On January 1st we had a family meeting and decided to start saving for our very first trip to WDW. We don't use credit cards, but we are thinking about getting the Disney Visa card. We budget $400 for groceries each month and $200 for gas each month. That would probably be the only thing that would be put on the card and it would be paid off every month. At 1% back in rewards money, is it worth getting the card just for $7200/year?? We'd end up just getting $7 in rewards each year. Are there any other perks that come with having the card that we should know about?
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Disney Visa---worth it??
- Thread starter Hisgal2
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BigRedDad
Well-Known Member
I am a Visa Rewards card holder. We put everything on it. It is an ABSOLUTE waste IMO. The reason I say that is I only get 1%. We do pay it off. However, if I only used cash, I would spend far less foolishly. With a card, it is easy to just run it. There are better ways to save up for a Disney trip. Here are a few of those ideas....
1. Better than 1%, get a Target card and but Disney Gift Cards for 5% off. Doing absolutely nothing gets you 5% vs 1%. Using a Red card (not exactly sure what that is) you may get even more. Just pay the Target card off right away.
2. Do the reverse $1 per week challenge. This is the idea of putting $1 in the bank the first week of the year, $2 the second, and so on. Doing the reverse method takes big chunks out of the XMas holiday time. Do $52 the first week, $51 the second week, and so on. Without interest, this is $1,378.
3. Depending on the number of people, staying offsite can be a MASSIVE savings. You need your own car and offset the parking price with an AP. The cheapest I have seen a Value resort during the cheapest of seasons is $650 for a 6 night stay. You can get 2BR suites offsite no further away than Pop Century for $500-$700 for 7 nights!!!
So to answer the ultimate question, I think a Disney Visa Rewards card is defintiely not worth it, especially with the Target Card giving you 5% immediately for buying Disney Gift Cards.
1. Better than 1%, get a Target card and but Disney Gift Cards for 5% off. Doing absolutely nothing gets you 5% vs 1%. Using a Red card (not exactly sure what that is) you may get even more. Just pay the Target card off right away.
2. Do the reverse $1 per week challenge. This is the idea of putting $1 in the bank the first week of the year, $2 the second, and so on. Doing the reverse method takes big chunks out of the XMas holiday time. Do $52 the first week, $51 the second week, and so on. Without interest, this is $1,378.
3. Depending on the number of people, staying offsite can be a MASSIVE savings. You need your own car and offset the parking price with an AP. The cheapest I have seen a Value resort during the cheapest of seasons is $650 for a 6 night stay. You can get 2BR suites offsite no further away than Pop Century for $500-$700 for 7 nights!!!
So to answer the ultimate question, I think a Disney Visa Rewards card is defintiely not worth it, especially with the Target Card giving you 5% immediately for buying Disney Gift Cards.
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While I may not agree with the Disney Visa being a total waste, @BigRedDad this suggestion is a perfect Disney savings plan. It is very easy to keep yourself on this and if you can do over a year of savings, you end up with somewhere around $1500.
While I fully realize that the Red Card and Target gift cards gives me 5% savings, I find that between the 2% rewards on Disney spending and 10% discount at Disney dining and sales (over $50), I do far better than 5% total savings. Last trip we got APs and did Tables in Wonderland, so the savings was not as great, but (similar to the DDP) the convenience of the Disney savings going right to Disney visits (and no chance of spending it elsewhere) makes us happy and is easy.
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BigRedDad
Well-Known Member
I should have stated that the 1% return is not worth it. The 10% discounts are definitely worth it. But with any credit card, most people keep a balance with an interest rate of 1.5% - 2.5% per month. That is how they all make their money. For people like me and probably you who keep no monthly balance, it is a benefit to us. We are in the severe minority though.
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loriloughs
Member
We are charter members of Disney VISA. Everyone is correct in that other cards have much better rewards, but we love our card. We booked a package in Sept 2014 and got 6 months of no interest. I think that was only for that package though. We go to Disney often enough for our card to be worthwhile. In addition to the meet and greet photo and 10% off merchandise, there is a Chase (bank) lounge in Epcot that offers free soft drinks to cardholders. It was a godsend when we were caught in a monsoon! And if you get there early in the morning, you can get a wristband for a special viewing area for Illuminations. We have not upgraded to premier yet. Any thoughts on that out there?
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Tuvalu
Premium Member
The Chase lounge in Epcot is only open during certain times of the year, Food & Wine and Flower & Garden. And the wristband for special viewing for Illuminations was a one time promotion.
We are also charter members who resisted upgrading to the premier until two years ago. We did not want a credit card with an annual fee. However, when we did the math and discovered how many more rewards dollars we can accumulate with the premier (we use Disney Visa exclusively and pay in full each month) we decided to try it for a year. We received nearly double the amount of rewards dollars we got with the regular card, even taking into account the annual fee. So the premier is a good value for us.
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loriloughs
Member
Thanks for the info. Did not those facts about Chase. We were there during Food & Wine. I shouldn't have assumed those perks were there all the time!
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Ben_since_1971
Well-Known Member
I have the premier card as well. I charge everything on it and pay it off at the end of the month. I also travel for work and use that for my expense reports. I usually end up with about $500-600 for my trip, which ends up being 10-15% of the total bill. True, there are other cards out there with better rewards, but I like it because every time I use it, I am reminded what I am saving for, and that always makes me happy.
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Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts and tips! While it seems that many of you put just about all of your spending onto a card with rewards, that won't be what we will be doing. I am a very visual person, so I took a large wine bottle, washed it out, and decorated it in Disney colors and put it smack dab in the center of our dining room table. Any paper money that can be spared gets rolled up and put into the bottle. The long neck makes it nearly impossible to pilfer the money from the bottle.
Part of my hesitation in getting the basic card (no annual fee ) was that while we budget $200 every other week for groceries and household needs(dog food, soap, etc.), I (1) often do not spend all of that money and(2) shop at Sam's Club for some things which does not accept Visa. So, ideally I'd be spending $7200 on the card in a year, but realistically I wouldn't be. I did apply for and get the basic card to use for gas to start with and will just continue getting the $200 from the bank for groceries. Any money not used at the end of the 2 weeks will just go into the bottle. There was $20 left over this pay period, so into the jar it went. That is 10% of my grocery budget.... more than the1% I would have gotten from the card. I've planned my menu for the next 2 weeks so that I'm primarily using stuff from my pantry and I don't need to buy meat, so I shouldn't spend more than around $100 and will be able to put the remaining money into the jar. Since the1st, we have been able to put about $230 into the jar. Once I can't shove anymore money into the bottle, we will break it open and go from there. Eventually I will use the card at the grocery store and cash at Sam's, and then at the end of each pay period, just take the remaining budgeted money out of the bank and put it into the bottle. I know it probably seems strange, but I'm just super afraid of going over our budget and I don't want to carry a balance on the card.
Part of my hesitation in getting the basic card (no annual fee ) was that while we budget $200 every other week for groceries and household needs(dog food, soap, etc.), I (1) often do not spend all of that money and(2) shop at Sam's Club for some things which does not accept Visa. So, ideally I'd be spending $7200 on the card in a year, but realistically I wouldn't be. I did apply for and get the basic card to use for gas to start with and will just continue getting the $200 from the bank for groceries. Any money not used at the end of the 2 weeks will just go into the bottle. There was $20 left over this pay period, so into the jar it went. That is 10% of my grocery budget.... more than the1% I would have gotten from the card. I've planned my menu for the next 2 weeks so that I'm primarily using stuff from my pantry and I don't need to buy meat, so I shouldn't spend more than around $100 and will be able to put the remaining money into the jar. Since the1st, we have been able to put about $230 into the jar. Once I can't shove anymore money into the bottle, we will break it open and go from there. Eventually I will use the card at the grocery store and cash at Sam's, and then at the end of each pay period, just take the remaining budgeted money out of the bank and put it into the bottle. I know it probably seems strange, but I'm just super afraid of going over our budget and I don't want to carry a balance on the card.
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lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Had you used them are you would have saved $21.80.
Unless you plan to write and Mail a check every month, you don't have to wait to pay off the card. They take a day or two to process, but payments can be made any time through the Chase website or app.
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I understand what you are saying, but I shopped at Sam's Club and they do not accept Visa as payment unless it is a debit card, so no savings there. Because of this, I think eventually using the Disney card for groceries from our regular store and cash at Sam's and then taking whatever I don't spend (which I can get that number up to $80-$100 depending on the week) and putting it into my bottle will have us saving more.
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Disnee4Me
Well-Known Member
I have bought 3 $100 Disney Gift cards at BJ's Wholesale for $96/ea and charged on Discover. I not only earned some Discover dollars. I cashed out $300 on my discover card to apply to the bill when it came in, therefore the Disney gift cards were free. I always pay off my balances too, so not interest charged on my cards. And with all the promotions Discover runs (right now on gas), I earn extra dollars quite often.
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I took our the Disney card to get the promo $200 gift card after spending the specified amount of money, ($500 I think it was), and my mom was the referring card holder so she got a $50 gift card. But now that I got my gift card the Disney CC is going into the safe and not coming out unless they come up with some really good promo for card holders.
I use another CC that has a really good rewards system, so I put everything I can onto that card and pay it off every month. Then the rewards points I cash in towards BP or Shell $100 gift cards and use them to fill up our truck throughout the summer when we are pulling our camper around, it just makes getting 9 mpg towing the camping not seem so bad.
I use another CC that has a really good rewards system, so I put everything I can onto that card and pay it off every month. Then the rewards points I cash in towards BP or Shell $100 gift cards and use them to fill up our truck throughout the summer when we are pulling our camper around, it just makes getting 9 mpg towing the camping not seem so bad.
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Weather_Lady
Well-Known Member
It all depends on where the biggest part of your trip cost lies. For my family of four, airfare from NY is the largest component (if you consider the four big components to be: travel, hotel, park tickets and food).
We have a JetBlue American Express card which gives us a point for every dollar we spend and costs $40 per year in annual fees. We charge everything we can to the card, including utilities, insurance payments, literally everything (the total probably averages $2,000 per month) and pay it off in full every month so there's never any accrued interest. We earn enough points for one roundtrip flight to Orlando each year, and we visit WDW about every 2 years, so that means that every time we go, we're saving a minimum of $520 ($600 roundtrip airfare for two people, minus $80 worth of annual fees).
If you fly down, you might want to look into the rewards card for your preferred carrier, and see if the savings are better than the Disney VISA.
We have a JetBlue American Express card which gives us a point for every dollar we spend and costs $40 per year in annual fees. We charge everything we can to the card, including utilities, insurance payments, literally everything (the total probably averages $2,000 per month) and pay it off in full every month so there's never any accrued interest. We earn enough points for one roundtrip flight to Orlando each year, and we visit WDW about every 2 years, so that means that every time we go, we're saving a minimum of $520 ($600 roundtrip airfare for two people, minus $80 worth of annual fees).
If you fly down, you might want to look into the rewards card for your preferred carrier, and see if the savings are better than the Disney VISA.
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HouCuseChickie
Well-Known Member
I don't have mine for the rewards. I have better cards when it comes to rewards. I have mine so that I don't have to deal with the insanity when deals are released. Having a Disney Visa means I get an avg of a 2-day jump on discounts + I don't have to wait on hold half of the day for a reservationist to assist me.
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JillC LI
Well-Known Member
I NEVER use my Disney Visa card because I have another card with better rewards, but I got it anyway to take advantage of the discounts at various places in WDW and DLR as well as the special character meet & greet. Plus I can use it to book Disney promotions before they are offered to the general public. It looks pretty in my wallet too
Just to supplement this, I actually used my Disney card recently because my daughter wanted Pentatonix concert tickets, and Visa cardholders got early access! LOL
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