As of February 4th the requirement to re-certify every 2 years when you hold an active VCP certification no longer exists (unless you are a VMware partner or are in some other program that requires you to have a more current certification).
This means you will now have more time to study towards a more recent certification, plus the upgrade path is shorter in many cases by simply taking the latest version of a specific VCP exam.
This shorter path can be taken as long as you are no more than 3 versions behind the most current VCP version for any particular track.
This announcement also means that some VCP certifications that were previously de-activated now have become active again !
For all details (like understanding that this is only for the VCP level certification, that there are different requirements when you upgrade to a different track, etc.) please see the official VMware blog post on this announcement.
Happy re-certifying !