Point to use with limited Travel Time

My mother in law just gave us 152000 points. We own DVC so we already have vacations in place for the near future. Half of the RCI points will expire in Dec 2010. Being a teacher I am limited on travel dates. So we are thinking Caribbean for xmas 2010. I am hearing that it is a slim chance. How can I "up" my chances. Love to stay at the Windjammer. Any other resorts I should look at? Thanks...I am reading as fast I can to try an understand all this. DVC I know inside and out RCI not so much

mmcculloch said:

My mother in law just gave us 152000 points. We own DVC so we already have vacations in place for the near future. Half of the RCI points will expire in Dec 2010. Being a teacher I am limited on travel dates. So we are thinking Caribbean for xmas 2010. I am hearing that it is a slim chance. How can I "up" my chances. Love to stay at the Windjammer. Any other resorts I should look at? Thanks...I am reading as fast I can to try an understand all this. DVC I know inside and out RCI not so much

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I'm guessing that you have an RCI points account?

Or will you be using your MIL's account to make a reservation with these points?

We are in the process of changing her RCI/points account to me. So yes, I have an RCI account.

The good news is that 152,000 is enough points to reserve anything that does become available. The bad news is you can't do an ongoing search with points so you have to look often to find what you want.

You can use your points account to look at the "weeks" reservations up to two years out, the "points" or "standard" reservations up to 9 months out.

You should find that you have several choices for holiday week vacations in the caribbean with RCI points. Just remember that air travel is most expensive for those weeks as well.

Thank you so much for replying. As a teacher...flight is always high. We can only travel at peak times. So I am prepared for that.

not so hopeless

You can book non homegroup points resorts at 10 months out. Holiday week owners are less likely to allow their weeks to go into points but some do and some forget to reserve their home resort during the time period so it automatically goes into the points reserveation pool. Check on February 24 for December 24 check ins and the next day for December 25 check ins. I think you can also do an ongoing search with points for weeks resorts, you just have to have a VC set it up.

Some people reserve their home week and if they can't rent it or decide later not to use it let it convert to points but I wouldn't rely on that. So if you don't have a Caribbean resort booked by the 26 of February you should start making alternate plans.

You probably should search through the RCI directory and try to calculate the maximum points you will need for this trip and start using your remailing points or count on paying a fee to extend them or loose them if they have are from 2008. You also need to be aware of when your use year is because many accounts have a use year (and thus expiration date for points) other than Jan1-Dec 31.