Adding 2nd Contract - considerations (use year, same resort, etc)

[takemetomickey]

When buying a second contract what is most important to you and why? Getting the same use year, staying with the same resort, etc. trying to work out what matters the most and it’s a bit overwhelming. Thanks!

 

[heynowirv]

When buying a second contract what is most important to you and why? Getting the same use year, staying with the same resort, etc. trying to work out what matters the most and it’s a bit overwhelming. Thanks!

They are all important factors. It's up to you as what's most important. We have always bought contracts with Aug UY's it just makes it easier to use points. Different resorts will give you more choices for the 11 month window to book, just keep in mind you can only use the points for that resort until you hit the 7 month window then you can book anywhere. I hope that helps.

 

[intamin]

This is an incredibly subjective topic but the things I'd ask myself when considering adding on

1. Do I want more points at the same resort? Is home resort priority really necessary for my resort of choice (VGC) vs. somewhere with more inventory (SSR, AKL) or would I rather own somewhere new and diversify my DVC portfolio. We typically like diversifying in general just because the 11 month home booking priority can be so valuable during certain times of the year. The only time I'd recommend against having multiple home resorts is if you truly only ever want to stay at one resort or the other places you want to stay don't typically require home resort priority
2. Definitely try and stay in the same use year if at all possible
3. What are you trying to achieve with the add on contract? Longer stays at the same resort? Upgrading to the next room category up on a regular basis will affect how large of a contract you end up getting

 

[Massachusetts]

We are waiting on a ROFR sign off for our first add-on purchase. Deed expiration and MF's were my first consideration. After that it was family preference and location. We have flexible travel dates so point cost to book was not really a big concern.

 

[ML_LovesDisney]

When buying a second contract what is most important to you and why? Getting the same use year, staying with the same resort, etc. trying to work out what matters the most and it’s a bit overwhelming. Thanks!

I would say having the same UY is very important, it gets too confusing otherwise. I like owning 2 resorts, but I don't transfer points back and forth between them, because they retain their home resort priority anyway, so I don't see a point. I also don't book last minute ever, so that factors in (always book at 11 mths because we travel at busy times). We own CCV and RIV and I like having two resorts to visit and change it up,

 

[takemetomickey]

I would say having the same UY is very important, it gets too confusing otherwise. I like owning 2 resorts, but I don't transfer points back and forth between them, because they retain their home resort priority anyway, so I don't see a point. I also don't book last minute ever, so that factors in (always book at 11 mths because we travel at busy times). We own CCV and RIV and I like having two resorts to visit and change it up,

thank you for the reply! What do you mean regarding transferring points between the resorts?

 

[Bucketfoot]

I would say that the same UY is preferred but not required. It kind of depends on what you are looking for in a contract.

The choice on small contracts can be much more limited. In our case we found a small contract with a price that was not overly inflated like so many are and went with it as it fit our needs. Would I have preferred that it be the same UY as our others, definitely. But it really isn't a big deal being that it is only one.

That said, I would not want to have to deal with more than two UYs!!!!

 

[ML_LovesDisney]

thank you for the reply! What do you mean regarding transferring points between the resorts?

For example: Let's just say I had two Use years. March and April. In order to combine my points to make one big reservation, I would have to call member services and transfer my points from my March contract to my April contract, to use all the points. That would be fine if I wasn't booking at 11 mths. But if I want to make one big reservation at 11 mths, I would have to wait for that window to open on my April UY contract (otherwise I'd have to borrow points since the use year didn't start yet, and I don't think borrowed points can be transferred? Someone correct me if I'm wrong). This is all more of a moot point if you don't book at 11 mths, but I always do so just saying that for reference. This is just another reason I like to have all my points in one UY.

 

[MsChristy12]

We already knew our 2nd contract will be a small BLT (50-75 points), so originally UY was the most important for us (well me mostly since I'm the one who manage all the points/bookings). We have April UY for our 1st contract, but a small April BLT contract is nearly impossible! I have only seen ONE since last Summer. So finally I gave up and went with Feb because that's the most common UY for BLT. It's only 2 months apart so still works for us. We can also travel any time of the year, but just prefer May if we aren't aiming to attend any specific festivals/events.

What's more important to you? 11-month window for a different resort? Or more points for your current home resort?

 

[Shellyred8]

For us, we started traveling at different times of the year. So it was important to have different use years that were beneficial to those travel times. We don't have a need to combine all of our points to do one big trip.
We have April and August UY's and I really like that mix for our travel dates.

 

[sndral]

thank you for the reply! What do you mean regarding transferring points between the resorts?

I own points at 2 home resorts w/ 2 contracts at each for a total of 4 contracts all titled the same & in the same use year, so all are in my one membership account. If I decide to make a reservation at 7 months out I can pull points from any or all of them for that reservation. If I cancel that reservation they go back to their original status & can be banked or borrowed for a future reservation.
If I had 2 use years I’d have 2 membership accounts. In order to use points from both memberships for one reservation, I’d first need to transfer points from membership A into membership B & then book. If I cancelled that reservation the points I’d transferred from A would stay in B but they’d retain their original use year - so I’d need to keep track of when they expired or needed to be banked by. I could not borrow from those transferred points. The transferred points would not show up on my dashboard until I was actually doing a booking. MS currently allows members to make multiple transfers between their memberships per year which is contrary to the one transfer (in or out) per year rule, but that could change if MS wanted.
If I decided to not mess with transferring & instead made a reservation in the same size/view villa for days 1-4 from membership A & a reservation for days 5-7 from membership B, MS cannot merge them, they will note it as a continuing stay & you usually won’t have to move, but there’s no guarantee since you will technically have 2 different reservations.
Even though I book at 11 months & never use my 2 resort’s points to stay anywhere but at those resorts, I find keeping track of my points hard enough as it is, so simple is best for my ease of use & simple for me is one use year in one membership.
As far as how I decided which home resorts - I travel around the holidays usually - a really high demand time - & I have very strong feelings about where I want to stay, so I bought where I wanted to stay so that I could book my home resorts at 11 months & not fret about whether I’d get what I wanted at 7 months. But I fly cross country once a year for a 10+ night stay, someone who goes during lower demand times or more often for shorter visits & likes variety w/ where they stay likely cares far less than I where they own. There are those who enjoy the hunt of finding a great reservation w/ SSR points or of reserving a reservation w/ points from resort A at 11 months & then trying to replace it w/ points from the less expensive resort B at 7 months freeing up their A points again, etc., but I’m a one and done keep it simple type person.

 

[Sandisw]

It really does come down to how you want to use the points from the contracts. We have three UYs now because we travel throughout the year and do multiple trips.

We use each one for different times and split stays. So, having points in different UY's works for us and allows me to be strategic in using points toward the beginning of the UY to maximize having to rebook if something happens.

We own RIV, VGF, and SSR. RIV and VGF are the places we stay most often and use the SSR as back up to replace a home resort booking if nights are still there so we can free up RIV and VGF points for the following year! We also use SSR to upgrade the size of the room too!

We actually put our RIV and VGF points in different UYs as well. RIV points are in our AUG and DEC UY, and our VGF points are in our JUNE and DEC UY's....with SSR being in AUG only.

Since we are retired and will be doing trips every month DEC through March (with a few other times sprinkled in), the overlap has worked well for us!

If you want to combine points for single reservations regularly, then I think the same UY is much more important! Good luck!

 

[RuntheMouse]

We bought a variety of resorts so we can stay at different resorts. Our Aug UY is what we bought most of those points under because we most often travel to WDW over fall/winter. We wanted ease and variety.

We did add on a small Feb UY for random spring/summer trips past our March banking deadline just in case. It’s only 75 points and won’t be used often as summer in FL is like the surface of the sun but it’s nice to have the option.

 

[takemetomickey]

I own points at 2 home resorts w/ 2 contracts at each for a total of 4 contracts all titled the same & in the same use year, so all are in my one membership account. If I decide to make a reservation at 7 months out I can pull points from any or all of them for that reservation. If I cancel that reservation they go back to their original status & can be banked or borrowed for a future reservation.
If I had 2 use years I’d have 2 membership accounts. In order to use points from both memberships for one reservation, I’d first need to transfer points from membership A into membership B & then book. If I cancelled that reservation the points I’d transferred from A would stay in B but they’d retain their original use year - so I’d need to keep track of when they expired or needed to be banked by. I could not borrow from those transferred points. The transferred points would not show up on my dashboard until I was actually doing a booking. MS currently allows members to make multiple transfers between their memberships per year which is contrary to the one transfer (in or out) per year rule, but that could change if MS wanted.
If I decided to not mess with transferring & instead made a reservation in the same size/view villa for days 1-4 from membership A & a reservation for days 5-7 from membership B, MS cannot merge them, they will note it as a continuing stay & you usually won’t have to move, but there’s no guarantee since you will technically have 2 different reservations.
Even though I book at 11 months & never use my 2 resort’s points to stay anywhere but at those resorts, I find keeping track of my points hard enough as it is, so simple is best for my ease of use & simple for me is one use year in one membership.
As far as how I decided which home resorts - I travel around the holidays usually - a really high demand time - & I have very strong feelings about where I want to stay, so I bought where I wanted to stay so that I could book my home resorts at 11 months & not fret about whether I’d get what I wanted at 7 months. But I fly cross country once a year for a 10+ night stay, someone who goes during lower demand times or more often for shorter visits & likes variety w/ where they stay likely cares far less than I where they own. There are those who enjoy the hunt of finding a great reservation w/ SSR points or of reserving a reservation w/ points from resort A at 11 months & then trying to replace it w/ points from the less expensive resort B at 7 months freeing up their A points again, etc., but I’m a one and done keep it simple type person.

Thank you so much for the detailed info!! It seems like if you keep the same use year you have one account that shows everything?

If you had the same use year and wanted to use Resort A points plus Resort B points to make one big reservation, could you do that or would it still be broken into two?

Thanks in advance!!

 

[intamin]

Thank you so much for the detailed info!! It seems like if you keep the same use year you have one account that shows everything?

If you had the same use year and wanted to use Resort A points plus Resort B points to make one big reservation, could you do that or would it still be broken into two?

Thanks in advance!!

So I can speak on this since I own multiple use years, with 3 contracts at Riviera, 1 at AUL and 1 at AKL. If you have multiple use years, you will have two MEMBERSHIPS, but you will have 1 single account to login to the website. When booking, there is a dropdown menu that allows you to select which membership you are using but I can see the breakdown of all my points under one login account. Both of my use years have a healthy amount of points in them so I’ve never had to transfer points but have had to book thing separately because I do own multiple use years/memberships.

In general, I recommend against multiple use years unless you have a specific use for owning multiple. If you want to keep things nice and simple, stick to one use year. If you have things under one use year/membership, it will allow you to book everything as one big reservation.

edit: Small inconvenience but as you can see on my dashboard my Boardwalk BW view studio is separated into 2 parts and that's because when you book things with different memberships, it prevents you from "merging" reservations even though everything shows up under one dashboard. You can ask member services to "link" the reservations so you don’t have to move rooms and that request is typically honored. Also yay under 2 week mark to next WDW vacation

 

[takemetomickey]

So I can speak on this since I own multiple use years, with 3 contracts at Riviera, 1 at AUL and 1 at AKL. If you have multiple use years, you will have two MEMBERSHIPS, but you will have 1 single account to login to the website. When booking, there is a dropdown menu that allows you to select which membership you are using but I can see the breakdown of all my points under one login account. Both of my use years have a healthy amount of points in them so I’ve never had to transfer points but have had to book thing separately because I do own multiple use years/memberships.

In general, I recommend against multiple use years unless you have a specific use for owning multiple. If you want to keep things nice and simple, stick to one use year. If you have things under one use year/membership, it will allow you to book everything as one big reservation.

edit: Small inconvenience but as you can see on my dashboard my Boardwalk BW view studio is separated into 2 parts and that's because when you book things with different memberships, it prevents you from "merging" reservations even though everything shows up under one dashboard. You can ask member services to "link" the reservations so you don’t have to move rooms and that request is typically honored. Also yay under 2 week mark to next WDW vacation
View attachment 839427

This is so interesting!! The things you don’t think about but can be important, especially when you are talking about buying something you will have for such a long time!

Also your hotel hopping trip looks fab, can I join!!

 

[takemetomickey]

So I can speak on this since I own multiple use years, with 3 contracts at Riviera, 1 at AUL and 1 at AKL. If you have multiple use years, you will have two MEMBERSHIPS, but you will have 1 single account to login to the website. When booking, there is a dropdown menu that allows you to select which membership you are using but I can see the breakdown of all my points under one login account. Both of my use years have a healthy amount of points in them so I’ve never had to transfer points but have had to book thing separately because I do own multiple use years/memberships.

In general, I recommend against multiple use years unless you have a specific use for owning multiple. If you want to keep things nice and simple, stick to one use year. If you have things under one use year/membership, it will allow you to book everything as one big reservation.

edit: Small inconvenience but as you can see on my dashboard my Boardwalk BW view studio is separated into 2 parts and that's because when you book things with different memberships, it prevents you from "merging" reservations even though everything shows up under one dashboard. You can ask member services to "link" the reservations so you don’t have to move rooms and that request is typically honored. Also yay under 2 week mark to next WDW vacation
View attachment 839427

So if I buy, for example, AKL and then SSR, but they are both sept use year, I will only have one membership and I won’t have to have separate reservations that require linking by MS if I combine all their points at 7 months out to book somewhere?

This is complicated stuff folks!

 

[intamin]

So if I buy, for example, AKL and then SSR, but they are both sept use year, I will only have one membership and I won’t have to have separate reservations that require linking by MS if I combine all their points at 7 months out to book somewhere?

This is complicated stuff folks!

That is correct.

 

[intamin]

This is so interesting!! The things you don’t think about but can be important, especially when you are talking about buying something you will have for such a long time!

Also your hotel hopping trip looks fab, can I join!!

The Jambo House ressie is a club level studio, swing by if you want some free food and booze , the night before that is also Jambo House but in a value studio

Some people call it a split stay, I call it frequent free housekeeping

 

[sndral]

Thank you so much for the detailed info!! It seems like if you keep the same use year you have one account that shows everything?

If you had the same use year and wanted to use Resort A points plus Resort B points to make one big reservation, could you do that or would it still be broken into two?

Thanks in advance!!

So if I buy, for example, AKL and then SSR, but they are both sept use year, I will only have one membership and I won’t have to have separate reservations that require linking by MS if I combine all their points at 7 months out to book somewhere?

This is complicated stuff folks!

W/ one membership when you book at 7 months you can choose whichever contract’s points you want to be used for that trip, so it’ll be one reservation when you book it. Say your reservation needs 200 points & you have 100 AKV points available & 100 SSR points you just pull 100 from each contract & viola you’re booked - one reservation.
Another hypothetical w/ one membership, say you want to go to AKV for 8 nights, but only have enough AKV points for 4 nights. At 11 months you book your first 4 nights at AKV. You also book 4 nights at SSR w/ your SSR points for nights 5-8 at 11 months - so you have somewhere to stay if AKV isn’t available at 7 months. When 7 months rolls around you hop online & modify your SSR stay to AKV (assuming it’s available.) Then you call member services & ask them to merge your 2 reservations & you now have one reservation for 8 nights at AKV.