I’m in a situation where I am hanging on to the last thread of hope to make one more modification to my DVC stay on marathon weekend and, if I’m lucky and am able to nail it down, I will end up with points going into holding. The new reservation would take fewer points than the current reservation and it’s my understanding that if that happens and you’re within 30 days then the excess points go into holding.
That then means I can use them until the end of my use year (which is December, huzzah! plenty of time!).
I have plans to be in the world in September 2022 and once this whole malarky is done I will re-make that reservation at my home resort, with hopes to switch to another resort once within 7 months. Can I make the reservation for the full length of stay (let’s call it 5 days) and then, once within 60 days do a massively quick drop/add where I modfiy the 5 days to 3 and then use the points in holding to re-reserve the last 2? I know I’d be taking a chance in doing so, but I think it will be the best opportunity to use the points in holding - unless their is a home-resort-only restriction on points in holding?
Let me know - it will make a difference as to whether I want to do the modification to my current reservation within that 30 days, even though I think I stand a good chance of getting it the closer I get to marathon weekend.
Yes, you can reserve online, at any resort, using points in holding. The reservation process automatically uses holding points first, so you don’t even need to do anything to indicate you want to use holding points. (It uses points banked from a previous year next, so that it always uses the points with the shortest remaining life first).
When I’ve had holding points but a reservation I made previously with non-holding points, member services has always swapped in the holding points once I was within the 60 day window. I’ve done that at least half a dozen times and it’s never been an issue.
In fact - and this may be a new thing and not yet universal - my New Year’s Eve reservation was changed without my request or intervention from using non-holding to using holding points as soon as it was 30 days out. So this may be a common thing and DVC will now do it without even asking.
Because my job actively hates me, I’ve had to make an unreasonable number of last-minute changes and cancellations. So I’ve gotten inordinately familiar with the ins and outs of holding points.