Annual Pass renewal question

I don't own DVC, so I don't know how much a DVC AP renewal differs from a regular AP renewal.

Here is how our AP renewal works every year. We have had Florida resident AP since 2008, and we have renewed them every year since 2008. We have 30 days, from the date our AP expires, to renew them at the reduced renewal rate. In all the years when we renewed, our AP expired a year from the date that the original AP was set to expire, regardless of what date we renewed within the 30 day period.

For example, if our AP were valid Jan 1, 2010-Jan 1, 2011, if we renewed on Jan 29, 2011, we got the reduced renewal price, but our AP expired Jan 1, 2012. So in this scenario, we basically lost a month. However, the reduced renewal price is quite a bit lower than buying a whole new AP, so IMO it's worth it. In recent years, we have gone to WDW the closest weekend we could to when our AP expired, so we've only lost a few days a year.

I think the price we figuratively have to pay to get a much lower AP renewal price, is potentially losing up to a month on our AP if our schedule doesn't allow us to get to WDW closer to our expiration date.

It works the same way using the DVC discounted renewal rate. We have to renew within 30 days of the current AP expiring. Our expiration date is always the 24th of January. We always do one of our trips the last week of January so we never really lose any days. Last year we had to renew before our expiration so we could use PF+. We called and were told to go ahead and renew. They sent us a voucher we could use to book our PF and then once we got there just take the voucher to get our new card. At the ticket window all the CM did was use a wipe to wash off the 2013 written on the front of our card and write 2014 on it. I am sure she must have done something through the computer but we got our same cards back.

So the short answer to your question is I do believe they have to be activated within 30 days of renewal to get the discounted rate.