How to Travel To Disneyland Using Points & Miles
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Last Updated: February 13, 2024
How to Travel to Disneyland Using Points & Miles
For years I thought a family vacation to Disneyland wasn’t possible because it’s so incredibly expensive! I’ve read statistics that say the average cost of a one-week trip to Disneyland is $9,000 for a family of four. Say what?!
But using points and miles makes taking dream family vacations totally possible—for wayyy less.
I discovered points and miles in 2019—and since then I’ve been using points and miles to travel all over, for practically free. My family and I have taken vacations to New York City, Universal Studios Hollywood, Cancun, Grand Cayman, and Greece, just to name a few!
And we just got back from our first ever family trip to Disneyland, and we did it on a dime! We paid $0 for our 4-night stay at the Sheraton Park Anaheim Hotel and only $11.20 each for our roundtrip flights from Houston to Long Beach. And we loved it so much, we decided to book another trip for January!
Today, I’m sharing my tips and strategies for using points and miles to score free tickets, flights, and hotels for your first (or next!) trip to the Happiest Place on Earth!
Flights
Step One. Determine which airline to fly. Disneyland is in Anaheim, CA and there are several airports that serve the Anaheim area, including Los Angeles (LAX), Burbank (BUR), Long Beach (LGB), John Wayne Airport/Orange County (SNA) and even San Diego (SAN) if you’re willing to make the drive.
To determine which airlines fly from your home airport to airports near Anaheim, you can check out the flight paths of over 900 airlines by using www.flightconnections.com. Simply input your “from” and “to” airports and the site will tell you all routes flown by every airline between the two airports you selected. You can even filter for direct, 1-stop, or 2-stop flights. Once you know which airline services your desired route, you’ll know which points and miles to target to make that flight possible.
Because there are so many airports that service the Anaheim area, there are also a ton of airline options as well. For simplicity’s sake, I will focus on Delta, United, and Southwest.
Step Two. Determine how many points/miles you’ll need. Now that you know what airline you’ll be flying, next log on to the airline’s website and determine how many points/miles it will take to cover your flights. You can do this by looking for the “book with points/miles” option on the airline’s website.
Step Three. Apply for a credit card, earn those points & redeem them for flights! I list options for earning points to fly Delta, United, and Southwest below.
Southwest
Southwest is my all time favorite airline and the one I fly almost exclusively. With Southwest, the award redemption rates are based on the cash price of a ticket. The cheaper the cash price of the ticket, the fewer points needed to book the flight.
Southwest publishes a low fare calendar, making it super easy to see month-by-month, the lowest priced flights between any two airports, at any given time.
I can typically find direct flights from Houston to Long Beach or Burbank for around 15,000 miles round trip. For a family of four, then, you’d need 60,000 points for these flights. If you live closer, you can expect to pay even fewer points. I’ve seen flights from Phoenix to Long Beach for as low as 1,850 points each way when Southwest has a sale!
HOW TO EARN SOUTHWEST POINTS
There are two really great options for earning Southwest points. The first is to open a Southwest credit card. Southwest has three personal credit card options, but you can only have one of them open at a time. The minimum spend required to earn the bonuses as well as the number of points you earn changes frequently, but it typically ranges from 50,000 - 75,000 points.
You can also earn 20,000 points for referring someone (friends, family, etc.) to the card. Southwest limits referral points to 5 referrals per card per year, or a total of 100,000 points.
Here’s the strategy I would suggest for practically free flights to Disneyland on Southwest for a family of four: For this example, let’s assume the current card offer is 50,000 points after spending $1,000 in the first 3 months from account opening.
Apply for a Southwest personal card and meet the minimum spend. You’ll earn 1,000 points from the spend plus 50,000 bonus points for a total of 51,000 points. Refer your spouse/travel buddy and have them do the same thing. You’ll earn 20,000 points for the referral and they’ll earn 51,000 points. Altogether, you’ll have 122,000 points, more than enough to fly a family of four round trip to Disneyland!
When you book a flight on Southwest, you still have to pay taxes of $5.60 per flight, or $11.20 per roundtrip. For a family of four then, with flights booked via Southwest on points, you can expect to pay less than $45 total ($44.80) to fly the whole family roundtrip to Disneyland!
IMPORTANT: You won’t be eligible for the sign up bonus if you’ve received a bonus on any Southwest personal card in the past 24 months.
You can also earn Southwest points by opening any credit card from Chase that earns transferable Chase points (called Chase Ultimate Rewards®) and transferring those Chase points to your Southwest Rapid Rewards account. Cards that earn transferable Chase points include the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card (my personal favorite and the card I recommend every traveler start with!), Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card, or Chase Ink Business Preferred® Card.
United
United uses a dynamic pricing system as opposed to a fixed regional award chart for its flights. It publishes its award prices (showing the number of United MileagePlus® miles needed to make the booking) by the month, and this makes it easy to quickly find the best deal and estimate the number of points needed for a flight. Below I searched for flights from Houston to Burbank. I clicked the “Book with Miles” option and then clicked on the “30-day calendar” to look for the best deals, which are always shown in green.
Direct flights from Houston to Burbank in economy on United can be booked for as little as 12,500 points each way, though 15,000 is more typical. If you live closer, you can expect to pay even less. Direct flights from Boise to LAX, for example, are as little as 8,300 points each way.
Like Southwest, when you book a domestic flight on United using points, you still have to pay $5.60 per flight in taxes or $11.20 per roundtrip. Below is what you’d see for a typical flight from Houston to Burbank in economy on United, at 15,000 points each way.
HOW TO EARN UNITED MILES
There are a ton of ways to earn United miles, but for this post I’m going to focus on my favorite two.
First, you can apply for a United℠ Explorer Card. The sign up bonuses on these cards vary often, but for our example, let’s assume the current offer on the card is 60,000 United MileagePlus® miles after you spend $3,000 on purchases in the first 3 months of account opening.
Second, you can apply for a Chase Sapphire Preferred® card. Let’s assume the card offers 60,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards® points after you spend $4,000 in the first 3 months of account opening. Chase points can be transferred to United at a 1:1 ratio, meaning 60,000 Chase points become 60,000 United MileagePlus® miles upon transfer.
Here’s the strategy I would suggest for practically free flights to Disneyland on United for a family of four: Assuming the sign up bonuses listed above, I would apply for the United℠ Explorer Card and meet the minimum spend. You’ll earn 3,000 United miles from the spend plus 60,000 bonus miles for a total of 63,000 miles—enough for 2 roundtrip flights to Disneyland. But you still need 2 more roundtrip flights. You have a couple of options.
Option one: Apply for a Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and meet the minimum spend. After you do so, you’ll have 64,000 Chase points, which you can then transfer to United. That’s enough for 2 more roundtrip flights to Disneyland!
Option Two: Refer your travel buddy to the United℠ Explorer Card. You’ll earn 10,000 United miles for the referral and your travel buddy will earn 63,000 United miles—enough for 2 roundtrip flights to Disneyland!
Delta
Delta doesn’t publish an award chart. You have to search your desired route on different dates to get an idea of the number of Delta SkyMiles® you’ll need. Here are some examples of flights I found when I searched Delta to give you an example of how many points you’ll need, depending on what area of the country you live in:
ATL to LAX: 36,000 miles roundtrip
IAH to LAX: 32,000 miles roundtrip
BOI to LGB: 19,000 miles roundtrip
SLC to LAX: 9,000 miles roundtrip
You can see that the closer you live to Disneyland, the fewer points you’ll need.
HOW TO EARN DELTA SKYMILES®
You can apply for a Delta credit card. There are several, but the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card is the most popular. The current offer on this card is 70,000 bonus miles after you spend $3,000 in purchases within the first 6 months. You will also earn 10,000 bonus miles every time you refer a friend to the card.
Another option is to transfer American Express® points (called Membership Rewards® to Delta. American Express Membership Rewards® transfer to Delta at a ratio of 1:1.
Currently, the American Express® Gold Card is offering 60,000 Membership Rewards® points after you spend $6,000 in the first 6 months. That’s enough for 2-4 roundtrip flights to Disneyland, depending on where in the country you’re flying from.
Hotels
Want to stay at Disneyland for free? Staying at hotels off-property is your best and easiest bet. Below I’m giving you plenty of options in Anaheim, including Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton and Wyndham hotels that can be booked using points. Plus, I know a lot of you have your heart set on staying on-property at Disneyland, so I’m showing you some tips you can use for that as well! Let’s dive in!
Hyatt
Hyatt is my absolute favorite hotel chain for redeeming points—not just at Disneyland—but everywhere. Hyatt organizes its hotels into 8 different categories, and the price you pay per night varies according to what category the hotel is and whether you’re staying at off-peak, standard, or peak times. Stays at Hyatt range from 3,500 points per night for category 1 hotels in off-peak season to 45,000 points per night for category 8 hotels during peak season.
Hyatt options near Disneyland. In Anaheim, you can book the Hyatt House at Anaheim Resort/Convention Center (closest to Disneyland) or the Hyatt Place at Anaheim Resort/Convention Center (a little farther away). Both are category 4 hotels and can be booked for as little as 12,000 points per night during off-peak times. Standard times will cost 15,000 points per night with peak season costing 18,000 points. Not sure whether your stay will be in off-peak, standard, or peak? Just head to Hyatt’s website, search for your hotel, and then click on the Points Calendar (see where to find it below).
The points calendar will bring up a calendar for the hotel you’ve selected and you can easily see how many points each night will cost you (and pick the cheapest one if your travel dates are flexible!)
HOW TO EARN HYATT POINTS. You can book Hyatt stays using Hyatt points or by using Chase Ultimate Rewards® points, which transfer to Hyatt. Chase points are my top choice for booking Hyatt hotels, and they transfer to Hyatt at a 1:1 ratio.
A typical sign-up bonus on the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is 60,000 points. That’s enough for a free 5-night stay at either of these Hyatt hotels during off-peak times!
The World of Hyatt Credit Card is also an option for earning Hyatt points. A typical bonus on this card is 60,000 points. 60,000 points is, again, enough for 5 free nights at either Hyatt hotel during off-peak times! But the best part of this card is that you get one free night at any category 1-4 hotel or resort every year after your card member anniversary. So, each year you are a cardholder of this card (after your first year), you can get one free night at Hyatt House or Hyatt Place Anaheim. If you and your spouse/travel buddy both do it, that’s 2 free nights a year just by being cardholders.
PRO-TIP: Before you book your Hyatt hotel, compare the pricing in the portal versus booking directly with Hyatt. (This works for all hotels and flights—not just Hyatt). In the Chase travel portal, I checked Hyatt Place for a 4-night stay in June 2024. Two queen beds with a sofa bed room for 4 nights goes for $319/night or a total of 120,313 points in the portal.
But that same exact room, if booked directly with Hyatt, is only 15,000 points per night, or 60,000 points total. You’ll save more than 50% of your Chase points by transferring them to Hyatt and booking direct.
Marriott
Marriott stays typically cost wayyyy more points than Hyatt stays. (All points are not valued equally!) The old system was an award chart similar to Hyatt, with category 1-8 hotels, each of which had peak and off-peak pricing. Now, Marriott is uses “flexible point redemptions” which aligns the cash price of the property to the time of year and hotel occupancy.
You can determine the exact number of points you’ll need for any stay in the Marriott app or website by logging in to your Bonvoy account, choosing the “use points/awards” and “my dates are flexible” options. The app is generally better than the website which can be glitchy.
Marriott options near Disneyland. Here are 5 Marriott hotel options near Disneyland and their average points, per night.
Springhill Suites Anaheim Maingate - Prices range from 33,000 - 54,000 points per night, depending on the time of year you stay.
Springhill Suites at Anaheim Resort/Convention Center - Prices range from 31,000 - 63,000 points per night, depending on the time of year you stay.
Sheraton Park Hotel at the Anaheim Resort - Prices range from 33,000 - 50,000 points per night, depending on the time of year you stay. We stayed here in November 2023 and loved it!
Four Points by Sheraton Anaheim - Prices range from 31,000 - 50,000 points per night, depending on the time of year you stay.
Fairfield Inn Anaheim Resort - Prices range from 34,000 - 55,000 points per night, depending on the time of year you stay.
HOW TO EARN MARRIOTT POINTS
Right now, you can earn three free night certificates by signing up for the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card. The certificates are good at properties valued at 50,000 points per night or less, but you can “top off” your free night certificates with an extra 15,000 points per day, allowing you to stay at properties worth 65,000 points with these certificates. If you and a travel buddy both take advantage of this offer, that’s 6 free nights at Disneyland!
Plus, what I love about this card is that you get an annual free night certificate to use each year after your cardholder anniversary. Those annual free night certificates are good for properties valued at 35,000 points a night, and can also be topped off with 15,000 points per night, allowing you to stay at properties valued at 50,000 points per night. If you and a spouse/travel buddy both have this card, that’s 2 free nights per year for as long as you are cardholders!
For all free night certificates, you have to use them within 12 months of issue. So be sure to have a plan for your free night certificates before you apply for this card. Disneyland is obviously a great way to redeem these certificates, in my opinion!
PRO TIP: Marriott has a Stay for 5, Pay for 4 option. You get the fifth night free when you book a 5-night consecutive stay on points. It must be 5 consecutive nights at the same hotel. The free night will be applied to the lowest point cost during the stay, and this benefit applies to standard rooms only. This benefit does not apply when you are using free night certificates or when you are using cash + points to book stays.
Hilton
Hilton no longer publishes an award chart. The number of points needed for any stay at Hilton varies depending on the hotel, room, and stay dates. You can use the “Hilton Points Explorer” to determine the minimum and maximum number of points needed for any hotel on your desired travel dates. Here’s what that looks like:
Hilton options near Disneyland. Here are three Hilton options you can book using points, near Disneyland.
Home2Suites by Hilton Anaheim Resort. This hotel is a 13-minute walk to the park and you can generally find stays at 60,000 points per night, though stays do range from 57,000 points - 210,000 points per night here.
Homewood Suites by Hilton Anaheim Resort. This hotel is a 20-minute walk to the park and you can generally find stays for 60,000 points per night, though stays do range from 38,000 - 137,000 points her night.
Hilton Anaheim. This is the largest hotel in the Anaheim area and it’s 2 blocks from Disneyland. You can generally find stays for 60,000 points per night, though stays do range from 38,000 - 124,000 points her night.
HOW TO EARN HILTON POINTS. You can earn Hilton points by applying for a Hilton credit card. The one I have and love is the Hilton Honors American Express Surpass® Card. This card typically offers 130,000 Hilton points. That’s enough for at least 2 nights at any of the hotels above. If you and a travel buddy both take advantage of this offer, that’s enough for 4 free nights at the hotels above.
Another option is to earn American Express® Membership Rewards® points and transfer them to Hilton. Membership Rewards® transfer to Hilton at a ratio of 1:2 so that 1,000 American Express® Membership Rewards® points = 2,000 Hilton Honors points! The American Express® Gold Card typically offers 60,000 Membership Rewards® points. If you transfer those points to Hilton, that’s 120,000 Hilton points, good enough for 2 nights at the hotels above. If you and a travel buddy both take advantage of this offer and transfer your points to Hilton, you’ll have 240,000 Hilton points, enough for 4 free nights at these hotels near Disneyland.
PRO-TIP: When you book a standard room reward stay at a Hilton property, every fifth night is free. This perk is available only to Hilton Honors elite members, but that’s an easy status to get: just be a cardholder of a Hilton credit card. You get gold status by holding the Hilton Honors American Express Surpass® card.
Wyndham
Wyndham hotels has a simple award chart with fixed tiers at 7,500, 15,000 or 30,000 points per night.
Wyndham Options Near Disneyland: Here are two really good Wyndham options near Disneyland: (1) The Ho Jo Anaheim - which is a crowd favorite and 8 minute walk to the park and (2) Wyndham Anaheim. The La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham is also a nearby option, bookable with points. All are 30,000 Wyndham points per night.
HOW TO EARN WYNDHAM POINTS: Capital One Miles and Citi Thank You Points both transfer to Wyndham at a ratio of 1:1. My favorite option for earning Capital One Miles is the Capital One® Venture® Rewards Card. The current offer on the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card is enough for 5 free nights if you and a partner both apply. Any my favorite option for earning Citi Thank You Points is the Citi Premier Card. If you and a partner both apply for this one, under the current offer, you’ll have enough for 4 free nights at any of the Wyndham hotels listed.
On-Property Hotels
The strategies for using points to stay at on-property hotels are the same for purchasing Disneyland tickets, which I discuss in more detail below. But a quick summary: (1) You can look for on-property hotels in the bank’s travel portals and book that way. Availability is hit or miss and at the time of this writing, only The Villas at the Disneyland Resort were showing, but there was no availability. (2) You can book your on-property hotel with your Capital One card and use your Capital One miles to pay for the purchase. 75,000 Capital One miles = $750 worth of travel credit. (3) You can use bank bonuses, discussed below, to earn some “free money” to use toward the price of your Disneyland on-property hotel.
Disneyland Tickets
There are a few options for using points and miles to pay for tickets to Disneyland, and I’ll discuss three of them below.
Option One: Use a Travel Portal. Each of the four major banks (American Express, Capital One, Chase, and Citi) offer their own travel portal, through which, users can redeem their points and miles for flights, hotels, car rentals, cruises, and tickets to local attractions.
The tickets that are available in the portals change all the time, so if you don’t find what you’re looking for, you can always check back at a later time. At the time of this writing, the Chase travel portal, for example, is only showing tickets to Walt Disney World and no tickets to Disneyland.
Here’s how you check for tickets to Disneyland in a travel portal, using Chase as an example. Access the Chase travel portal by logging in to your Chase account and selecting Travel. Options include Hotels, Flights, Activities, Cars, and Cruises. Select “Activities” and input Anaheim and the dates of your stay. Then you can filter your results by “Disney” and see what comes up.
Prices in the Chase portal are 1.25 cents per point if your access to the portal is granted by being a cardholder of the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or 1.5 cents per point if you are a Chase Sapphire Reserve® cardholder.
But a word of caution: the Walt Disney World tickets in the Chase portal currently have an insane mark up. A one-day ticket to WDW in the Chase travel portal is $432 compared to $109 if you bought from Disney directly.
So, if you ever use your points to purchase Disneyland tickets in a travel portal, you’ll want to make sure you’re getting a good value and the price of the ticket is not insanely inflated.
Option Two: Redeem Capital One® Miles for Disneyland Tickets
We did not use points or miles for our tickets on our first trip to Disneyland last month. Since our hotel was $0 and our flights were $11.20 each, we could afford to pay cash for the tickets.
But we’re going back in January 2024 and wanted to try the Capital One® option to purchase our tickets. Here’s how we did it and how you can too:
When you use a Capital One® Venture® Rewards Card, you can use your Capital One® miles to cover any purchase that codes as travel on your Capital One® credit card statement. Right now, the card offers 75,000 bonus miles after you spend $4,000 within 3 months of account opening. 75,000 miles = $750 worth of travel you can cover with your miles. If you and a partner both sign up for a Capital One® Venture® Rewards Card, that’s $1,500 you can put toward travel related expenses, including Disneyland tickets!
To redeem your miles to cover travel purchases, simply log in to your Capital One® account, click on your miles, and then click “Cover Travel Purchases.” Your available purchases (the ones that code as travel) will be shown and you can click the one(s) you want to “erase.”
A WORD OF CAUTION! To code as travel, Disneyland tickets must be purchased from a third-party provider, such as Undercover Tourist or Get Away Today. If you purchase your tickets directly from Disney, the purchase will not code as travel on your credit card statement, and you will not be able to use your miles to pay for the charge. We used Undercover Tourist to purchase our tickets for our upcoming Disneyland trip and didn’t have any problem covering our purchase with our Capital One® miles.
Option Three: Use Bank Bonuses. A bank bonus is when a bank pays you cash just for opening an account with them and meeting certain criteria - usually depositing a certain amount of money within a certain amount of time.
I use the Doctor of Credit website to search for info on the best bank bonuses.
This year, I did a bank bonus with Capital One in which I earned $350 of free money just by making two different deposits of $251 each. If you and a travel buddy both did this bank bonus, that would be $700 to put toward your Disneyland tickets!
And there you have it! Your complete guide to using points and miles to travel to Disneyland. If you use any of these tips to make your Disney vacation more affordable, please reach out to me on Instagram and tell me all about it! I’m at @thatdebtfreelife and would love to chat with you there!
Till next time!
XOXO, Kate
