Theme Park Vacation with Points

If you are wanting to visit theme parks like Disney or Universal, but want to save money by using points or credit card annual credits, I’ve got some tips for you.

THEME PARK HOTEL OPTIONS WITH POINTS

One of the easiest ways to save money for a theme park trip is by using points to book your hotel.

But these hotels are really divided into 2 categories:

Hotels you can book with points (or by transferring points) like Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott & IHG
On property hotels you can’t transfer your points to & book

All of these hotel brands have a lot of good options around most US theme parks. One thing to keep in mind is utilizing 4th or 5th night free options.

If you are silver or higher status with Hilton, when you book a stay with points, the 5th night is free on a 5 night booking
If you hold an IHG card, when you book a stay with points, the 4th night is free on 4 night booking
If you book a Marriott stay on points, the 5th night is free on 5 night booking

When we are talking about “on site” properties, the use points/transfer points option doesn’t work. But there are still several options.

Use your points to “cover” the cost of the hotel.
Book an on site hotel via the bank’s travel portal using points in the portal to book it.
Book an on site hotel via the bank’s travel portal using a travel portal credit that comes with your credit card. We did this recently when we applied our $300 annual travel credit from Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card and our $300 annual travel credit from Capital One Venture X Business

TICKETS

The best way to offset the cost of theme park tickets will vary by the points you want to use

Chase Ultimate Rewards –

Once you login to your Chase account and click on your points, you’ll see this option at the top. You can either cash out points or use Pay Yourself Back to essentially use points to cover a purchase you’ve already made.

So you can see, you’d need to cash out 15,900 points for a $159 ticket.

BUT I think the better option is to Pay Yourself Back. That way, you are also earning points on your purchase. At the time we bought our tickets, there was a 5x quarterly rotating bonus on the Chase Freedom Flex®. *This card has quarterly rotating bonuses – “entertainment” was one of the categories for Q3 2025 – Disney tickets, when bought through Disney, code as “entertainment” so I was able to earn 5x Chase Ultimate Rewards Points for this purchase.

In this example, you can see I could select a purchase I’ve already made and use points to remove that charge.

Capital One

You’ll have similar options with Capital One. However, with Capital One, the “cover travel purchases” is a MUCH better option than cashing out points.

After logging into your account and selecting “cover travel purchases” you’ll be given a list of eligible travel purchases you can cover. Your tickets MUST CODE AS TRAVEL to be eligible. Which means you can NOT buy from Disney or Universal directly – you must purchase from somewhere they code as travel – like Undercover Tourist.

Want tickets to code as TRAVEL? Book through Undercover Tourist or similar
Want tickets to code as ENTERTAINMENT? Book directly through Disney/Universal.

But as you can see, it’s 1 cent to 1 point. Not terrible.

BUT if you convert to cash…

This only gives you HALF a cent to each point. TERRIBLE! Don’t choose this option 🙂

HOW TO EARN POINTS TO COVER THIS VACATION

Hotel – my standard go to is earning Chase Ultimate Reward points and transferring them to Hyatt so I can book $0 award stays at Hyatt. THIS is how I earn so many Chase points.

Flights – We were able to find super cheap tickets via Southwest Air which is our go to for flights in the US. For Southwest we almost always earn points from our Southwest Rapid Rewards® Plus Credit Card.

Tickets- Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card: Earn $750 when you spend $6,000 on purchases in the first three months after account opening. This card has NO annual fee!

My favorite Chase card to earn Chase points with (to transfer to Hyatt OR Southwest) is Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card.

My favorite Capital One card to earn Venture miles with is Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card.

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Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.