Free WDW Trip!? (on Miles & Points)

[Syzygy]

I came across two “Miles & Points” bloggers who have posted credit card strategies to earn nearly-free trips to WDW:

1) http://millionmilesecrets.com/2013/08/21/2-cards-5-nights-airfare-for-2-to-disney/
2) http://www.frugaltravelguy.com/2012/09/churning-challenge-disney-world-for-4.html

Is this type of strategy legitimate for WDW travel? Has anyone ever traveled to WDW using Frequent Flyer Miles and Hotel Points?

[I am not affiliated with these blog sites. Just curious if anyone has done anything like this].

 

[navywifetill2002]

We use DH's airline and hotel points to take free trips everywhere including Orlando. His points come from his travel however and not credit cards but it can be done. In fact we just got home from 4 nights in Vegas that cost us $10 out of pocket for Sept 11 airline fees (plus spending money of course).

 

[hsmamato2]

yes it;s legit...... I could see doing it this way,but I already have another cc offer I'm using to get free airfare+free hotel stay there.....you have to be willing to do what they recommend,it involves opening multiple cc's in your familiy's name,and knowing your finances VERY well before doing it. (i.e.,never carry cc balance,reach minimum 'spend' to get points,know how to use those points to get what you want)
In this instance, the starwood cc requires a min. spend of 5000 within 6 months,(per card) P.I.F. to get those points, then have them posted to your account, then use them. It takes time,and planning.
It shouldn't be done carelessly.... but it's 100% legit.

 

[hsmamato2]

what those blogs post is a pretty good deal,if you can do it. You pretty much have to have great credit to get those,though. And to answer your question,yes,I've gotten us on trips to WDW for the past few years this way,at significant discounts (one fam. member,who also went to WDW when we went, said the overall cost of our vacay. made him "sick to his stomach" when he compared what he paid vs. what we paid LOL)

 

[NotUrsula]

It's possible, but as a general rule, not free, just way less than you would otherwise have to shell out.

We use airline and hotel points to fly and stay for about $25/pp, but we still pay for our park tickets and food. (AFAIK, you cannot use anything but Chase Disney Rewards pts. at Disney properties so as to take advantage of FD, and it would take quite a lot of spending to earn enough of those to finance a stay; even with with the premier version of the card, you would have to spend a bit over $93K to afford a 7-nt. trip for 2 adults at Pop during value season.)

40,000 SPG points gets you five nights free at the S/D, no blackout dates; we like to use them to go at Christmastime when cash stays mean a premium rate. SPG has LOTS of opportunities to earn large point bonuses, so it doesn't take long to get to that point.

We get free flights on SWA quite often, but not easily at Christmas, so we usually pay OOP at the holidays and use the points to fly at other times of year.

The part that costs is the park tickets, so we tend to invest in 10-day passes with no expiration + water parks, and use each one for about 4 trips. They are not cheap up front ($700 and change for the kid's pass I bought 2 weeks ago), but given annual price increases, the daily cost is quite reasonable if you can swing the initial expense. On this recent trip my DH used the final water park day of a pass he bought 8 years ago.

So, while we don't actually get FREE trips, we do spend an whole lot less on our Disney habit than we would have to if we paid strictly OOP.

 

[kydisneyfans]

Not completely free here either but not bad:

-Initial fillup-Speedway using points, will cost nothing.
Kroger fillup in Macon, GA, $1.00 off/gallon, around $30 for that fill.
-Orlando fill will be full price.
Same in reverse.

Chase rewards points gave us enough dollars this year for 7 nights at POFQ with Disney discount and paid for the Halloween Party tickets. My wife and I each have a card to max the 5x points. It also paid $400 toward our YES tickets, leaving $400 for us to pay.
We also have food costs.

If we want to stay coming home, we have enough Hilton points for several properties in the Atlanta area.

We get 2 "extra" pays a year, the extra pay will cover all food, souvies, and the remaining ticket price, with some left over.

We are using nothing from our budget to make the 8 day trip in October.

 

[CupcakeKelly]

I came across two “Miles & Points” bloggers who have posted credit card strategies to earn nearly-free trips to WDW:

1) http://millionmilesecrets.com/2013/08/21/2-cards-5-nights-airfare-for-2-to-disney/
2) http://www.frugaltravelguy.com/2012/09/churning-challenge-disney-world-for-4.html

Is this type of strategy legitimate for WDW travel? Has anyone ever traveled to WDW using Frequent Flyer Miles and Hotel Points?

[I am not affiliated with these blog sites. Just curious if anyone has done anything like this].

For our upcoming trip DH and I each opened up AMEX cards that had a 50k point bonus when you spent $1k in the first three months. We used one to pay for our park tickets and one to pay for the DVC point rental deposit (rented from a person, only wanted 50% upfront). Got our points really quick, and used them to buy 3 round trip flights on Jet Blue for $75 total.

It's definitely not something that I would do again (I just don't like to open cards that I know I'm going to cancel), but for this trip it made the trip more affordable.

 

[bjscheel]

DH and I signed up for the SW 50,000 points cards. So we had 100,000+ points. We flew to CA this summer on those points and had over 30,000 left. I am on e-Rewards and earn 500-1000 points per month on that. We are charging things for our house addition to the SW card too. We should be able to fly to FL next year too on our points if we take a vacation.

DH has his own semi so he charges $50-60,000 in fuel each year on a card he gets 2% on. So that gives us over $1000 to put toward vacation. When you can fly for free and have $1000 cashback to use, that makes a big difference in your vacation cost.

Now once all the SW bonus points are gone, it will be tough to have enough points to fly on. What I could do is have DH switch to buying fuel on the SW card.

If we had figured it out better, we could have tried to get DH a personal and a business SW card, and qualify for the companion pass. But I didn't read about that until later.

 

[jme829]

I came across two “Miles & Points” bloggers who have posted credit card strategies to earn nearly-free trips to WDW:

1) http://millionmilesecrets.com/2013/08/21/2-cards-5-nights-airfare-for-2-to-disney/
2) http://www.frugaltravelguy.com/2012/09/churning-challenge-disney-world-for-4.html

Is this type of strategy legitimate for WDW travel? Has anyone ever traveled to WDW using Frequent Flyer Miles and Hotel Points?

[I am not affiliated with these blog sites. Just curious if anyone has done anything like this].

Yup..we leave tomorrow for our trip paid almost exclusively with point's from DH's credit card points/airline miles.

Keep in mind, he travels extensively (about 45 weeks a year) so we rack up thousands in points every year.

This is what we got with points for this trip (for 5 people):

R/t airfare (Minneapolis-Orlando)
Hotel (offsite and free breakfast so no cost there)
Car rental
Gas cards to cover rental car
Sea World tickets (1 day passes for 5)
Gift cards for dinner (Maggiano's, Bonefish, Bahama Breeze, Uno's, Logan's)
Gift cards for spending money (from AMEX points, speedy rewards, shopkick)

Literally the only thing we paid cash out of pocket for is our WDW park hoppers and our parking fee to leave our car at our home airport for the week.

We are taking extra spending money in addition to our gift cards (we have about $500 in Disney/AMEX/Visa giftcards) but we're not big souvenir buyers so we won't spend too much more than we have in cards.

 

[Marionnette]

I came across two “Miles & Points” bloggers who have posted credit card strategies to earn nearly-free trips to WDW:

1) http://millionmilesecrets.com/2013/08/21/2-cards-5-nights-airfare-for-2-to-disney/
2) http://www.frugaltravelguy.com/2012/09/churning-challenge-disney-world-for-4.html

Is this type of strategy legitimate for WDW travel? Has anyone ever traveled to WDW using Frequent Flyer Miles and Hotel Points?

.

Legitimate? Yes.

But to do it for completely free? No. There are going to be some fees you cannot avoid, such as the 9/11 security fees on airline tickets or an annual fee on rewards credit cards that get imposed right from the beginning.

I've used rewards to reduce the cost of my vacations for years. I have never gotten to the point where my trip was completely free. I certainly could not accrue enough rewards to pay for free trips every year.

However. I imagine that if I ran a popular blog with lots of referral links to the various rewards programs that I mentioned and affiliate links for credit card applications, I could probably earn enough kickbacks to fund annual vacations.

 

[NHTikiBeckie]

Yup, we currently have enough points saved up on Southwest for 12 flights! We pay $5 for flight, that is it. We got the 50k point promotion, each of us, and I use e-rewards and e-miles to earn more points. We have DVC so we don't bother with hotel points, but I use the Disney Visa and we put our bills on it and it pays for food or tickets. Not 100% free but pretty close!

 

[Mrs. Ciz]

The part that costs is the park tickets, so we tend to invest in 10-day passes with no expiration + water parks, and use each one for about 4 trips. They are not cheap up front ($700 and change for the kid's pass I bought 2 weeks ago), but given annual price increases, the daily cost is quite reasonable if you can swing the initial expense. On this recent trip my DH used the final water park day of a pass he bought 8 years ago.

So, while we don't actually get FREE trips, we do spend an whole lot less on our Disney habit than we would have to if we paid strictly OOP.

I bought the same 10 day no expire WP & more tickets. It really does cut down on the per trip cost as long as you use them over 3 or 4 trips. I occasionally get enough FF miles on American (through flights & CC use) for free flights but since we can fly to Orlando for around $200 or less per person I usually save the FF miles for tickets to more expensive destinations. I have hotel point accounts with Holiday Inn/IHG and Wyndham but only have enough points for 1 night so far. I cannot get my debt averse DH to open any more credit cards even if we pay them off monthly no matter what the perks. And neither of us have to travel overnight for work so we are kind of limited.

ETA: Wasn't there a guy a few years ago who got millions of airline miles by buying special promotion pudding cups? Now he had the system DOWN!

 

[luvmarypoppins]

We do it all the time. Today I just booked 3 nights at the Swan for dh, I and 2 of the adult ds = Free using dh ff miles. resort view
and
3 nights at the Beach Club garden view for just dh and I = FREE using dh ff miles. Our first food and wine!

I must say dh travels a lot and we also have it tied to a credit card so we get a lot of points that you can convert to hotel stays.

This trip cost about 150K miles and right now dh has 320K in his account. He has 3 more business trips planned so there comes more.

We dont use it for the airline that is tied to the cc though. Another airline has more direct flights so we use that.

Flyertalk.com is a great source of info too.

 

[MinnieForMe]

Absolutely. I follow both of those sites. Our current trip to Florida in February of 2014 cost me $80 total for five of us to fly Southwest. I signed up using that lovely 50k offer.

I'm currently working on getting us to Aruba for free. The Chase Sapphire is another lovely credit card!

Keep in mind, your credit score needs to be excellent - top 700 to 800 range. You need to meet your minimum spends and if you can't pay it in full every month, I wouldn't suggest trying this method of collecting points/miles.

 

[beansmom]

our first trip to Disney back 2000 was completely free with rewards programs. That was a once in a lifetime deal.

We do, however, often get great rewards. We have flown to London, Italy and Maui twice for less than $50 total with our ff miles. We get free groceries on Maui with Safeway cards thru Mypoints.

I wouldn't open credit cards willy=nilly just for points--I know me and I'd forget to cancel and end up paying fees plus i really just don't have the time or patience for it. To those who can do it, good on ya.

 

[ShellieB]

We have done 2 trips in the past year with not much out of pocket. We used cc points for flights. My son did baby/toddler food testing for a local company which paid for our resort package with tix and free dining (he was under 3 )..and yes, he earned a few thousand! And I do all of my purchasing for work under quickrewards to get disney gift cards for spending money! However, he is now over three and no longer eligible for testing....so those trips are done

 

[hsmamato2]

as a pp noted, you usually have a few fees here and there for this sort of thing, those OP posts are for JUST airfare+ hotel for 5 nights. Most people still have to eat,etc while on vacation,and I like to stay longer than 5 days when I go away. However the premise behind it is sound,and it works. We can't afford a 'straight-up' Dis vacation, but wangling a bunch of discounts? oh,yeah! flying for 20.00 R/T for 4 people? Oh,yeah.....Staying on cc points for a hotel? Oh,yeah...Getting into a theme park for free? Oh,yeah...(not disney,Universal)

 

[Gamegrl1]

Travelling for work 6 to 8 times a year sure helps earn those airline miles and hotel points. I fly short hops several times a year and stick to the same two (mainly one - Holiday Inn!) hotel brands and use their customer loyalty program. It takes a while to earn the hotel points but I have two free nights finally which I'll be using when I take my brother to DLR in fall '14. (We originally thought of getting a discounted night on our WDW trip at a H.I. but decided to stay on property instead).

Our two cross-country, round-trip flights to WDW cost $20 with the Southwest Visa - I put everything on that card and almost never pay cash. I always pay it off in full each month. Work expenses all go on the card too, which helps bump up the points, and they let us keep our airline points earned while flying for work!

I understand the travel-for-work part does not apply to probably many people on here, but otherwise those strategies do work. I only wish I had more stuff like that (for food, tix and on-property hotel)!

 

[texaslady22]

I'm using Southwest credit card points to get flights for our family of 5 completely free That saves us about $800

I opened the Barclay Arrivals card. It required a $1000 minimum spend for $400 rebate on travel. I put the cost of our hotel ($1100 for 10 days at ASMo) and it took of $440.

I'm still trying to figure out a way to get cheaper tickets and food.

 

[kkmcan]

We've do this all the time. Not free but definitely cheap. We went to Orlando the last week of May this year and paid $300 for all 4 of us to fly roundtrip out of Phoenix. Used up all of our airfare miles (capital one). Then had $500 in Disney reward dollars from our Disney Visa towards our 2 day tickets. Stayed in in-laws timeshare for a week free at Wyndham Bonnett Creek. Additionally, we bought Discovery Cove/Sea World, Aquatic tickets which we paid cash for since we didn't have any poins to cover those.

I thought it was a pretty cheap trip flying all the way from Az.