Where are all of my Disney fans!? Did you know you can use points and miles to cover Disney? It can be done!
Our family took a paid vacation to Disney in October of 2022. It was our first time as a family, and we thought we would be “one and done” people. Well, that quickly changed after having an amazing time! Of course, my husband was still in the mindset, it would be our one and only trip due to the expense. I, on the other hand, had just started learning more about points and miles travel a couple months prior to our trip so I was determined to figure something out!
I knew Disney World would be tough using Chase Ultimate Reward points. All I knew at the time was that those points could cover our flights. But, what about staying on site at Disney World and the cost of tickets? I needed to figure out how to save on both of those things.
Fast forward a little bit- I’ve now done quite a bit of digging and a lot of research. Our goal is to make it to Disney World in October of 2024 and I already have a couple plans in the works to cover a good portion of it.
After all of my research, I learned that using points for Disneyland is the easier of the two, and having never been, we are giving it a shot this year! In a few months, we will be traveling to California and spending a day at both of the Disneyland Parks!
Flights: We are taking Southwest non-stop flights from KC to LAX. I have a SW companion pass, so my husband will fly for only $11.20 (the fees for a round trip flight). My daughter and I will be flying on points that were originally around 30,000 each for a round trip ticket. So, our total would have been just under 60,000 Southwest points, but I kept an eye out and saw a sale for 40% off, so we ended up only having to use around 35,000 points total! The fees for our whole family of 3 were $33.60. We are saving around $1,230.
You can read how to earn the Companion Pass and get buy-one get-one flights for two years in this post!
Hotel: We are staying at the Hyatt House in Anaheim. It is less than 1.5 miles from Disneyland and only about a 10-minute walk. We are staying 4 nights and it is costing us 57,000 World of Hyatt points. The resort fee is waived on points stays, breakfast is free, and we won’t need transportation since we are so close to the parks. Our plan is to get in on Thursday night, visit one park on Friday, have a rest day on Saturday (swim, hang out in the Downtown Disney District, etc), and then visit the other park on Sunday, before heading home on Monday.
The interesting thing about this hotel is that costs are often very inflated (probably because it is so close to Disneyland and I’m guessing certain times of year are higher). When I originally booked with points, prices were running around $800 a night! I looked recently and they were around $270 a night before taxes and fees. So we are saving anywhere from $1,300-4,000 depending on when you book. Either way, we are paying nothing!
Tickets: As I mentioned, we are going to both parks at Disneyland. My mom will be joining us on this trip, so we actually need 4 tickets to each park. We decided to have my husband open another beginner card from a different bank for this because you can basically reimburse travel purchases.
This isn’t actually the best redemption of points/miles because we are getting a basic value of 1 cent per point, but we opened it for this specific reason, so we are okay with it. The other reason we wanted this card is because you receive 2X miles on every purchase you make, no matter what it is! So, if there is ever a time we can’t get more than 1 point per dollar, we pull out our Capital One Venture Rewards® card! This card had a solid signup bonus and you can use the miles you earn to reimburse yourself for the cost of tickets.
When purchasing straight through Disney, the park ticket purchase will code on the credit card as “entertainment”, but there is a work around. If you order Disney tickets through a travel site, they will code as “travel” and are eligible to be reimbursed using your Venture Miles. So, we will be getting tickets through a popular site that a lot of points and miles travelers use and recommend called “Under Cover Tourist.” Tickets on this site are often only slightly cheaper, but since they code the right way to reimburse the purchase, this is the route we will take to purchase tickets.
Food:
This is an area we don’t talk about as much, but we all know food costs have gone way up in the last couple of years. To help cover food costs, I’ve done a couple of things. First, breakfast will be at the hotel everyday since the Hyatt House has free breakfast. To cover most of the food costs in the Disney parks, I have gotten free or very deeply discounted Disney gift cards.
There are a variety of ways to get discounted Disney gift cards or to earn extra points when purchasing Disney gift cards, but most of my gift cards have come from earnings by using cash back apps. There are several apps out there where you can scan receipts after making purchases that earn you coins, points, rewards etc. Then, you simply cash those out for gift cards to stores, restaurants, or my favorite…Paypal. I transfer money to Paypal and then use it to purchase Disney gift cards.
This does take a little time and effort for not as much return as travel points, but it’s helping to cover additional expenses for our trip! I like to use the ones that don’t require me to shop at certain stores or do extra work. I just simply scan and earn rewards. My daughter even likes to scan/take pictures of my receipts for me because it’s like a game and sometimes we earn extra points for certain purchases!
Disneyland is a bucket list trip for so many people and we are grateful that points and miles allow us to take that trip for free!
