Use Year

[Welcome_Home]

Hello all! Curious to hear your responses on use year. Sorry if this topic has been beat to death in other forums. A little background on my family's travel habits. We typically travel to Disney from August to January. We are not much on spring or summer vacations to Disney. So with that said, I have been looking at August, September and October UY contracts. However, I found one today that was a great deal but had an April UY. Is use year only important if you cancel your vacation?? Would you let a use year that didn't meet your travel dates sway you from purchasing??

 

[supersnoop]

Would you let a use year that didn't meet your travel dates sway you from purchasing??

Yes.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

I'd also likely wait.

But - in the first place, if you're going to travel in August-January then the August UY that you are looking at is the only appropriate one to give you insurance against last minute cancellations. Sept and October would be the worst you could do. April would be much better although not great for January but still, far and away better than Sept or Oct.

You want to be looking for June or August. If the April contract is really that great it wouldn't be the worst thing but maybe there's a June out there that you've been skipping over.

 

[CarolMN]

If I found a good contract with an April use year, I'd definitely consider it. There are certainly other use years that can give you more "insurance" in the event you have to cancel, but IMO, an April is not completely horrible for a travel pattern that spans August - January.

The banking deadline for an April use year is the last day of November. The January trip would be at the most risk. As long as you cancel before November 30, you would have the opportunity to bank the points used for the January vacation. Vacations n August through December would be "protected" as long as you cancel at least 31 days before arrival. (If you cancel within 30 days, the points go into holding and then you have other restrictions on the use of the returned points).

If you haven't already, check out this thread:

Understanding Use Year

Good luck!

P.S. You might also find this use year distribution article from DVCNews.com helpful:

Use Year Distribution Charts (Updated September 2015)

.

 

[Welcome_Home]

Thanks for the links, CarolMN. Much appreciated!

 

[disneynutz]

As long as you don't mind not being able to bank your points from a canceled vacation, UY doesn't really matter.

Bill

 

[MrInfinity]

If you really will never go in the summer, an Aug UY is ideal. However, if you have a lead on an April one and it meets your price, then I agree w Carol, an April UY can be fine too. Look at how they would work differently for you:

January Trip:
April UY: You would have to cancel no later than November to bank your points. That's fine, because you're likely to know whether or not you'll be going in Jan, by Nov.
Aug UY: You would have more time to cancel... Technically you could bank up thru March, but that isn't really useful. You can cancel as late as December. Gets you an extra month there.
Since you won't re-book for Feb-Sep, the later time on the expiration of August points doesn't really help you.

August Trip: Similar situation but even less pressure, since you can cancel up to 30-days out with either UY. In both cases, you'd have the option to rebook something for Jan or bank the points.

So there's not a huge difference in regards to banking.

More important to me would be whether you might ever want to go in the summer... When our kids were young, we did fall trips. But the bigger they get the harder it is to do things during the school year. So we never thought we'd want summer, but here we are a few years later and we will almost always be going in the summer from here on. If you might ever be in a similar situation, that April UY might be appreciated later on.

But then a benefit to the August UY is that if you do cancel an August or January trip, you would have 7-10 months to rebook if you could rebook for the summer. With an April UY, your only option would be to bank. So if you're ever working with points banked or borrowed then rebooking is more important than the banking deadline. We are always dealing with something banked or borrowed, so having a good window to rebook is more useful to us than to bank points from cancelled trips.

As you can see there are benefits to each UY, but they're all really situational.

 

[Welcome_Home]

If you really will never go in the summer, an Aug UY is ideal. However, if you have a lead on an April one and it meets your price, then I agree w Carol, an April UY can be fine too. Look at how they would work differently for you:

January Trip:
April UY: You would have to cancel no later than November to bank your points. That's fine, because you're likely to know whether or not you'll be going in Jan, by Nov.
Aug UY: You would have more time to cancel... Technically you could bank up thru March, but that isn't really useful. You can cancel as late as December. Gets you an extra month there.
Since you won't re-book for Feb-Sep, the later time on the expiration of August points doesn't really help you.

August Trip: Similar situation but even less pressure, since you can cancel up to 30-days out with either UY. In both cases, you'd have the option to rebook something for Jan or bank the points.

So there's not a huge difference in regards to banking.

More important to me would be whether you might ever want to go in the summer... When our kids were young, we did fall trips. But the bigger they get the harder it is to do things during the school year. So we never thought we'd want summer, but here we are a few years later and we will almost always be going in the summer from here on. If you might ever be in a similar situation, that April UY might be appreciated later on.

But then a benefit to the August UY is that if you do cancel an August or January trip, you would have 7-10 months to rebook if you could rebook for the summer. With an April UY, your only option would be to bank. So if you're ever working with points banked or borrowed then rebooking is more important than the banking deadline. We are always dealing with something banked or borrowed, so having a good window to rebook is more useful to us than to bank points from cancelled trips.

As you can see there are benefits to each UY, but they're all really situational.

Thank you for the detailed answer. Great points!