Hi Reader!

Since coming home from Disney, I’ve had several friends IRL ask me to break down our strategy using credit cards to get our Disney trip cost breakdown. One friend said her family spent $10k on a similar length trip, and the other friend said she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to afford to go because it’s so expensive. She’s ready to start opening cards!

So here is our Disney trip cost breakdown using credit card points!

Trip value: about $7,300

What we paid in cash: about $2,500

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Our Disney Trip Priorities:

I know there are other ways to save money like staying off property in a condo, cooking your own meals and packing lunches, and renting a car to drive into the parks, but that was not the experience we were going for.

• Stay on Disney property. Stay on Disney property to be able to get easy transpiration with (no car seat) and early entry to the parks and Genie+.
• A suite. While all four of us in one hotel room is fine for a night or two, we really wanted some extra space to spread out and give us options if Birch needed to go to bed earlier than the rest of us. So we decided to book a one-bedroom suite with 2 rooms.
• Dine out. We didn’t travel all the way to Disney to cook basic meals in a condo kitchen, so the ease and adventure of dining out was our plan.
• A shorter trip. Because we planned to dine out and didn’t want to spend a fortune on food, we did a 4-night trip instead of a full week.

Flights

I found a great deal on a direct flight with Jet Blue out of the Richmond airport (about an hour drive from Cville). Our return trip we flew American and had to go through Charlotte. I think each flight was about $300 per person total. The total for the four of us was 95,000 Chase points or around $1200 equivalent.

Hotel

As you saw in my blog posts, we stayed at the Swan Reserve. We LOVED it! It was brand new as of 2021 so our room was super nice and modern. (The Swan and Dolphin have a bit more dated rooms, although I think some rooms have been renovated.) We could use any of the pools / restaurants in the three hotel trio.

The Swan, Dolphin and Swan Reserve hotels are all Marriott branded, so if you get a Marriott card or use flex points like Chase, Capital One, or Amex, you can book within their portals.

I actually did get a Marriott card in anticipation of using those points on this trip, BUT, it would only let me book double rooms! So I ended up using the Chase Portal to book our suite. We are able to get more Chase points than the average person because of Thomas’s construction business, so I was OK saving the Marriott points I earned on my Bonvoy card for another trip. Remember Chase gives you 1.25 points per dollar when you book with a Sapphire Preferred.

4 nights at the Swan Reserve:

Transportation

I booked round trip tickets on the Sunshine Flyer Bus for a total of $104. I was able to erase this travel expense with Capital One points from my Venture card! This travel eraser is GENIUS for anything that is not a flight or hotel but codes as travel.

Disney Tickets

The hack with Disney tickets is to buy them through a site that codes as travel so you can erase the expense with a Capital One Venture card. (I learned this from other Disney pros.) We have the Venture (Thomas) and the Venture X (me).

For three days at parks for four family members the total for tickets was $1593. We had enough Venture points to erase about 2/3 of that, so the out of pocket cost was $600. We could have erased all of it if we had had enough!

Food + Incidentals

And finally, the part of the trip we did pay for: all of our food and incidentals. Here’s some rough math from my YNAB tracker:

• Checked bag, two ways: $60
• Hotel daily resort fees + taxes: $180 (ugh!)
• Airport parking: $54
• Hotel breakfasts and lots of coffee: $200ish
• Genie+ and paid rides: $285ish
• Four nice dinners, ice cream, souvenirs, waters, airport food, etc.: ~$1,000

If we had had more Capital One points, we could have erased some of this charged to our room! But we spent all of our earned points on the tickets and bus : )

How to Earn Credit Card Points for Disney:

If you want to plan a similar trip, start accruing points now! You'll need some time to open cards and accumulate points without putting more than your usual spending on the cards.

If you’re starting from scratch, it could take you a year or more to get enough points to cover all the categories. A good card strategy is to pace no more than one card every 90 days per person. If there are two of you, you can stagger them so it's a new card after you complete each sign up bonus.

Get Travel Freely first!

I highly recommend signing up for (free) for Travel Freely. The app tells you which cards have the current best offers based on your travel goals. And you can put in if you are one person or two and whether or not you want business cards mixed in. It also keeps track of your sign up bonus and annual fees when they come due.

For your hotel:

If you don’t care about a suite, the easiest way to do your hotel is for each of you to get the Marriott Bonvoy Bold card. It has no annual fee and the points are 2x right now.

OR

Apply for Chase cards for each of you (even easier if you have a business)

1. ​Chase Sapphire Preferred​
2. ​Chase Freedom Flex​
3. Chase Ink Business (2 best options: Unlimited and Cash. These are still at 90k points with no annual fees!!!)

OR

If you’re already done Chase, look into other currencies like Amex or Citi where you can use their portals to book hotels.

For your flights:

You can use the above flex points and book in the portals OR transfer to airline partners. OR get an airline cards:

​Southwest has a great deal right now where you get a free companion pass with their cards. That means you bring a companion on your flight for free for over a year!

For park tickets and incidentals:

Each get Capital One Venture cards (Venture X or Venture) so you’ll be able to erase as much of your tickets and incidentals as possible! Two Venture cards = 150k points = $1500 of travel expenses erased. I'm also about to get the Spark Miles business card so I can keep erasing travel incidentals.

Read this blog post for more details on our trip!

Reply to this email with any questions : )

Kath

PS. When you apply for cards using my links I make a small commission. I hope you will consider using my links as a thank you for this free content! The offers are the exact same as the banks provide - just with a kickback to the source that sends you. I'd rather you put money in my pocket than Google's ;)