Creating a $0 Disney Vacation

[Jax1023]

I’m doing a week at the poly for less than 1k out of pocket.

2 adult, 1 child 7 day tickets-86,976 chase ultimate rewards points.

7 nights at the Polynesian with a travel agent special- 2039.66. $300 of this covered by chase sapphire reserve travel credit. I’m attempting to cover the remain 1750 with bank account bonuses. I’m up to $1400 so far. I’m converting this cash to Disney gift cards at Best Buy. I’ll do $1500. This will get me 7500 UR points in my chase freedom using chase pay and 18,000 in Swagbucks I can then redeem for another $200 in gift cards. another FYI- these are considered taxable income.

Flights- 60,288 rapid rewards points from credit card bonuses.

Food- so far have $100 in chase disney visa rewards dollars, $200 disney gift card from opening the disney visa and $50 disney gift card from target free with purchase gift cards. Have a $100 visa gc from renewing my Fios contract. Figure we’ll need 1500-1700 dollars for the week. That’s 450. Will likely earn some more swagbucks/ Ibotta reward for another 50 dollars. Will also earn some more disney visa rewards, maybe $25. Consider having my husband refer me to a disney visa to net $300 more. Also have $850 in Discover cash back, but hoping to save that for other trips.

 

[TabbyShabby]

100% possible. I did it with our 8 day trip, 5 days spent in the parks. As others have said, Marionnette is a great person to check out. She had an amazing weekly thread in which you could post your savings/earnings for the week. I found it really helpful to list everything. It helped encourage me to keep going. I also found it so inspirational to read what others were doing.

Also, check out Craigslist for local focus groups if you live in a bigger city. I was amazed by how much I was able to make with focus groups. I qualified for one that paid me $400 two days before we left.

All in all I saved enough for:

-2 flights on Southwest from Seattle to Orlando. I bought discounted Southwest gift cards from gift card sites like Raise and Gift Card Granny. Go through Swagbucks to earn even more savings. I used PayPal funds I earned through Swagbucks, MyPoints, Ibotta, CheckPoints (now gone), Perk (which I no longer use), and a few other earning apps to pay. You can also buy Southwest gift cards on Amazon and would use Amazon gift cards I earned to buy gift cards there.

-3 Nights in a suite room at a Disney Springs partner hotel and 4 nights River View at Port Orleans French Quarter. Again, I bought Hotels.com gift cards via gift card sites or bought them through mygiftcards.com when Swagbucks had bonus offers to buy them. You can also buy Hotels.com gift cards from Amazon.

-5 day Park Hopper tickets for my husband and myself. I paid using Disney gift cards I purchased using PayPal funds I earned and I bought them through Swagbucks at the Disney Store online earning swagbucks. For some reason it counts physical gift cards as a purchase and I got points. Not sure if they've fixed this or not.

-$400 in Landry's gift cards which we used at Rainforest Cafe in Disney Springs, T Rex in Disney Springs, and The Yak and the Yeti in Animal Kingdom.

-$50 Lyft gift cards for rides to and from the airports. I purchased these from gift card sites and paid using PayPal funds I earned.

-$125 in Starbucks gift cards, plus I banked all my free drink rewards. We had coffee twice a day in the parks as well as had breakfast there a couple of mornings.

-$750 in Disney gift cards for meals and other stuff while in the parks. We ate at the Sci Fi Dine In and Be Our Guest, both at lunch and did counter service or at the Food and Wine Festival the rest of the time.

-$150 spent at Target buying snacks, suncreen, hand fans, etc. for the trip. I used gift cards I earned.




I actually came home with $35 dollars leftover on my Disney gift card that I'll be using on our 2019 Disneyland trip. I also have a $25 Ghiradelli gift card and a $150 at Schula's I earned but didn't have a chance to use.

The best advice I can give is watch this board. There is so much amazing information shared. It also helps to have an awesome partner. My husband tells me every day how much he appreciates me padding our vacation budget. He knows that while he's playing Xbox, I'm taking surveys. We have a trip to Las Vegas in June that's going to be 100% paid for as well. Saving is an awesome hobby!

 

[Tikitoi]

100% possible. I did it with our 8 day trip, 5 days spent in the parks. As others have said, Marionnette is a great person to check out. She had an amazing weekly thread in which you could post your savings/earnings for the week. I found it really helpful to list everything. It helped encourage me to keep going. I also found it so inspirational to read what others were doing.

Also, check out Craigslist for local focus groups if you live in a bigger city. I was amazed by how much I was able to make with focus groups. I qualified for one that paid me $400 two days before we left.

All in all I saved enough for:

-2 flights on Southwest from Seattle to Orlando. I bought discounted Southwest gift cards from gift card sites like Raise and Gift Card Granny. Go through Swagbucks to earn even more savings. I used PayPal funds I earned through Swagbucks, MyPoints, Ibotta, CheckPoints (now gone), Perk (which I no longer use), and a few other earning apps to pay. You can also buy Southwest gift cards on Amazon and would use Amazon gift cards I earned to buy gift cards there.

-3 Nights in a suite room at a Disney Springs partner hotel and 4 nights River View at Port Orleans French Quarter. Again, I bought Hotels.com gift cards via gift card sites or bought them through mygiftcards.com when Swagbucks had bonus offers to buy them. You can also buy Hotels.com gift cards from Amazon.

-5 day Park Hopper tickets for my husband and myself. I paid using Disney gift cards I purchased using PayPal funds I earned and I bought them through Swagbucks at the Disney Store online earning swagbucks. For some reason it counts physical gift cards as a purchase and I got points. Not sure if they've fixed this or not.

-$400 in Landry's gift cards which we used at Rainforest Cafe in Disney Springs, T Rex in Disney Springs, and The Yak and the Yeti in Animal Kingdom.

-$50 Lyft gift cards for rides to and from the airports. I purchased these from gift card sites and paid using PayPal funds I earned.

-$125 in Starbucks gift cards, plus I banked all my free drink rewards. We had coffee twice a day in the parks as well as had breakfast there a couple of mornings.

-$750 in Disney gift cards for meals and other stuff while in the parks. We ate at the Sci Fi Dine In and Be Our Guest, both at lunch and did counter service or at the Food and Wine Festival the rest of the time.

-$150 spent at Target buying snacks, suncreen, hand fans, etc. for the trip. I used gift cards I earned.




I actually came home with $35 dollars leftover on my Disney gift card that I'll be using on our 2019 Disneyland trip. I also have a $25 Ghiradelli gift card and a $150 at Schula's I earned but didn't have a chance to use.

The best advice I can give is watch this board. There is so much amazing information shared. It also helps to have an awesome partner. My husband tells me every day how much he appreciates me padding our vacation budget. He knows that while he's playing Xbox, I'm taking surveys. We have a trip to Las Vegas in June that's going to be 100% paid for as well. Saving is an awesome hobby!

That's some great information. Just wondering what hotel are you staying at in Vegas?

 

[TabbyShabby]

That's some great information. Just wondering what hotel are you staying at in Vegas?

We're going to be spending two nights at the Aria via MyVegas Rewards. We also earned two dinner buffets at the Bellagio and tickets to The Beatle's Love via MyVegas Rewards. If anyone is planning a Las Vegas trip, I tell them to look into MyVegas Rewards. It's a series of apps and a facebook game that allows you to earn comps at MGM casinos. My parent's live in Southern Utah and Las Vegas is the closest airport. Since discovering MyVegas Rewards we haven't paid for a hotel room in Las Vegas in years.

 

[CouponGirl]

We're going to be spending two nights at the Aria via MyVegas Rewards. We also earned two dinner buffets at the Bellagio and tickets to The Beatle's Love via MyVegas Rewards. If anyone is planning a Las Vegas trip, I tell them to look into MyVegas Rewards. It's a series of apps and a facebook game that allows you to earn comps at MGM casinos. My parent's live in Southern Utah and Las Vegas is the closest airport. Since discovering MyVegas Rewards we haven't paid for a hotel room in Las Vegas in years.

Thanks for sharing about MyVegas... How long did it take for you to accrue enough points to earn all of that?

 

[kydisneyfans]

We're doing better than Disney, we've been saving points since 2014 and are redeeming them for a 10 day trip to Great Britain. Flights and hotels have been covered by United and Hilton points. Only paid for luggage/fuel surcharges, those from Chase UR points. We have train tickets, Buckingham Palace tickets, the Royal Tattoo in Edinburgh, a car rental for a few days in Scotland, and close to $1500 in points to cash out as of now. With grocery as 5% and multiple cards, we should be able to add a few hundred more points/dollars before we leave in August. What may throw a kink into the plans would be the negative exchange rate-we may end up having to spend $500 out of pocket for the trip....

For Disney, we are running Star Wars this weekend and bought 4 day hoppers to convert to AP's. With the weather and time committed to running, we have decided to skip the parks this time and activate the passes in Sept where we are coming for 6 days for Wine and Dine. We are running in January(5 days) and again next April(4 days), and our son/daughter in law will be Honeymooning at Disney in August 2019(5 days). DVC covers all the rooms, no cost outside of maintenance fees. It is around 2K by bridging tickets into AP's, but that will cover the next 4 trips. Flights will be on SW redeeming points(we will have to buy some tickets). Food is an expense you have at home or on the road, not much difference is budget there.

Yes, being smart with points can get you trips to just about anywhere. We're loving it.