Yeah, I’m not following your logic here even a little bit. First of all, Disney Chase Visa is a pretty terrible rewards card in that you get 1 percent cashback (only as a Disney gift card) for basically every purchase category. There are much better rewards categories out there. Second of all, in order to earn $1,800 a year in rewards you would need to spend roughly $180,000 a year on the card. Finally, it’s still not “free,” as those rewards can be used to purchase anything at Disney, and again, you could get a different credit card, with better rewards, where you could most likely direct deposit that money into your bank account instead of getting a Disney gift card.
Saying that the existence of the ability to use a Disney Gift Card to pay your dues means that your annual dues are $0 is just wrong.
It’s not wrong. I spend way more than that per year, because I use it to buy inventory for ny business. It’s gotten more difficult as some distributors are insisting on direct electronic payments, or charging a fee to use a credit card, so I don’t get as many points as I used to. But I average between $300 and $400 per month, obviously more at Christmas time.
Yes, there are other cards with better rewards, and I would qualify for any of them. However, I would be responsible and use those points to pay down the bills, or some other practical use. For example, my Discover card rewards are set to automatically go towards my bill.
I think of my Disney rewards like an old-fashioned vacation club. They are designated for our Disney trips, otherwise I would never save up points for our Disney trips.
Most of our trips are all or mostly covered by points. This year we’ve gone a lot more often, so it’s been a partial payment. For example, it covered our annual passes completely. It covers all of our dining, which is mostly signature dining. It covers at least part of our hotels. On our most recent trip for my birthday, I rented DVC points, so I paid cash for those. But the first and only time I paid cash for anything else was our brunch on the morning we left to go home.
But we’ve done Victoria & Albert’s completely on points while staying at the grand Floridian club level completely on points. We’ve done a four day cruise completely on points, including all on board spending. We live “higher on the hog“ at Disney than we do at home, because of those points. However it is rationalized, it works for us.
So $1800 per year is a lot easier to handle if I can pay for it in Disney Chase Visa points.
I’m running out of time and still undecided. There have been some very helpful posts here, especially talking about points availability, and the likelihood that there will not be a better deal in the future.
With the promotion going on, I’ll have to double check my paperwork, but I’m pretty sure the cabins ended up less expensive than most other available resorts. With the obvious exception of the annual fees.
I guess the question is would I spend $26,000 in lodging going to Disney for the remainder of my lifetime? That would likely include a trip to Hawaii. It may include international travel.
We don’t go one week per year. We take several 2 to 4 night trips whenever we want to. We typically book closer to last minute, which I know is not good for DVC. So some of our trips would have to be planned further in advance.
We sometimes stay deluxe, sometimes moderate, sometimes value. Off the top of my head for this year, I think we’ve spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $2500, and probably have one more visit to go.
Using that as an average, although this was a heavy year, I guess we would spend that in 10 years.
I just turned 54. I’m in good health, but if I’m alive in 10 years, I will be seven years older than any man has ever lived on my father’s side of the family. I can’t ignore that. My cholesterol is high and even an Immaculate diet doesn’t help.
Will I be traveling as long as I’m alive and mobile? Absolutely. It’s a priority.
How much do you all use DVC outside of Walt Disney World? Am I right to feel that I’d be more secure at a Disney property in another country? Or is it no different from any other timeshare, and more expensive? I’m supposed to sit with Holiday Inn for their version of this type of thing when we go to Vegas to see Wizard of Oz at the sphere lol. But I’ve rarely heard good things about timeshares in general.
Sorry, long post! Was kind of addressing all the responses at once.
(Inside “Sky Pesos” joke for those not understanding)
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