How to make Excursions and Onboard Expenses FREE!

[pontikes67]

So lots of people visiting about Disney Vacation Accounts and that got me thinking...how can I SAVE the most possible and cover my expenses etc to get the most from our cruise!

Now granted some of this only works if you meet certain criteria, but it IS possible. I've been looking at the math, and while it takes a little work, WOW!

Okay, so let's start with a real life scenario:

• Booked a Cruise while on board - saved 10% and got a $200 OBC from Disney!
  • Saved $515.20 and got an OBC
• Set up (actually had set up 2 years ago and Disney Vacation Account)
• Purchase Disney Gift Cards to cover the cost of the Cruise (they sell the cards $150 value for $142.98).
  • For this particular cruise that will yield a savings of $252.72 after purchasing all of the gift cards needed to pay off the cruise. The one cost is TIME, we have to enter them (actually, we will consolidate them into $1,000 Gift Cards on the Disney Gift Card site).
  • The total we're putting into the DVA is enough to cover, prepaid gratuities, the cruise, port fees, and transfers, but no excursions or other on board expenses (we'll get to that beauty) less the deposit we had made at the time of the cruise booking.
• So the total saved for this cruise by a) booking on board, b) using our gift card plan to pay the cruise off at a small discount rate of 4.68% is $767.92.

But it gets better!

Now of course we want to have fun, do Remy, Palo, an Excursion in every port (maybe), drinks on board, a few pictures etc. So our budget is $3,000 for all of this fun, but here's the fun part, it won't cost us a dime (okay, theoretically

• Disney, as noted above, gives us a $200.00 OBC!
• Our travel agent, another $250.00 OBC!
• We get a Gift Card for every $1,000 we spend on a vacation via our Disney Vacation Savings Account and those can be used on board as well. This will come to $100.00 in Gift Cards
• And the biggie of them all, our Disney Credit Card Reward...by the time we get about 60 days out from our cruise, we'll have accumulated $2,480.-- in dollars we can then add to gift cards (actually that's where we ask, can you have that much split between two cards or are they limited to $1,000 like typical cards?) If you know, let us know.
• So Grand Total of Credits/Rewards - $3,030.25!

Okay, so the cruise would have cost as much as $10,571.45 (air, pre-stay hotel, and everything related to the cruise), but the total with discounts, rewards, credits etc is $6773.28. A savings of $3798.17!

Now I realize, you don't have to spend that much onboard and that you may not have accrued the rewards (and that takes time to get that many), BUT, with patience, and playing the planning game you can have an amazing vacation at a pretty awesome price. Heck, if we tone down excursions and other onboard expenses...our trip could come in at about $3500 for a family of 4 in a Cat 4E on a 7 Night Cruise including Air and Hotel that would amazing!

Finally, the other thought, and I've had this a bunch...why not go less expensive Category, take it easy on on board expenses and take multiple cruises...hmmm, maybe I should rethink our plan

Would LOVE to hear how you make your DCL experience memorable and affordable! Please share any tips!

 

[wanderlust7]

Those are great ways to save. The only one I'm not sure I agree with would be the Disney Credit Card. It's 1% in reward dollars for the no annual fee version and 2% for gas/grocery/Disney for the fee version? You can get 1.5% cashback on all purchases with a no fee Capital One, or 2% back on all purchases with a Barclays with an annual fee (plus sign-up bonus worth $400), and there are other cards that have rotating 5% categories.

 

[drnp]

You can also get 2% cash back with no annual fee with a Fidelity Amex (soon to be Visa).

 

[KalamityJane]

You can do better than that, actually. If you have a Kroger that carries Target gift cards, buy them there and get 4x fuel rewards, or buy discounted Target gift cards online, then buy Disney gift cards online to retain the 5% discount, then put them in the DVA account for another 2%. If you do that correctly, you should be receiving 12%+ off. Over Christmas, they had a super deal with $10 Target GC for $100 in Disney gift cards PLUS the 5% RedCard discount! And then the DVA 2% on top of that, so most of my DVA money will be ~16% off

Also, with plane flights, we signed up for 2 credit cards with Southwest and got 110k in miles plus a companion pass, so flights are free due to the miles. That saved us a ton.

 

[hanscarlet]

I just checked my email and got notice that I am receiving $80 in disney gift cards from DVA boo ya! It's like free money for just using DVA! I also wracked up $200 in GC from using my disney visa and my husband has some platinum black card (through his bank, not disney card) and got $800 in disney gift cards so we took $500 and paid off the cruise and now our cabana is paid for and we also got 200 OBC towards booze for booking on the ship so now all we need to pay for is gratuities, yay!

 

[LoveTheMouse!]

All of our excursions and onboard expenses will be paid with "free money." Birthday and Chraitmas money, Disney Visa rewards card, rebates from various things, and one of my favorites- saving Target gift cards (the ones like buy two of product X and get a $5 Target Gift Card) and using those to buy Disney Gift cards!

 

[pontikes67]

You can do better than that, actually. If you have a Kroger that carries Target gift cards, buy them there and get 4x fuel rewards, or buy discounted Target gift cards online, then buy Disney gift cards online to retain the 5% discount, then put them in the DVA account for another 2%. If you do that correctly, you should be receiving 12%+ off. Over Christmas, they had a super deal with $10 Target GC for $100 in Disney gift cards PLUS the 5% RedCard discount! And then the DVA 2% on top of that, so most of my DVA money will be ~16% off

Also, with plane flights, we signed up for 2 credit cards with Southwest and got 110k in miles plus a companion pass, so flights are free due to the miles. That saved us a ton.

I guess I should qualify my idea of 'savings' as I was thinking of direct ways of getting your actual Disney trip 'discounted'. I know if you buy travel through CostCo you can get a Gift Card to use at CostCo but that doesn't save me money on my trip, though I guess it saves me money in general, so we're accomplishing the same task, but I'm confused on calculating some of the savings. I suppose since I want to go more frequently, I don't plan to get a new credit card for every trip, though on the first trip, the Credit Card Bonus Points would be a great way to get free air out of the deal. If I'm doing that I could use my airmiles, (which I didn't use on this trip) to save me the airfare which then puts me at $4800 in savings and brings my 7 Night to $5700 (all IN), nearly 45% off (including all rewards available to me; though only about 8% of that is 'discount' and the other is rewards of some sort).

It's a great GAME! Maybe we should create the app...the Great DCL Savings Game (Innoventions would be a great place for this game...

So I've done the math, but I'm not getting it: KalamityJane; walk me through this.

• I buy Target Gift Cards at Kroger which gets me "Points" to get discounted fuel.
  • What's the value of that discount? 4X of what? (incidentally, my company pays my gas, though I know that's not typical)
• I then take the Gift Cards and Buy Disney Gift Cards ONLINE at Target.com
  • How does that get me 5% off? Don't you have to use a REDCard to get 5% back? Also, I saw this:
  • 
• I then put those gift cards on my DVA and save 2% (that part I get).

Okay, so if all goes as noted I save 5% on the Gift Cards, I save 2% on the DVA, does that mean 4X is a 5% savings?

Finally, I know I've now created a mathematical hornets nest, lol, but I really want to get this because I love getting things 'discounted' or even FREE!

Thanks for sharing!

 

[minorthr]

If you sign into your target account and have a red card it defaults to that payment taking off the 5% but you can just edit the payment option and use the target gift cards to pay. I have purchased $1800 in disney GC and saved $207 using carpool to buy Target GC then using those to buy dis gc

 

[CM Dad]

For this particular cruise that will yield a savings of $252.72 after purchasing all of the gift cards needed to pay off the cruise. The one cost is TIME, we have to enter them (actually, we will consolidate them into $1,000 Gift Cards on the Disney Gift Card site).

If you are using the DVA to pay for your cruise, what is the benefit of going through the extra step of consolidating the cards on the Disney Gift Card site?

 

[pontikes67]

If you are using the DVA to pay for your cruise, what is the benefit of going through the extra step of consolidating the cards on the Disney Gift Card site?

I don't know...I thought the same thing, but it seemed 'cleaner' to me for the accounting of it. It's the same thing in the end I guess

 

[pontikes67]

If you sign into your target account and have a red card it defaults to that payment taking off the 5% but you can just edit the payment option and use the target gift cards to pay. I have purchased $1800 in disney GC and saved $207.

Cool. I don't have the red card, but still the site is confusing as it states "5% off 'excludes gift cards'". Thanks for sharing!

 

[lanejudy]

And the biggie of them all, our Disney Credit Card Reward...by the time we get about 60 days out from our cruise, we'll have accumulated $2,480.-- in dollars we can then add to gift cards (actually that's where we ask, can you have that much split between two cards or are they limited to $1,000 like typical cards?) If you know, let us know.

I believe you can have up to 2 active Rewards Redemption Cards at any given time. So, yes, you should be able to split your reward dollars onto 2 cards however you wish. I'm not aware of a max value allowed.

Enjoy your cruise!

 

[KalamityJane]

I guess I should qualify my idea of 'savings' as I was thinking of direct ways of getting your actual Disney trip 'discounted'. I know if you buy travel through CostCo you can get a Gift Card to use at CostCo but that doesn't save me money on my trip, though I guess it saves me money in general, so we're accomplishing the same task, but I'm confused on calculating some of the savings. I suppose since I want to go more frequently, I don't plan to get a new credit card for every trip, though on the first trip, the Credit Card Bonus Points would be a great way to get free air out of the deal. If I'm doing that I could use my airmiles, (which I didn't use on this trip) to save me the airfare which then puts me at $4800 in savings and brings my 7 Night to $5700 (all IN), nearly 45% off (including all rewards available to me; though only about 8% of that is 'discount' and the other is rewards of some sort).

It's a great GAME! Maybe we should create the app...the Great DCL Savings Game (Innoventions would be a great place for this game...

So I've done the math, but I'm not getting it: KalamityJane; walk me through this.

• I buy Target Gift Cards at Kroger which gets me "Points" to get discounted fuel.
  • What's the value of that discount? 4X of what? (incidentally, my company pays my gas, though I know that's not typical)
• I then take the Gift Cards and Buy Disney Gift Cards ONLINE at Target.com
  • How does that get me 5% off? Don't you have to use a REDCard to get 5% back? Also, I saw this:
  • View attachment 157593
• I then put those gift cards on my DVA and save 2% (that part I get).

Okay, so if all goes as noted I save 5% on the Gift Cards, I save 2% on the DVA, does that mean 4X is a 5% savings?

Finally, I know I've now created a mathematical hornets nest, lol, but I really want to get this because I love getting things 'discounted' or even FREE!

Thanks for sharing!

Ok, sorry that it was a bit disjointed!

So with the Kroger fuel rewards, I'm not sure how much they discount them as we don't have a Kroger and our Fred Meyers doesn't carry Target gift cards. That being said, 4x fuel rewards at FM usually has a cap of 35 gallons and a $1 off max each gallon. You get a $1 off with 1000 points. With 4X fuel rewards, you get $35 off (if you max out the gas, I usually brought gas cans and also filled my tank) for every $250 in gift cards. This is 14% off. I then would put the cards into our DVA for another 2%. Obviously, if you have a Kroger/FM that carries Target cards, you can buy Target gift cards there, then use the Target gift cards ONLINE only, to get the 5% RedCard discount.

So on to that. If you have a RedCard, you can set it to default on your Target account, and then pay in Target Gift Cards to buy Disney gift cards on there. Target classifies Disney gift cards as "entertainment cards" so the 5% off still works. When they refer to gift cards, they are talking about Gift Cards (Target's) and not any other cards they carry (usually excludes their prepaid Visas too).

I think I covered everything? Oh, if you are stacking discounts like 14 + 2%, it works out to be not quite 16% due to the math. For instance, if I save 14% of $100 (100 - 14 = 86), then 2% of what is left, (86 * .02 = 1.72), I only saved 15.72% and not 16%. The more discounts you add in (3% here, 5% there) the more you see this compound and be slightly less.

 

[pontikes67]

Ok, sorry that it was a bit disjointed!

So with the Kroger fuel rewards, I'm not sure how much they discount them as we don't have a Kroger and our Fred Meyers doesn't carry Target gift cards. That being said, 4x fuel rewards at FM usually has a cap of 35 gallons and a $1 off max each gallon. You get a $1 off with 1000 points. With 4X fuel rewards, you get $35 off (if you max out the gas, I usually brought gas cans and also filled my tank) for every $250 in gift cards. This is 14% off. I then would put the cards into our DVA for another 2%. Obviously, if you have a Kroger/FM that carries Target cards, you can buy Target gift cards there, then use the Target gift cards ONLINE only, to get the 5% RedCard discount.

So on to that. If you have a RedCard, you can set it to default on your Target account, and then pay in Target Gift Cards to buy Disney gift cards on there. Target classifies Disney gift cards as "entertainment cards" so the 5% off still works. When they refer to gift cards, they are talking about Gift Cards (Target's) and not any other cards they carry (usually excludes their prepaid Visas too).

I think I covered everything? Oh, if you are stacking discounts like 14 + 2%, it works out to be not quite 16% due to the math. For instance, if I save 14% of $100 (100 - 14 = 86), then 2% of what is left, (86 * .02 = 1.72), I only saved 15.72% and not 16%. The more discounts you add in (3% here, 5% there) the more you see this compound and be slightly less.

Thanks KJ!!

 

[KalamityJane]

On saving with Costco, we shop there a LOT. I usually take the money we get back for the cruise cash from booking with them and use it to buy Target/Disney/DVA for our next trip. So it works out.

 

[2-pointdoe]

Disney gift cards are considered "Entertainment cards" so you do get the 5% off.

Cool. I don't have the red card, but still the site is confusing as it states "5% off 'excludes gift cards'". Thanks for sharing!

 

[pontikes67]

Thanks for the great info. I get the classification now of Disney Gift Cards at Target and I love the idea of taking the CostCo Rebate and using it for more Disney Vacations! We love Disney, but it's hard to sometimes justify the expense compared to others. With some creativity, we can get the best of both worlds...our favorite Parks/Cruiseline and just enough savings to make it as good if not better than others.

It's such a fun game to see how much you can save. #SavingsNerd

 

[Prose]

Just remember that if you pay with gift cards and you cancel for some reason, they will put the money back on that SAME gift card - don't throw them away!

 

[pontikes67]

Just remember that if you pay with gift cards and you cancel for some reason, they will put the money back on that SAME gift card - don't throw them away!

If you are using the DVA to pay for your cruise, what is the benefit of going through the extra step of consolidating the cards on the Disney Gift Card site?

There's my REASON for loading $1000 to 6 gift cards! I'll only have to keep 6 cards vs. 100+

 

[RedSox68]

WOW, some great tips here!