could use points from each member number by simply telling MS to use the second should the first fall short of points. The reservation made w/b linked and I wouldn't even notice the difference. This assumes, of course, booking only within the 7 month window since there w/b 2 or 3 home resorts involved. Does that sound right?

I'm confused by this statement and can't tell if you are asking about transferring a few points or booking a single day and linking the reservation. It would be one or the other and not just completing a reservation from the second UY. But if you book days with different UY's and link then it should be like a single reservation. I've had the hotel system be confused a couple of times and not recognize this and think we were checking out earlier but it's not been difficult to deal with. The majority of the time it's acted as a single booked stay.

2. Should I need, say 50 points for the last night of my stay (a GV, of course!) and I have only 47 left in the first account, I could either use the one time annual transfer to move the 3 points from the second account to the first, OR I could use 50 from the second account (if I have them available) and bank the 47 from account one, thus avoiding the need to do a transfer. Or I could buy the temp points Disney sells for the 3 I needed. Am I still on target here?

Yes

3. If you have two member numbers, like I would, one with the bulk of your points and the second with a much smaller number, can you do the annual transfer to move all the points to the main account and then do all your bookings from there?

Yes. You would not be able to borrow ony of the transferred points though - only bank them.

4. If you do #3, does the home resort for that second contract also move with the transferred points? So if VGC was my second account, by moving all the points into my primary account negate the home resort booking privileges at VGC, which is why I'm looking to buy there in the first place?

They retain their original home resort and UY and transferring will not change that.

 

[drusba]

Having two use years and two member numbers is the same as being two entirely different members.

1. Absent a transfer, the points in one use year cannot be mixed with points in another to reserve any one night. Instead you reserve some nights with one contract, the rest with the other and link the reservations. If you do that you will be blocked out of doing on-line check-in because Disney's IT people have yet to figure out how to set it up so the combined ressie can be checked in as one (based on their record with computer systems, they will probably come up with a solution in about 5 years). You can, alternatively, transfer points from one contract to the other. Transferred points retain their resort ID and use year but can be mixed with points in the recipient contract to make a reservation. You can transfer some or all of the points from one contract to another but you only get to do it once per use year.

2. Regardless of how many contracts or use years you have one rule always remains the same: you can book 11 months out only with points that apply to the particular resort, e.g., only VGC points can be used 11 months out at VGC.

3. As to buying trip points from Disney to fill a gap, that can only be done during the 7 month ressie window, 24 points max, and only once per use year.

4. You get two separate annual statements and bills for dues. If you have automatic monthly withdrawal from bank account, you will have two separate withdrawals per month.

5. Both accounts will appear together under your name on the DVC official website. You get only one annual Planner.

 

[Breyean]

Thanks very much for all the info.

Now if only you guys could make a decision for us as well!!!!

 

[disneynutz]

Stick with one UY if your current one works for you. The more you move things around, the more complicated things are, the greater chance of things going wrong.

Bill

 

[Breyean]

Stick with one UY if your current one works for you. The more you move things around, the more complicated things are, the greater chance of things going wrong.

Bill

True. Just about any other resort and I would agree totally, but in the case of VGC there are just not that many resales available, and add to that my points target and UY, the pool gets even smaller.

 

[disneynutz]

True. Just about any other resort and I would agree totally, but in the case of VGC there are just not that many resales available, and add to that my points target and UY, the pool gets even smaller.

I doubt if there is much availability at 7 months at VGC. How often do you plan on staying there since you are looking for a small contract?

Would you better off adding on additional points at one of your existing resorts and renting your points and paying discounted cash at DL?

Bill

 

[LauraLea]

Stick with one UY if your current one works for you. The more you move things around, the more complicated things are, the greater chance of things going wrong.

Bill

There are good reasons though for having different UYs. You often want points at a particular resort for a particular time of year. An Oct UY at BWV is great for a F&W trip every year, but it is frustrating to use it for a late summer trip to Vero or Hilton Head. If you are going to use the points at different times of the year, by all means get a UY that fits the point usage, not just because you want to keep the same UY.

Laura

 

[Breyean]

I doubt if there is much availability at 7 months at VGC. How often do you plan on staying there since you are looking for a small contract?

Would you better off adding on additional points at one of your existing resorts and renting your points and paying discounted cash at DL?

Bill

We live in AZ, a 5 hour drive from DL. We've been going to DL once per year since we moved here.

Thing with DL vs DW is we find we don't need as long a stay in DL. We have a trip planned for DW next year for 9 nights. Did the same in 2010. Trip is longer, which makes it a hassle, plus there's so much more to do in DW, we like to take a longer vacation there.

But at DL, we can drive over for 3-4 nights and still feel we have done all we want at the parks.

So we don't think we need nearly as many points at VGC as we have at OKW (our home resort in DW).

We actually have gotten a room at VGC at 7 months last year, but we got it off the wait list.

 

[disneydenisel]

We have two UYs and so far it has been fine for us. I do treat them like separate timeshares and don't plan to try and combine points at 7 months out. I am constantly in the state of borrowing, so don't foresee a problem.

Of course, our VGC points don't go as far as our BCV points. I can get three nights in a one bedroom at VGC for 135 points (mid-June), and if I want to go during Christmas, it's 64 x 3 or 192 points. Yikes! We own 160 points so that seems like a small contract for that resort since the points required to stay are so high. We are used to staying in two bedrooms at BCV and at VGC, we will never have enough points for three nights in a two bedroom! Luckily, they have the extra bathroom in the one bedroom which will help .

 

[disfan100]

5 contracts and 3 UYs. March UY for spring reservations. June UY for our annual summer trip to visit family in California. DLR is much more pleasant than WDW in the summer. September UY for fall and winter visits. We like the variety and reservation flexibility with having multiple home resorts and use years. As previous posters have mentioned we treat each UY as a standalone membership and normally do not combine points.

For us the VGC points have been a great purchase (even with the different UY)!