Use Year Advice Needed

[diznyfanatic]

The one thing that continues to confuse me regarding our DVC membership is managing our Use Year.

Unfortunately, our travel is mostly limited to the school calendar, and we currently can definitely plan on vacationing during:

Christmas week
First week of January
Easter week; or the week before
First two weeks of August
Week before Halloween

We currently have an August UY. If we add-on, I'd like to keep everything with the same UY, but if the right resale contract came up, might consider adding a different use year.

Based on the above normal travel times, can someone suggest a compatible alternate UY?

How difficult is it to manage multiple Use Years?

Thanks for the help.

 

[abner1776]

Man...with that possible schedule, I don't think there is a "perfect" UY. Until I saw the August weeks, I would have said a Oct UY would fit about right, since all of the vacation times would fall after 9/30.

I guess I would say to add on via a resale with a Dec UY. That way you can use the current Aug UY contract for your August and Oct vacations, and the new Dec UY contract for your Xmas, Jan and Easter vacations. You just don't want a UY just after your vacation dates, as this could make rescheduling a cancelled ressie problematic.

I also understand that DVC will not sell you an add on contract with a different UY of less than 150 points.

 

[drusba]

Use year has importance only for banking rules if you cancel. With August, you already have ideal use year for August and Halloween and even December and January -- if you cancel trip, you have until end of January to bank 100% of points. Easter time is the only one that creates a banking risk if you cancel. You might consider a February or March use year as a result if you must take another.

It is not that difficult to manage more than one use year (I have two). You just need to keep track of use in both. It is fairly easy to make a reservation using both contracts -- you put some days on one contract and some on the other and then link the two.

 

[diznyfanatic]

Thank you both very much for your assistance and suggestions.

I'm sure for more experienced DVC'ers, managing multiple use years is a piece of cake, but I think until I get more experience with banking, borrowing and so forth, I'll probably stick with my original use year for awhile.

Knowing what other use years might be a good match is very good to know for the inevitable add-ons I see in our future!

Thanks again.

 

[Granny]

I think your comment about "the right resale contract" coming up is the key phrase.

I wouldn't pass on a great resale if it's everything you want (including price) because of the UY difference.

We bought resale and got a good deal but a different UY. We use some software to track it and it's really not that big of a deal. But I can't argue that having everything with one UY would be the simplest.