Unfortunately, we always travel in the last 4 months of our use year. We always travel in the fall and our Guide told us they were only selling December use year when we bought....
I didn't have a problem with it until last fall when we had to cancel due to the hurricane. There was no availability left in the next 2 months for any trip at WDW or
Disneyland for my family of 5 (across all resorts and room types!) Member services was nice enough to bank my points into the next use year but we had banked the previous use year's points for that particular trip which accounted for most of the points. They won't allow you to bank them twice, no matter the circumstances. My only recourse was to deposit them into RCI and so we will be taking a ski trip over spring break to Granby, CO (near Winter Park ski area). I'm sure it will be a great trip, but Granby, CO is no VGF! I usually buy trip insurance but didn't want to pay double the amount to cover 2 use year's points so I didn't buy any that time.... In the future, I will certainly buy trip insurance on already banked points. Although December use year doesn't work for our fall trips, we are taking a February and June trip this year which will work great. (No one can always plan to travel the same time of year forever!)