Creating a $0 Disney Vacation

[Snake the jake]

hello everyone!

I’m a first time poster but have been an active reader since last January when my best friend and I decided we would take a 5 night vacation to Disney world. We are both kindergarten teachers, so making the vacation as cheap as possible, without sacrificing the quality of vacation we wanted.

Staying on property (all-star music) and eating at all our dream restaurants, we got the cost of the vacation down to 650 dollars each, including airfare, food, park admission, ect.

We did this through using the chase Disney referral program to get 700 Disney dollars (which paid for all our food) and the chase southwest card to get our flights for free.

Now I got a serious case of the Disney bug, and an even greater case of the money saving bug. I want to go back in January 2020 and am curious, do you think a zero dollar vacation is possible for 2 people, just by taking advantage of discounts, credit cards, and deals? Have you tried? Did you succeed? What was hard about it? I’ve been doing the math and I think we can do this by 2020.

 

[trenty]

I believe it is possible. Check out these threads of the budget board:

I love credit cards
swagbucks
disney gift card deals

There are tons of ideas in those threads.

 

[pigletto]

I think it’s possible for sure, especially if it’s only two people. I would include “other income” as well.. like selling things you aren’t using anymore, or having a garage sale etc. We don’t know where we are going yet, but I am just slowly collecting extra money from several different sources and it will be applied to a trip at some point.

My most lucrative methods are PC Optimum and Airmiles (we’re Canadian.) If all goes according to plan I will have $1500 from those two sources by Christmas. Then I do things like save all my loose change in a jar or sell things we aren’t using and put the $ in our vacation fund. Swagbucks is another program I use, but I’m finding it frustrating lately so I’m giving that one a break.

 

[broadsheet]

I am working on that now!

5 nights at AKL - rented dvc Points, then redeemed Chase Ultimate Rewards for cash to cover it.

4 flights needed - two paid with Delta miles from Delta Amex bonus
1 flight - free companion cert from a delta Amex
1 flight - paying in cash and will use a combo of swagbucks money/Chase Rewards

Food/Disney tix - aiming to cover it with swagbucks money and selling stuff online via decluttr, thredUP

 

[disorganizedchaos]

I think it's totally possible for just two people! I'm hoping to be able to use Swagbucks rewards (we don't do credit cards) to pay for a trip for DS and I to go for his 8th birthday in November. I've been really active with SB and using the QR code for $50 gcs at Best Buy.

 

[Snake the jake]

I think it's totally possible for just two people! I'm hoping to be able to use Swagbucks rewards (we don't do credit cards) to pay for a trip for DS and I to go for his 8th birthday in November. I've been really active with SB and using the QR code for $50 gcs at Best Buy.

How exciting!! That will be a wonderful experience

 

[JAMIESMITH]

https://www.richmondsavers.com/take-your-family-to-disney-world-for-free-step-by-step-instructions/

I’m trying to tweak these ideas for Universal 2019.

 

[ah10is]

Though not $0 I've been pretty close to it...in 2016 I paid $36.20 out of pocket for my whole trip! The $36.20 was the airfare taxes and early bird fee that you can't use gift cards or miles to pay for. I did a solo Split stay 8 nights trip in August that summer - 4 nights at Yacht Club and 4 nights at the Polynesian, annual pass, flights from Maine, spending $$ for food etc! Trip would have been $2749.72 but I only paid $36.20 out of pocket thanks to all of the tricks I learned right here on the disboards!

 

[Snake the jake]

Though not $0 I've been pretty close to it...in 2016 I paid $36.20 out of pocket for my whole trip! The $36.20 was the airfare taxes and early bird fee that you can't use gift cards or miles to pay for. I did a solo Split stay 8 nights trip in August that summer - 4 nights at Yacht Club and 4 nights at the Polynesian, annual pass, flights from Maine, spending $$ for food etc! Trip would have been $2749.72 but I only paid $36.20 out of pocket thanks to all of the tricks I learned right here on the disboards!

Could you share which tricks that were best for you?

 

[disorganizedchaos]

Though not $0 I've been pretty close to it...in 2016 I paid $36.20 out of pocket for my whole trip! The $36.20 was the airfare taxes and early bird fee that you can't use gift cards or miles to pay for. I did a solo Split stay 8 nights trip in August that summer - 4 nights at Yacht Club and 4 nights at the Polynesian, annual pass, flights from Maine, spending $$ for food etc! Trip would have been $2749.72 but I only paid $36.20 out of pocket thanks to all of the tricks I learned right here on the disboards!

Holy crap. You win! That’s amazing!

 

[ah10is]

Could you share which tricks that were best for you?

Swagbucks has been a big part of it! Perk tv use to be a big earner (I have a phone farm)...but these days I'm lucky in getting a couple of pennies! Disney Rewards Visa cards, Pointsforsurveys (jet blue points), southwest cc's. These are just a few! The disboards is full of different ideas....you just have to find the ones that work for you!

 

[Marionnette]

hello everyone!

I’m a first time poster but have been an active reader since last January when my best friend and I decided we would take a 5 night vacation to Disney world. We are both kindergarten teachers, so making the vacation as cheap as possible, without sacrificing the quality of vacation we wanted.

Staying on property (all-star music) and eating at all our dream restaurants, we got the cost of the vacation down to 650 dollars each, including airfare, food, park admission, ect.

We did this through using the chase Disney referral program to get 700 Disney dollars (which paid for all our food) and the chase southwest card to get our flights for free.

Now I got a serious case of the Disney bug, and an even greater case of the money saving bug. I want to go back in January 2020 and am curious, do you think a zero dollar vacation is possible for 2 people, just by taking advantage of discounts, credit cards, and deals? Have you tried? Did you succeed? What was hard about it? I’ve been doing the math and I think we can do this by 2020.

Now that we own DVC, it would be disingenuous to claim that I've actually achieved a $0 Disney vacation. However, I used GCs and cash that I earned from Perk, SB, Shopkick, iBotta and other GPT programs Then I added travel hacking credit cards for airline travel and car rental. And I multiplied my savings by employing the now-defunct GC churning in 2015 in order to pay for all food, transportation, and tickets for 2 (AP for me, 7-day PH for my husband) and a TiW card as well as covering the DVC dues for the year, I didn't spend anything OOP for our 2016 F&W trip. However, that does not take the initial investment in DVC into consideration.

For us, the CC travel hacking is pretty easy. We own a small business and we place a large amount of overhead on credit cards every month. The points accrue rapidly when the CC bill amounts to $10K+ every month.

 

[ah10is]

Now that we own DVC, it would be disingenuous to claim that I've actually achieved a $0 Disney vacation. However, I used GCs and cash that I earned from Perk, SB, Shopkick, iBotta and other GPT programs Then I added travel hacking credit cards for airline travel and car rental. And I multiplied my savings by employing the now-defunct GC churning in 2015 in order to pay for all food, transportation, and tickets for 2 (AP for me, 7-day PH for my husband) and a TiW card as well as covering the DVC dues for the year, I didn't spend anything OOP for our 2016 F&W trip. However, that does not take the initial investment in DVC into consideration.

For us, the CC travel hacking is pretty easy. We own a small business and we place a large amount of overhead on credit cards every month. The points accrue rapidly when the CC bill amounts to $10K+ every month.

Let me just say that Marionnette was very helpful in helping me get my 2016 vacation down to $36.20! I learned a lot over the years from his/her postings!!! So a big Thank You Marionnette in helping keep my disney vacation cost down!!!

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

We flew for free using Chase UR points for the southbound flight, stayed 4 nts at the Boardwalk for less than $800 using Chase UR points, then used SW RR points to fly home. The hotel would have been free if we had chosen a moderate or value. I have never done it but I do know UR points may be redeemed for GCs so if Disney GCs are on the list, it's feasible one could save up enough points to have everything free.
We put everything on our Chase Sapphire Preferred card and shop online through the UR mall to earn additional points. Every little bit helps.
It would be fun to save up enough points to do an entire Disney trip for free, just to see if it could be done but we're saving pts for HI or Europe to cover the flights so I would have to delay this experiment for a few years.


It's great when a business can really rack up points. Several years ago our pediatrician was excited that she had just bought 2 first class seats RT to Sydney, Australia using miles. Each of the 3 doctors take turns using their CCs to buy supplies, vaccines, etc for the practice. If you have to buy stuff, you might as well get some rewards for it.

 

[JJTNY]

For last year's trip we were able to get a trip for 4 down from an estimated $3675 trip down to $1075 using rewards and other discounts. (Those numbers cheat a little on the rewards, since we got the one-off CBR rebate.)

My wife and I both obtained the Barclaycard Arrival MCs and used those rewards in conjunction with Disney Visa rewards. I wrote up some detailed info on another board.
I believe the Arrival MC reward has gone down since I wrote that, but info still stands - and there are some tricks in there to get multiple Disney Visa rewards over time, plus a tactic with the Barclay rewards that can add $50 or more additional travel reimbursement to your totals.

I wasn't shooting for $0 and didn't have time to amass the rewards for it, but for next trip I'm planning to hit the rewards harder and get a highly discounted AP for my family of 4 and close to $0 hotel. (We don't fly normally, so I haven't looked too hard at airline rewards. I do think I'll be shooting for the SW companion passes if we ever do.) I probably be taking another crack at getting new Barclaycards, plus some Chase Ultimate rewards.

 

[Andrea1975]

This discussion might be helpful:

https://www.disboards.com/threads/track-your-2018-vacation-budget-here.3643423/

 

[pinkxray]

I believe it is possible. Check out these threads of the budget board:

I love credit cards
swagbucks
disney gift card deals

There are tons of ideas in those threads.

This is was exactly what my response was going to be.

We are going in Nov. and the majority of the trip will be covered from credit cards points and swagbucks. I do watch for gift card deal but don’t really do much from that thread since I do most of my shopping online and don’t go to physical stores much.

We are a family of 5 but so far I have free flights from SW(had to pay fees out of pocket) and used Chase points for hotel and most likely tickets. We will still have to pay for food but will at least have discounted gift cards to help with that.

If we were a party of 2 we would have easily covered the whole trip using tips from the threads mentioned above.

 

[tylerzmommy]

https://www.richmondsavers.com/take-your-family-to-disney-world-for-free-step-by-step-instructions/

I’m trying to tweak these ideas for Universal 2019.

check out this blog post for some tips and tricks that may help. http://thefrugalvirginiafarmhouse.com/universal-studios-for-almost-nothing/

 

[JAMIESMITH]

check out this blog post for some tips and tricks that may help. http://thefrugalvirginiafarmhouse.com/universal-studios-for-almost-nothing/

Thanks! I’ll check this out!

 

[babyready]

You can definitely do it! I did a very large family trip to Disney last fall and we were able to do a LOT of it with points. There were 11 people so we did have to pay out of pocket for some things but it was WAY less than what it would have cost out of pocket. Maybe 2,000 for 11 people with 5 days in the parks?

Just our immediate family is six people and we have done some wonderful trips for nearly free using points/bank bonuses/free giftcards from Swagbucks/Ibotta/etc.

You didn't ask advice but if I were you I would take this route:

Unless you have gotten other credit cards besides the Southwest cards and Disney cards in the past 24 months, you could go for another Chase card, one that earns UR. If you are aiming to go totally free, I would do a Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP). You will get 50,000 bonus points if you spend 3,000 in the first three months plus the points you would earn spending that 3,000. You could earn more points by adding an AU or referring your friend (10,000?). There are some better bonus cards but they have annual fees that are not waived the first year. Although, they are often worth paying.

A night at All-Star Music is around 11,000 UR. Just one card could get you very close to an entire week on-site.

URs could also be used for plane tickets and even park tickets (although you have to call for these, they are not available online).

There are a few credit cards that give you travel credits. I am looking at the Capital One Venture right now that would be worth a $600 travel credit, with no annual fee. But since you can only get 5 cards with Chase every 24 months, I would definitely start with Ultimate Rewards.

Also, bank bonuses helped us with getting some extra cash to help with our expenses that we couldn't cover with URs or other points.

January 2020 gives you A LOT of time to play with. You can totally do this!!