Disney Theme Park Tickets Return to Chase Ultimate Rewards — For Now
Update: Some offers mentioned below are no longer available. View the current offers here.
Want to surprise the family with a Disney vacation under the tree (without spending a small fortune)? You may be in luck.
An average family vacation to Disney World can easily cost thousands of dollars, so it is only natural, often imperative, that travelers look to save wherever they can on Disney resorts, meals and park tickets. For those who like to use points to keep the cash cost of a Disney vacation down, a huge blow was dealt in Sept. 2018 when essentially everything Disney related was pulled from the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel site.
This happened as the Chase Travel site transitioned from a Connections Loyalty-powered site to an Expedia-powered site. Prior to that September change when Disney disappeared completely from Chase Travel, you had to call the Chase Cruise and Vacation department to book all things Disney using points from your Chase Sapphire Preferred Card (1.25 cents per point), Chase Sapphire Reserve (1.5 cents per point) and Ink Business Preferred Credit Card (1.25 cents per point).
For months it had seemed as if there was no recourse to using your Chase Ultimate Rewards points to book anything Disney, but earlier this week we got our first report in the TPG Lounge Facebook Group that perhaps things had changed.
How to Book Disney Park Tickets Using Chase Points
It is currently possible to book both Disneyland and Disney World theme park tickets using your Chase Ultimate Rewards points online, but there's a catch: you can't search on the Chase Travel site for Disney tickets. You have to search for something else similar to do in those cities (try Legoland in Anaheim and Universal Studios in Orlando) and then scroll down past those activities to the bottom of the page.
At the bottom of the pages of similar attractions, there should be other suggestions — including Disney theme park tickets.
This workaround may not be intentional, which means that if you want to use your points in this manner, I would do so sooner rather than later.
Update: This situation seemed unlikely to last long, and based on some test searches on Dec. 27, it may indeed be dead.
How Many Points do Disney Tickets Cost?
If you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve, where points are worth 1.5 cents each towards travel, Disney World one-day adult tickets start at 9,826 points and two-day Disneyland adult tickets start at 14,000 points.
In terms of pricing, Disneyland tickets are in line with what is offered directly from Disney using cash.
Disney World tickets are slightly pricier via Chase than what you may be able to find elsewhere, such as via Undercover Tourist. This is partly due to the Chase site offering peak date pricing thanks to Disney's new date-based pricing model. If you are planning to visit Disney World on a less expensive value date, you will be overpaying for tickets via Chase by paying peak prices. However, that variation may not matter to you as much when using points instead of cash, but still do the math.
Bottom Line
I cannot overemphasis how insecure I feel about the option to use Chase points to book Disney theme park tickets lasting into perpetuity. If you want in on Disney tickets using Chase points, do it now in case this isn't an intentional redemption opportunity. It's still not possible to use Chase points to book Disney Resorts, Disney Cruises, or even to search directly within Chase Travel for Disney theme park tickets. In other words, it smells of a limited time opportunity, though TPG would love to see full Disney booking functionality return to Chase Ultimate Rewards.
If your family is putting together a Disney vacation using points, here are a few other articles to get you going:
