Use year does it really matter?

[Disney-Kim]

What are any cons of a UY...we plan to mostly travel to WDW in May.

some great deals are out there but late in the year UY...tell me the cons please

It seems like you can always borrow ahead ..but the one thing I read...

you CAN cancel your vacation if needed? I thought you couldn't if you used some banked points?
so if you cancel then you bank...and you want to be in your banking deadline...
right?

so tell me when it would be bad...I still can't quite wrap my mind around why UY matters that much (when we bought direct from Disney years ago I didn't question our Feb UY)

thanks you guys for helping me on this journey

 

[supersnoop]

If you already have a contract with a use year that works for you, your best bet is to match it. That way you'll be able to seamlessly book vacations with one big pot of points rather than splitting your reservations between two smaller contracts.

If you have to cancel a reservation, you want to have enough time to either rebook and use those points before they expire, or bank them prior to your banking deadline.

 

[Disney-Kim]

we bought many years ago and sold in 2009 and are buying again by resale so I am getting up to date on info

 

[chitwndan]

I have no firsthand knowledge, being a new owner, but I would recommend the following thread.

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1942668

 

[JimMIA]

Use Year does matter, in one scenario.

Up to 100% of your points may be banked at any time (or multiple times) in the first 8 months of your UY. The ideal UY is one just prior to your normal vacation time. The danger of a UY too close after your typical vacation time is that if you have to cancel --and your banking deadline has passed -- you could lose the points.

For example, we had an October UY with both school-aged kids and a schoolteacher vacationing primarily in June and July. If we'd had a cancellation after May 30, we would have had a situation where the cancellation gave us "use or lose" points.

We actually did have that situation once, but it was quickly fixed by using the points prior to their expiration 9/30...but we were lucky in that case.

 

[chalee94]

some examples:

if you have a feb UY and a dec 2014 trip and you need to cancel 60 days out (in oct 2014), your banking window for your 2014 UY already closed on sept 30, 2014 so you'd have to scramble to use all of the pts in the reservation before they expire on jan 31, 2015.

if you have a dec UY and a dec 2014 trip and you need to cancel 60 days out, your banking window for your 2014 UY won't close until july 31, 2015 so you'd have until then to decide whether to use current year (2014 UY) pts for a reservation in that UY or else bank them to the next year. (you'd still need to use banked and borrowed pts by nov 30, 2015 since you can only move pts one time.)

if you have a feb UY and a dec 2014 trip and you need to cancel 5 days out, the pts would turn into "holding" pts so you'd have to use all of the pts in the reservation subject to a 60-day-out limitation - but that won't matter much since they expire on jan 31, 2015 anyway...which is less than 60 days out.

if you have a dec UY and a dec 2014 trip and you need to cancel 5 days out, the pts would turn into "holding" pts so you'd have to use all of the pts in the reservation subject to a 60-day-out limitation - but at least you'd have 12 months before they expire on nov 30, 2015 to decide what to do with them.

that’s the longer version of how UY makes life easier or tougher if you need to cancel – so it's good to try not to travel late in your UY if you can help it.

more info about UY is in the UY link above if you need it (you may want to bookmark it for later reference).

 

[JimMIA]

There is one important caveat to all of this UY stuff, however.

The fact is that your vacation pattern today may not be your vacation pattern five years from now. As kids grow up, their interests change, limitations get imposed because of school or sports activities, they grow up and leave you as empty-nesters with far fewer travel limitations. All sorts of stuff happens.

The way I always looked at UY was that it was not a deal-breaker. It is just something you need to be aware of, and manage. If you are considering a vacation which could put you in a cancellation-after-banking-deadline situation, you just use extra care and maybe don't book until you are positive you won't change things and shoot yourself in the foot.

 

[lovin'fl]

If you cancel a resie w/in 30 days of the trip then UY matters. But we bought our 1st contract for the deal and didn't even think about UY...we got June and it has worked fine for us and we have vacationed all throughout the year. Yes, we tweak resies and whatnot and if we cancel it's to book something else and it's before the 30 day window. So, we have been fortunate to never have to cancel w/in the 30 days. If that's a likelihood for you then you need to think about UY and go for one of the months before May (your preferred month of travel). If you canceled w/in the 30 day window you would have the rest of that UY to re-use those points since those points cannot be banked now (if April UY, you'd have until the following April...if Aug UY, you'd only have a few months to re-use those points by Aug).

Also, if you plan to add on later...maybe look at the distribution of points to see the more common UY that will be easier to find contracts for to add on. Here is the chart: http://dvcnews.com/index.php/dvc-program/owning-dvc/1557-distribution-of-dvc-points-by-use-year...maybe Feb would be good for you.

 

[disneynutz]

There is one important caveat to all of this UY stuff, however.

The fact is that your vacation pattern today may not be your vacation pattern five years from now. As kids grow up, their interests change, limitations get imposed because of school or sports activities, they grow up and leave you as empty-nesters with far fewer travel limitations. All sorts of stuff happens.

The way I always looked at UY was that it was not a deal-breaker. It is just something you need to be aware of, and manage. If you are considering a vacation which could put you in a cancellation-after-banking-deadline situation, you just use extra care and maybe don't book until you are positive you won't change things and shoot yourself in the foot.

That's the way I see it also. I call it free insurance, understand UY and it's pluses and minuses and if possible pick one that allows you time to bank should you need to cancel and not re-book before the end of the UY.

Bill

 

[com_op_2000]

It seems like you can always borrow ahead ..but the one thing I read...

you CAN cancel your vacation if needed? I thought you couldn't if you used some banked points?

Banking and borrowing are final transactions. If you cancel a reservation with borrowed points, you have to use the borrowed points before the end of the UY into which they were borrowed.
If you cancel a reservation using current UY points, are within your banking 8 month period, you can bank those cancelled points into your next UY.

 

[Dean]

UY is variably important for most people. It can be worth up to a years worth of points or more for some. It's insurance against cancelations and losing points. For those where it's not important, they're taking additional risk regardless.

 

[lovin'fl]

If you cancel a resie w/in 30 days of the trip then UY matters. But we bought our 1st contract for the deal and didn't even think about UY...we got June and it has worked fine for us and we have vacationed all throughout the year. Yes, we tweak resies and whatnot and if we cancel it's to book something else and it's before the 30 day window. So, we have been fortunate to never have to cancel w/in the 30 days. If that's a likelihood for you then you need to think about UY and go for one of the months before May (your preferred month of travel). If you canceled w/in the 30 day window you would have the rest of that UY to re-use those points since those points cannot be banked now (if April UY, you'd have until the following April...if Aug UY, you'd only have a few months to re-use those points by Aug).

Also, if you plan to add on later...maybe look at the distribution of points to see the more common UY that will be easier to find contracts for to add on. Here is the chart: http://dvcnews.com/index.php/dvc-program/owning-dvc/1557-distribution-of-dvc-points-by-use-year...maybe Feb would be good for you.

And I am not sure I even fully understand UY and cancelling w/in 30 days...points go into holding and there are restrictions on using them then (but I am not sure the restrictions). But, also, you need to bank points 4 months before UY month...so if you book a May 2015 trip and have April UY and used April 2015 points...you can cancel before the 30 day window and have time to bank them (before Dec 2015).

And, still I think UY is not important...for us. We have booked stays in every month but March-May so we have no particular travel period (though we have dwindled down to Aug, Nov and Dec as our prime travel months...so our June and Aug UY work well for us).

 

[Disney-Kim]

I think I am finally getting it. thank you again for all the help understanding

 

[bumbershoot]

As a specific example...

We have a Feb UY.

For our very first WDW trip, we banked all and borrowed some for a big family trip in early December. 2 weeks.

Banked 2009 UY, borrowed 2011 UY, used 2010 UY points.

If someone had gotten sick or injured etc, and we had had to cancel some or all of it, we would have had by Jan 31, 2011 to use them. That's NOT that much time, over the holidays and if someone had been *that* injured or sick. If we had had to cancel it all and couldn't rebook, that's a LOT of points that would have been lost.


I don't particularly care about UY, but it's important to think about when setting up vacation times. Just to think about it. Might not change anything. But it's better than being surprised!

 

[DenLo]

. . . . you CAN cancel your vacation if needed? I thought you couldn't if you used some banked points?
so if you cancel then you bank...and you want to be in your banking deadline...
right? . . . . .

If you have banked points being used in a reservation and you cancel that reservation at least 31 days before the check in date, the banked points return to the UY they were banked into and they will expire by the end of that UY. For example, you have a December UY and you cancel a May 2014 vacation on March 31, 2014. The points used for that vacation include 160 banked points from 2012 and 50 points from your 2013 UY.

Keep in mind your 2013 December UY runs from December 1, 2013 through November 30, 2014. And your 2013 points must be banked by July 31, 2014.

Back to the example, this May 2014 vacation is cancelled 31 days or more before your checkin so all of your points return to your regular account. If you want you can still bank any of your 2013 points into 2014 including the 50 points from 2013 that were used in this reservation. You have until July 31st to bank any 2013 points you have not used. The 2012 banked points also return to your current year points (2013) account but they may not be banked again and must be used by November 30, 2014 or they will expire and lost forever.

For a October UY you would have to bank points by May 31st. So using my example above, your 2012 banked points would expire November 30, 2014 and you could bank your 2013 points by May 31, 2014 into your 2014 UY.

Note: if you cancelled 30 days or less from the first day of your check in date the points go into a Holding Account which have their own rules. I won't confuse you with Holding rules now.

 

[chalee94]

I think I am finally getting it. thank you again for all the help understanding

one more note about UY then:

if you are planning on adding on at some point, be aware that UY months are not evenly distributed. so certain months may be more commonly available for certain resorts, which is a minor issue IMO but can be useful to know...

http://dvcnews.com/index.php/dvc-program/owning-dvc/1557-distribution-of-dvc-points-by-use-year