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Bonvoy 5 night certificates for MVC owners

luv2vacation

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Thinking about buying 5 night certificate with 100K miles to use airfare for upcoming trip to Disney with the family.

I’m totally new to using my MR points for anything but a random hotel stay and have never used airline rewards points before but we are doing a big family WDW trip this summer and hoping I can at least save on the airfare by using some of the almost 1 million points that are just sitting in my MR acct.

Since we will be staying at DVC, can I just use the miles for airline tickets and save the hotel certificate to use another time?

If so, anyone know how long I have to use it?

If I buy cat 1-4 now, can I upgrade to cat 5 or higher when I decide to use the hotel certificate?

Can I get more than the 100K airline points? Looks like I need 117K total AA points to fly all 9 of us round trip - that’s including 39K points already in our AA account.

Will the airline let us use points for all 9 of us at one time? There are 3 adults & 6 kids.

Looking at AA because we have an AA advantage CC and I think that still includes free bags. That offsets the cost of flying the cheaper airlines like Spirit or Frontier. Also, seeing more flight choices for the dates of our trip on AA.
 

Big Matt

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You can use them separately.

I would not count on the upgrade later. Rules can change. Category 1-4 doesn't get you much in major cities or resort areas. I would pick the five night destination ideas now and scout out what you get for your points. You have a year to use the certificate although they generally let you extend it. If you do upgrade, you have a year from the date of the upgrade.
 

bazzap

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We have extended some hotel certificates we have received, as part of the 5 night Travel Packages, twice in the past.
This was not a guaranteed option and purely at their disgression to agree to.
I thought I had read though that with the changes over the last year, some owners were being refused extensions?
 

TXTortoise

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Your estimate on airfare points cost seems low, but obviously depends on your city, season and AA...who generally are pretty limited on award seat availability.

I’m sitting on four old certificates and trying to figure out how to use them.
 

dioxide45

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Based on recent reports, upgrading and extending may be a thing of the past. Buy the category that you need now because I certainly wouldn't count on upgrading it later YMMV.
 

dioxide45

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If you have points to burn, using them for air miles for domestic flights may be okay, but really not the best use. YOu can often find good deals from the east coast to Orlando and just pay cash.
 

luv2vacation

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If you have points to burn, using them for air miles for domestic flights may be okay, but really not the best use. YOu can often find good deals from the east coast to Orlando and just pay cash.

I know it’s not the best use, but a lot of these points have been sitting in our account for years. Not the best use, either, as they’ve been devalued while just sitting there.

Just looking to off-set some of the costs of a big trip that we’re paying for with something that’s sitting there not being used. If I can use them now to save about $2000 on this trip, then they are more valuable to me than just sitting there being more & more devalued.
 
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