If you are frequent visitor to all things Disney, it might be worth your while to sign-up for a Disney VISA credit card. I signed up many years ago and there are several perks which my family has enjoyed. The biggest one is earning Disney reward dollars. On the basic card, with no annual fee, you earn 1% rewards, so $1 in Disney reward dollars for every $100 you charge. If you have a Disney Premier Card, which requires an annual fee, you can earn 2% on certain purchases. Of course, the number of reward dollars you earn depends on how much you use the card. But over the course of a year or two, it is possible to earn a few hundred dollars in rewards.
What can you do with Disney Rewards? Well, if you’re on a Disney cruise, you cannot pay cash or charge anything. It all gets billed to your on-board account. So you can take your Disney rewards card (you need to call and obtain a special card with just your Disney dollars on it before you go on vacation -- and give a few weeks for processing) to the customer relations desk and they will apply it to your on-board bill. So, if we have spent $700 on on-board drinks, merchandise, cruise excursions, etc and I have Disney reward dollars on my card of $300 -- the amount we pay at the end of the cruise is $400. You can also use your Disney dollars at Disney theme parks, to purchase Disney tickets and at the Disney store. For us, it is a way to save some money. Be sure to check the rules on redeeming your Disney dollars a couple months in advance of your trip. Sometimes, there is also an on-board credit if you have paid for a Disney cruise with your Disney VISA -- this changes periodically, so check with Disney VISA or your travel agent.
Second, if you purchase a Disney vacation using your Disney VISA, you get 6 months of 0% financing to pay off that vacation. So, if our cruise costs $6,000 and I charge the entire amount to my Disney VISA, I can pay it off ($1,000 per month) without incurring interest charges. It’s a nice, cost-free way, to spread out the costs of your vacation.
Finally, there are typically other perks with your Disney VISA card in the Disney theme parks. They change pretty regularly, but in the past our Disney VISA got us into special character greetings that were for VISA card holders only and a free photo print of that meeting. During our August, 2017 trip we had a photo session with Kylo Ren in Hollywood Studios and Figment in EPCOT.
Of course, Disney rewards are always subject to change. Be sure to read the fine print.
