A Disney family vacation is almost as classic of an American pastime as baseball games and 4th of July fireworks. It’s an escape from reality and can be a fun dose of magic and happiness. But along with all that joy and anticipation can come sticker shock at the cost of a Disney vacation. Disney can be done on a budget, but it will never be inexpensive.
While there are sometimes deals on Disney dining and lodging, scoring a meaningful discount on Disney tickets is hard. However, you can use some of your credit card points to get Disney tickets without spending a wallet’s worth of cash.
Whether you want to head to Disneyland or Disney World, here’s a look at different ways to use points to cover your Disney park tickets so you can make your next family vacation more affordable.
Disney ticket costs
How much a Disney ticket costs, and therefore the number of points you’ll need to use, depends on several factors.
These factors include guest age (under 3 are free, but at 10, you’re considered an ‘adult’), what date you’re going, how many days you’ll visit, which park(s) you want to visit and whether you want to park-hop.
Related: Everything you need to know about visiting Walt Disney World Resort
One constant with Disney tickets is that the more days you visit a Disney park in one trip, the less your per-day cost.
Looking at the value on a per-day basis, it’s clearly in your best interest to fit as much Disney as possible on a single trip.
Doing so will let you get significantly more bang for your points (or dollars) than taking multiple short Disney trips, unless you’re shopping for a Disney annual pass, which actually isn’t a bad strategy if you plan to visit multiple times in a year. A single-day, one-park tickets to Disney World range from $109 to $184. But your per-day cost on a longer Disney trip of up to 10 days can start as low as $62 per day at certain times of the year.
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Park hopping, where you visit more than one of the theme parks in a single day, will make a one-day adult Disney World ticket cost $188 – $252 (plus tax), so you’re looking at a real chunk of change … or points.
How to redeem points for Disney tickets
If you’re looking for a magical way to get outsize value when using your points for Disney tickets the way you might when cashing in airline miles for a first-class ticket, we have some bad news.
It’s generally impossible to get an insane return for your points when using them on Disney tickets. Instead, as you’ll see below, the main ways to redeem points for Disney tickets are via a cash-back card or by redeeming them at a fixed rate.
Related: Save on a Disney vacation by renting Disney Vacation Club points
But, the best use for your points is the one that makes you happy and if Disney is your happy place, your points can unlock the gates for your visit.
Bilt Rewards are very good points for Disney tickets
Bilt Rewards points are some of the best for securing tickets to Disney.
With Bilt Rewards and the Bilt Mastercard®, (see rates and fees) you can earn points that you can use for Disney tickets directly in the activities section of their travel platform at a rate of 1.25 cents per point, which is going to be a better return per point than most of the other options we’ll go through.
While there are more valuable ways to redeem Bilt points with transfer partners, using Bilt points for Disney tickets is pretty solid, especially if you are racking them up at an increased rate on the monthly Rent Day that does things such as result in double the earnings on dining, taking it from 3 points per dollar to 6 points per dollar, etc.
In the example above, Bilt’s travel booking site charges $167.04 for a one-day ticket to Animal Kingdom on Nov. 2, while Disney charges $158.69 directly. So, you are paying about 5% more in that case to use your points, but it’s still one of the better overall uses of points for Disney tickets.
Use Chase points for Disney tickets
Until 2018, you could redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards points directly toward Disney tickets, cruises, resorts and vacation packages at 1.25 cents if you held a Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or 1.5 cents each if you had a Chase Sapphire Reserve®.
Then, that option went away for many years. However, it’s now back, with some limitations.
In the Chase travel portal, three-day and longer tickets to Walt Disney World are available with points. However, the prices are a bit higher than purchasing directly from Disney in our comparisons. For example, on Nov. 2, 2024, Disney is charging $473 for a three-day adult ticket, while the option on the Chase site costs $544. Unlike the 5% difference with Bilt, that’s a larger 15% price increase in our example dates, so something to pay attention to when pricing out your trip.
That said, the $544 three-day ticket would cost you 36,277 points if you had a Chase Sapphire Reserve, which is mathematically not the best use of Ultimate Rewards points. However, it’s still a decent option compared to some others, considering you’re effectively getting 1.3 cents in value per point redeemed against the price Disney is charging (1.5 cents against the higher rate on the Chase site).
With the Chase Sapphire Reserve, you can also use the card’s annual $300 travel credit toward Disney tickets — again, as long as it codes as a travel charge, so purchasing the tickets from Undercover Tourist is a good strategy for that plan.
Here’s a look at our favorite credit cards and types of credit card rewards for a Disney trip.
Redeem travel points and miles for Disney tickets — with a catch
Like with Bilt Rewards and Chase Ultimate Rewards, you can transfer Capital One miles from the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card or Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card to hotel and airline partners. But you can also redeem Capital One miles at a fixed rate of 1 cent each toward travel purchases made using the card.
The catch with this redemption method is that Disney tickets purchased directly from Disney don’t typically code as a travel charge if purchased by themselves.
If you want to offset the cost by redeeming flexible travel points such as Venture miles, you’ll need the purchase to code as travel.
As mentioned, if you book a larger hotel-and-ticket package directly from Disney, it will likely code as travel. But if you only want to buy Disney tickets without purchasing a broader resort package, again consider purchasing the tickets via a reputable third-party site like Undercover Tourist, as that should then code as travel. As a bonus, some of the tickets available via Undercover Tourists cost a bit less than buying directly with Disney (though some tickets for a shorter trip cost a little bit more).
Going that route means that you could use the 75,000 miles from the welcome bonus from the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card that you earn after spending $4,000 on the card in the first three months as $750 toward a Disney trip, again, as long as what you are buying codes as travel.
Related: These are our favorite Disney World hotels
Redeem flexible points against the charge
With some of the other credit card programs, the best you can do is earn cash-back rewards that you could use to offset the cost of Disney tickets or anything else for that matter.
For example, Bank of America Preferred Rewards points earned from the Bank of America® Premium Rewards® credit card are worth 1 cent each. This card awards up to 2.625 points per dollar charged on non-bonus transactions and 3.5 points per dollar on travel and dining purchases if you have the highest tier of perks based on total assets on deposit with Bank of America and/or Merrill accounts.
If you are in that preferred earnings tier, it’s just about the most rewarding cash-back card on the market.
Right now, the welcome bonus is 60,000 points after spending $4,000 in the first 90 days of account opening. That has a $600 cash equivalent value that you could use to give yourself a statement credit, essentially offsetting the cost of the Disney tickets charged to that card.
Here’s a look at some of our other favorite cash-back cards.
What about the Disney Visa Card?
If you have a goal of using points for a Disney vacation, it’s logical to wonder why 1,000 words into the story, the namesake Disney® Visa® Card has yet to come up.
There are technically two versions of the Disney Visa. The no-annual-fee Disney Visa earns a simple 1% back on all card purchases in the form of Disney Rewards Dollars you can use at Disney.
Then there’s the Disney® Visa® Premier, which earns 5% back on card purchases made directly at DisneyPlus.com, Hulu.com or ESPNPlus.com, 2% back on purchases at gas stations, grocery stores, restaurants and most Disney U.S. locations, and 1% back everywhere else.
In both cases, the Disney Rewards Dollars you earn can be used toward expenses at the Disney parks, on a Disney cruise, etc. This means that it’s not a bad option if you want to rack up rewards for a Disney trip — especially if you lock in a good sign-up bonus, which I’ve seen as high as $300 – $400 on the Disney Visa Premier card that has the $49 annual fee.
There are some cool perks and discounts that come with the cards, but they aren’t the absolute best options for maximizing your ongoing spending to earn a future Disney vacation.
Here’s an entire story on whether the Disney Visa Card is worth it to help you decide what role that card could play for you in an overall Disney on points and rewards strategy.
Related: How to save money on a Disney vacation
Bottom line
It takes time and a concerted effort to build up enough points for a family’s worth of Disney tickets. However, strategically using one or more big credit card sign-up bonuses can help turn a dream Disney trip into a more wallet-friendly reality.
For example, getting $750 in value toward your trip from the current bonus on the Capital One Venture Rewards Card and another $600 from the Bank of America® Premium Rewards® credit card and its welcome bonus can get you a nice head-start on not having to pay cash for Disney tickets.
If you have more time to stockpile points, then the Bilt Mastercard is a great card to add to your wallet since its points are worth 1.25 cents each for Disney tickets. However, it currently doesn’t have a welcome bonus for new cardholders.
Getting the Chase Sapphire Reserve and earning its 60,000-point welcome bonus after you spend $4,000 in the first three months could get you close to two three-day adult tickets as long as they stay available in that travel portal.
While mathematically, there are often better uses of some credit card points than on Disney tickets, the best use of points is always the one that makes your travel dreams come true. So, if Disney is what you want for a future points-fueled trip, you can make that dream come true.
Related reading:
See Bilt Mastercard rates and fees here.
See Bilt Mastercard rewards and benefits here.
