Our Ultimate Guide To Disney Tickets

Cover the tickets with points and miles

Here are the most common banks with travel credit cards. These cards will reward you in points or miles that you can use for travel. Certain cards allow you to use the points for things like statement credits or paying yourself back. This allows you to use your points for tickets.

Capital One Venture or Venture X

Both of these cards currently have a 75,000 mile bonus. If you meet the minimum spending and earn them, you will end up with 83,000 miles. This will equal 830 dollars to use towards tickets. You can refer a spouse/partner from your card page to give you even more points!

Disney is odd because it doesn’t code as travel but as entertainment. In order to use the travel purchases feature on capital one, you have to get the purchase to code as travel (Disney tickets direct from them code as entertainment). To do this, you need to buy tickets for a third party travel agency. Our favorite is undercover tourist because they tend to have lower prices than Disney! When you buy from undercover, it codes as travel. Here is our step by step guide to use the points for tickets.

Citi Bank

Our choice would be the Citi Premier. Right now the bonus 60,000 points which equals 600 dollars in tickets. This card has a feature that allows you to cash out your points at 1 cent per points but it doesn’t need to code as travel. You could cash the points out to buy gas if you wanted. It is a little hidden to find.

Steps to do get the cash for tickets:

1. Log onto your Citi bank account online (not the app)
2. Scroll down and select direct deposit
3. Pick a bank account you want to direct deposit them you will click redeem
4. You will then verify your identity and that $$ will be in your bank account!

Chase Bank Ultimate Rewards Cards

Chase tickets you will have a couple of options depending on where you are going! These are the options if you have one of there flexible currency cards: Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserved, or the Chase Ink Business Preferred.

Disneyland- There are tickets on the Chase portal you can buy inside the chase portal. This allows you to buy tickets. However, I have found these tickets to usually be overpriced so just make sure to compare it. You will find the tickets under your ultimate rewards points or chase travel depending on which card you are on. Click the three lines at the top, then go to travel. You will then search activities. I haven’t found WDW on there but they do have universal tickets which are usually reasonable for Florida.

I  tend to use my chase points for Hyatt hotels near Disneyland instead. I usually get 2-3x the value out of my points this way! I will transfer my points to a free world of hyatt account. We have a step by step tutorial that shows you how to transfer here.  We also have our beginners guide to Disneyland if you want to save $$ going there.

What card to use at the holiday’s to maximize your point game

WDW and Disneyland- You can use chase’s “pay yourself back” option. Right now depending on if you have the chase sapphire or the chase reserve you will have different categories. I would actually pay myself back if I had the either card on my groceries. You will get 1.25 (reserve) or 1 cent per point with the sapphire.

Bilt Mastercard

is a newer credit card that allows you to pay your rent with a credit card. It allows you in its portal to book tickets at 1.25x the points. This is a great option for those who have high rent and want to maximize their points.

Amex

In my opinion, this would be the worst way to use your AMEX points. Even buying them with a statement credit would give you .6 instead of the usual 2 cents these points are worth. I would save your AMEX points for flights or hotels.

Cover the tickets via bank bonus or cash-back card

Bank bonuses are given to you by opening a bank account and meeting the requirements. One of the best places to check to see if there is a bank bonus is on the website doctor of credit. Here they will list all of the different bank bonuses you can earn from opening a bank account!

US Bank Cards

I learned a lot about these cards for @homeschoolonpoints on instagram. These cards are a great option if you want cash for your Disney trip and have any sort of business. When you sign up for one of these cards 500-750 dollars to use. They also don’t effect your 5/24 status with chase.

Cash Back Cards

There are many cash back cards options that you could open. If you have a business, I would look a the no annual fee business ink cards such as the unlimited and the cash card. They would give you $750 dollars each and you wouldn’t have to pay an annual fee. Downside to cash back cards is the sign up bonus is usually relatively small for personal cards (around $200 dollars).

Buying Tickets from Discounted Sellers

Even when paying cash, I typically buy my tickets from undercover tourist. This is because they tend to have tickets that are cheaper than Disney’s site. You can buy tickets for Disneyland or WDW.  Let me show you an example:

Here is an example from December:

Below is the rate on undercover tourist:

Here is the rate on Walt Disney World’s site for the same tickets

I always compare both sites to see which is cheaper!

Money Back Options/Deals

Here are some places that you can buy tickets or Disney gift cards. Keep in mind you will need to buy your tickets directly from Disney when using a gift card.

Target

If you have a target red card (even the target red card debit card) you get 5% back on purchases. Many will buy Disney gift cards using this method. Another option is to buy Disneyland tickets directly from target here. You will still get the 5% discount with your card.

Other Stores

Keep an eye out at the following stores: Costco, BJs, and Best Buy all run deals on gift cards you can use for tickets. Costco usually has a sale around thanksgiving on there $500 dollar gift cards that is very popular.

Personal Chase Freedom Flex Card

Check the rotating categories on your freedom flex card. This is a common 0 annual fee card that has bonus categories each quarter. currently the bonus is “live entertainment” which includes Disney tickets, annual passes, even genie +.

you can combined all of your Disney gift cards at https://www.disneygiftcard.com/. It is a legit site. Many delete the info after combining them. You can have 1,000 on each card but can hold up to 10 cards on the site at a time.

Buy a ticket and then upgrade to annual pass via ticket booth

A unique trick to getting the best rate on annual passes is to do the following stack. Buy your tickets from somewhere like undercover tourist and then go to the ticket booth and upgrade your tickets to an annual pass! We personally haven’t done this since pre-covid but we are hoping that it still works.

DVC owners- this trick works for you too! We actually called member services this week to ask. If you have a ticket and want to buy an annual pass as a direct DVC owner, call member services and they will upgrade it for you!

Conference Tickets

Go during a conference time and use conference rate tickets. @summerisjoy is the expert at this on instagram. There is some risk with doing this if you aren’t attending a conference. However, summer had done it a lot and has had 0 problems.