Travel Tip: Use Your Credit Card Points

Don’t you love getting perks for using your credit card? Credit card companies have hundreds of different ways to lure you to their company — and earning travel points or airline miles tops the list!

If you plan wisely, you can cut hundreds of dollars off your Disney vacation by using your credit card points. Let's look at a few options….

Disney Rewards Visa Card

Chase Bank USA offers the ultimate card for the Disney fan — The Disney Visa card. Let’s look at the benefits related to Disney World vacations:

How to Earn Rewards

Earn $1 in Disney Dream Rewards for every $100 in “net” purchases. (That means real merchandise that you keep. No balance transfers and such qualify for rewards.) Disney Dream Rewards must be used for designated Disney products (more on that in a minute). Other standard provisions apply, such as losing privileges if you don’t keep your credit up to agreed standards.

You can earn up to $750 per year. That’s $75,000 in purchases. If you run all of your household expenses through your Disney Rewards Visa for a couple of years, you could pay a good portion of your vacation!

How to Redeem and Use Your Rewards

When you’ve earned at least $20 in rewards, you can request a Disney Rewards Card. You can then use this card to pay for your Disney World hotel and theme park tickets or to purchase food and other items on your vacation. Yes, this can be a cumbersome step. Just remember that you need to do it, and you’ll be fine!

Other Benefits

Advance Notice of Discounts: Disney Rewards Visa Card holders can typically make reservations for special discounts several days before other guests. For very popular travel dates, this benefit is priceless!

When the discounts are announced, frequently they are worded to sound like it’s a special offer just for Disney Visa Cardholders. Most of us have access to the discounts the following week.

Special Rates: If you charge your Disney World vacation on your Disney Visa, you get six months financing at 0 percent.

Character Greetings: Get a free 5-by-7-inch photograph when you visit special Character Meet ‘n’ Greet Events. As of June, this greeting area was the Character Connection in Future World at Epcot.

Tour Discounts: Get a 15-20 percent discount off special tours at the Magic Kingdom, Epcot and Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Most tours cost from $25 to $199, so the savings for your family can add up quickly.

(You can use your rewards for other Disney purchases, and there are a few other benefits. I’m just referring to Disney World benefits to save space. You can read more online at http://img.dsi.go.com/Images/I-Catalog/DS/Misc/GuestServices/RewardsCards/Body.html.)

Other Credit Card Rewards

Let me give you the bad news first — There are no other credit cards that offer rewards for Disney hotels or theme park tickets. That means your best bet is to use your rewards for air travel.

Many credit cards give airline miles or points that can be used on the airline you choose. These are much better than cards linked to a specific airline! Your goal is to be able to pick the airline that has the best flight for your vacation. You don’t want to be tied to just one airline.

My husband has a Capital One No-Hassle VISA Card. It accumulates airline miles on United Airlines. But it also accumulates a cash equivalency that can be used to pay for tickets on other airlines.

Here’s how it worked for us recently:

We had been planning a trip for us and our daughter, who was high school senior at the time. Since our son was in college, we didn’t think that we would be able to go with us so we bought only three tickets on Southwest Airlines for our travel.

Less than three weeks before our vacation, our son decided that he would be able to join us. The only tickets available on our flight were full fare — almost $600! Ouch!

All my husband had to do was buy the tickets using his Capital One card. When the bill was due, he used his points to pay for the tickets. Sweet!

The lesson for you: Check around to see how you can use your airline miles or reward points. Many cards can be linked to many different airlines, and many airlines have many ways to use rewards points.

My Favorite Combination!

Now let me tell you my favorite combination of credit card rewards and airline frequent flyer program: American Express Member Rewards and Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards.

American Express Member Rewards

I carry the American Express Green Card. It’s just your basic charge card — which is different from a credit card. The balance must be paid off each month, so there are no interest charges. The standard card fee is $65 per year. That’s a little more than most credit cards, but it’s worth it to avoid the temptation of letting charges accumulate.

The Membership Rewards program offers one point for every dollar spent. I also get bonus points for “everyday purchases,” like gasoline and groceries. No maximum on the number of points you can earn! No expiration for your earn points!

My Green Card is linked to my Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards account. One Rapid Rewards credit “costs” 1,500 points.

(Read details online at http://www.membershiprewards.com/wow/default.aspx .)

Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards

Southwest Airlines is my favorite airline by far. I don’t mind having open seating. It’s not too hard to do early check in online to make sure that I’m in an early boarding group. To me, it’s easier than picking out seats in advance.

I also like the attitude of Southwest Airlines employees. Yes, it can be a little corny. Why not make travel fun?

The frequent flyer program is called Rapid Rewards. You earn one credit for each flight you take, two credits for round trips. Sixteen credits equals one round-trip Reward Rewards ticket. There are some other rules, but they are fairly lenient.

You can also earn credits through partners, such as car rental agencies and hotels. Almost half of my credits (except for my AmEx points) were from car rentals and hotel stays.

(Read details on at http://southwest.com/rapid_rewards/?ref=rr_gn .)

Here’s the cool part: I only pay for about three round trips each year, but I earn enough points from Southwest Airlines partners and American Express points to get two or more free round-trip tickets. Of course, I usually use them for more trips to Disney World.
Now that’s some real magic!