Help Please

[JackyH]

Evening DVC people

Please can you help me get my head around my predicament and the best way to solve it.

Next year I am going to WDW for 3 weeks (yeah go me! ) with my family. Two weeks in a villa and one week to be spent onsite using our DVC points.

I have 178 points from this year (use year Feb) and 180 coming in February 2020.

My home is BLT but I want to book a two bed roomed villa at OKW. Is it best to book at BLT at 11 months and then change at 7 months and will I get back any points as its more points for BLT also I may need to borrow from 2021 points for BLT but not for OKW. Can I book in 2019 for 2020 and borrow from 2021?

Am very confused

[eaglesrest]

That's a toughie for a Saturday morning

You didn't say when your stay is planned for, and that's critical to assess risk and calculate the number of points needed.

Personally I'd work out how many points needed for the OKW 2 bedroom and book your BLT at 11-months for the maximum number of days you can get with the required OKW points. Assumption being that you be happy with BLT if OKW doesn't come off.

You can bank and borrow for the period you are vacationing - so if it's say August 2020, you can bank from 2019 and borrow from 2021. I personally wouldn't want to borrow unnecessarily as you won't be able to return those points of course.

If you swap from BLT to OKW you will get the extra points returned to your current UY (2020) so you'd probably have to rent the spare out, and only you know how missing those 2021 points will impact your vacation plans.

The risk is that you only have X days of the 7 at BLT if OKW is a fail, and then cannot add the extra day(s) at BLT. If that would be a major issue then you need to borrow from 2021 unfortunately.

Would SSR be an option if OKW is a fail? SSR/OKW should be good to book at 7 months but it depends when you are vacationing.

With 358 points to play with in 2020 you could get a BLT 2bedroom standard view for any season other than Premier, so wouldn't need to borrow assuming you are happy with Standard view AND are lucky enough to get one at 11 months. Lake View would work for any season other than Magic/Premier.

[JackyH]

Thank you for your in-depth reply. I am looking for August 15th to 22nd 2020. I completely agree with what you say. It does take some thinking about

[eaglesrest]

I’d be shocked if you couldn’t get a 2 bed at OKW for those dates at 7 months.

There’s availability for the same dates in 2019, even now at 4 months out.

[YorkshireT]

You will 99% be likely to be able to book a 2 bed at OKW bang on 7 months (unless something changes dramatically in booking patterns between. then and now) and your dates are amongst the slowest DVC times. I would just leave it and book 8am ET 7 months out online.
Last summer I did Boardwalk and AKL and didn’t bother booking and switching as I could see they had availability 7 months out. Xmas I am booking and switching as there is more likely availability issues.
Skier Pete’s latest availability charts on the other board are a good handy indication of 7 month availability.