DVC Use Year 101: Considerations for Trip Planning & Buying Points

What Is DVC Use Year?

Your DVC Use Year:

• Marks the time each year when you receive a new allotment of Vacation Points
• Effects when you can bank and borrow Vacation Points, and sets the deadline for certain vacation decisions
• Is determined at the time you purchase your Ownership Interest in a Disney Vacation Club Resort

Use Year Calendar

Your Use Year starts with the 1st day of your use year month, and ends with the last night of the month prior to your use year. For example, if you have a June Use Year, your use year begins on June 1st, 2020, and ends on May 31st, 2021. This is important to keep in mind for vacation planning, as you will have to start thinking in terms of use year calendar, as opposed to the traditional calendar you’d normally use.

8 Total Use Years

There are 8 total use years possible for DVC members. You may have noticed the following months are missing:

• January
• May
• July
• November

DVC Use Year When Buying Points

Choosing the Best Use Year for You

Some of the major considerations for choosing the best Use Year for you would be:

• Frequent travel dates you wish to book
  • It may be advantageous to have a use year that begins a few months before the times of the year you would like to travel. This will give you ample time to use your points throughout your Use Year, without worrying about booking trips that are near the end of your Use Year.
• Banking deadlines for your DVC Points
  • For example, if you have a June Use Year, you will have to bank your points by January 31st. If you fail to bank your points by then, you will need to use them within the Use Year, bank them in RCI, or risk losing your points.
• Borrowing deadlines for your DVC Points

Considerations For Adding DVC Points To Your Existing Membership

Adding Points With The Same Use Year

Pros

• Seamless use of points at 7 months like they were all bought at the same time in the same contract
• Fairly seamless use 7-11 months as long as you have the same home resort
• Only 1 member number to deal with (as long as deed stays the same)
• No real need to navigate tricky transfers

Cons

• Sometimes can be difficult to match use year & home resort & contract size when adding on

Adding Points With A Different Use Year

Pros

• Each use year creates a new membership
  • Double one time use points
  • Double waitlist capacity (with valid points to book)
• Can better align banking deadlines if taking multiple trips each year
• Ease of use if member prefers to book split stays at 11 months

Cons

• Combining points becomes tedious
  • Formal transfers between memberships
  • Booking trips as split stays and hoping to stay in the same room (can’t be used online)

Other Considerations For Adding Additional Points To Your Existing Membership

• When is it smart to buy a different use year and when is it not?
  • This depends on many factors, but after reviewing the pros and cons of each choice, you may find one route that works better for your use case. Many times, when buying resale points, it can be difficult to match your home resort and use year perfectly, so in the interest of being able to successfully bid on contracts that are selling quickly, you may consider choosing a property with a different Use Year.
• When buying additional points directly from Disney, the add on policy is to always match the owner’s existing use year
• Each contract that is the same use year and deed is a unique item and will be designated .1, .2, .3 etc.
• Members cannot add points to an existing contract BUT if adding same use year AND same home resort the points will act as one

DVC Use Year When Trip Planning

Points must be manually moved to the use year the travel is set to occur in terms of banking / borrowing PRIOR to executing the reservation

• This means either manually banking points before you search or during the latter stages of the booking process. Borrowing will occur during the latter stages of the booking process and is only prompted if necessary
• If you do not manually bank the points to the use year the travel is set to occur, the system will skip the banked points and pull from the allotted year first.

Banking Deadlines for DVC Points

You can bank a percentage of this Use Year’s allotment of Vacation Points to the next Use Year – if you do so by the dates listed:

Basic Booking Without Banking or Borrowing

Example #1

In this example, we are booking a reservations from 2/4/2021 to 2/11/2021. The blue portions of the chart denotes this member’s 2020 Use year, the green portion denotes the member’s 2021 Use Year, and the orange portion denotes the member’s 2022 Use Year. You can see that this booking takes place in the 2021 Use Year, even if the reservation was booked in 2020 calendar year, the points are taken from the Use Year when the travel occurs.

Example #2

In this example, we are booking a reservations from 12/2/2021 to 12/12/2021. The blue portions of the chart denotes this member’s 2020 Use year, the green portion denotes the member’s 2021 Use Year, and the orange portion denotes the member’s 2022 Use Year. You can see that this booking takes place in the 2021 Use Year.

Borrowing DVC Points

• You can always book a trip “before” your points arrive
• It’s not about having the points at time of booking, it’s about making sure the points are valid and aligned with the travel dates
• 11 month and 7 month booking windows never change based on use year

Booking A Reservation With Banking and Borrowing

Example #1

March User Year – 150 Points

Example #2

October User Year – 150 Points

Travelling Across Your Use Year (Split Stay)

• Requires you to book as a split stay because a single reservation cannot pull points from two separate use years
• Tricky way to get “4 years” worth of points in one trip
  • Bank from year 1, use allotted year 2, borrow from year 3 BEFORE the anniversary date. Use year 4 borrows into year 3 AFTER the anniversary date giving access to 4 years of total points (keep in mind 50% borrowing limit currently)

In this chart above you can see there is a reservation book from 9/28/2022 to 10/4/2022. If the member has an October Use Year, the reservation will take place in both the 2021 Use Year, and the 2022 Use Year. This requires the member book what is called a “split stay”, which is basically like making two different reservations that are right next to each other. It has been our experience, along with many other members, that you have a high probability of not needing to switch rooms with a split stay, but that is not guaranteed.

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