DVC Considerations

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I always recommend that Disney Vacation Club (DVC) owners stick to one Use Year. It is much simpler to combine points from multiple contracts for room reservations. It also allows you to have one membership rather than a membership for each Use Year. Sometimes, it might help your travel plans to have more than one Use Year. Here is one situation, for example. We always travel to Disney World during the summer. I still have kids in school, and I work at a middle school. Summer makes the most sense for us since we have plenty of time off, we don’t need to feel rushed to get back to obligations, and we can all travel together. We also like to visit Disney World over April break for the same reasons. The issue we face is that our June Use Year is great for summer travel but much less beneficial for spring trips. If we have to cancel a trip in April after our banking deadline of January 31st, we are limited in what we can do with the points. We can no longer bank them, and we only have February through May to use them to book another trip. We could use a March contract for our April trips if we had two Use Years, June and March. The caveat is that for simplicity, we would use the March points exclusively for our spring travel. We would not combine them with our June points. If you are like us and have two or more definite travel periods in which you will be using DVC points, depending on the times of year, having two Use Years might make more sense. We are staying with our single Use Year, hoping to keep those April bookings intact and our membership as simple as possible. 

Points charts at every Disney Vacation Club (DVC) resort are not just informative; they have financial implications. These charts outline the points required per night or week for each resort, and they vary based on the time of year, room type, and room category. It's important to grasp these rates. For example, 150 Animal Kingdom points will stretch further than 150 Grand Floridian points, regardless of the room type. Opting for a resort with a more reasonable point chart could be a savvy financial move. Consider our experience at Bay Lake Tower (BLT). The rates for standard-view rooms are fantastic, but BLT has a limited number of standard rooms. Most are Lake View or Theme Park View, which are significantly higher per night. The DVC point charts are a key consideration when selecting a home resort and determining the points you need to align with your travel plans.