Frugal Mouse header image

Frugal Mouse

Save Money on Your Next Disney Vacation
≡ Menu

Should You Get the Disney Visa Credit Card?

Chase Disney Premier Visa

The Disney Visa credit card is a popular among us Disney fans because obviously it has the name Disney in the title and who doesn’t want a credit card with Mickey on it?

Disney teamed up with Chase bank to offer the card which is targeted at you guessed it – Disney fans.
The card is no doubt popular with our community, it offers many perks and discounts at Disney World and on Disney products in general.

There are two different cards offered, The Disney Premier Visa card and the Disney Rewards Visa Card.

Some of the perks of both cards are:

  • Special cardmember meet and greet inside Innoventions West @ Epcot from 1pm – 7pm daily.

  • 10% off merchandise purchases of $50 or more on Disney property

  • 10% of select (read: the more expensive) restaurants on property

  • 20% off official park tours at Disney World and Disneyland

Here is a comparison chart to show the differences between the two cards:

Disney Premier Visa

Chase Disney Premier Visa

Disney Rewards Visa

Chase Disney Rewards Visa

Annual Fee $49 None
Opening Perks $200 Disney Gift Card after spending $500 in first 3 months $50 Disney Gift card after first purchase
Rewards Earns 2% at Grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants and at Disney Earns 1% on all purchases
Redeeming Redeem Rewards for Airline travel Redeem for any Disney purchases

What are Disney Reward Dollars?

The main perk of these two cards is the ability to earn Disney Reward dollars when you spend on the cards.  As you spend money on the cards, for each dollar you spend you earn either $1 or $2 Disney reward dollars.

After you accumulate a minimum of $20 Disney reward dollars you can request a Disney Reward redemption card which is basically a Disney gift card that is good to use at just about all Disney locations.  For a full list of redemption locations click here.  Just a note that the redemption card can take 2-3 weeks to be delivered or could also be picked up in the parks.

If you have the Disney Premeire Visa you also get the option to redeem your Disney reward dollars for flights.  To do this you need to use your card to purchase the flights then request a rebate on your statement for the flights.

They don’t sound like a bad cards right?

Wrong! 

Unfortunately these two cards don’t provide very much in terms of value. The perks, discounts and “rewards” that both cards offer really aren’t worth much in terms of good value.  The “perks” for these cards are well, well below what you can get from other travel & cash back cards.

Why the Disney Visa isn’t Worth It

How about we take a look at a real life example of how to use these cards: for this example I’m going to apply for the Disney Premier Visa. Spending $500 in 3 months isn’t a big deal so I’ll get my $200 Disney gift card which is more like $151 because of the $49 annual fee which isn’t waived the first year.

The Disney reward dollars you earn with the Premier Visa is $.02 (2%) per dollar spent at Grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants and at $.01 (1%) per dollar spent elsewhere.

That doesn’t give you that great of an earning ratio – basically you’ll only earn 1 or 2 Disney rewards dollars for every $100 spent.

With either of the Disney cards you’ll have to spend quite a bit of money on them to be able to get any type of substantial amount of Disney dollars.  Let’s say that you put every dime you spend on this card and spend maybe $3,000 a month, you would be earning only 30-60 Disney rewards dollars – hardly enough for a dinner in the park!

Stack of money

Be prepared to spend a lot if you want Disney Rewards!

A 4 day Magic Your Way ticket it would cost $297 at the gates, and say I wanted to use my Disney Rewards to purchase the ticket.

I would only need to spend a whopping $29,700 on the card to get enough Disney Reward Dollars! Ok, $14,850 at 2% earning stores but still, that’s a ton of spending needed!

I could use my $200 Disney gift card which means I’ll only need to spend $9,700 on the card to get the remaining $97 to be able to purchase the ticket.

As you can see, you really need to spend a ton of money on the card for it to be worth it.

But What About the Other Perks?

The merchandise discount of 10% only applies to purchases of over $50.  Most times in the parks you see one, two or three things in the merchandise stores that you may want to purchase and don’t go over $50 per purchase a whole lot, especially when you’re trying to save money.

The dining discount of 10% is nice but only applies to a few restaurants which are on the higher end of the cost scale.

Overall the cards don’t provide much value in the frugal world compared to many other travel and cash back cards out there on the market.

What are some other good travel cards?

Here are a few travel credit cards that provide much more benefits and higher value than the Disney branded credit cards.  Be sure to keep an eye out on our Best Credit Card Deals page where I’ll keep an up to date list of the best credit card deals out there.

Barclay Arrival Card
Barclaycard Arrival

The Barclay Arrival card awards new accounts with 40,000 points after spending $1000 in the first 3 months after opening the card.  Arrival points are woth $.01 each so you’ll be left with at least 41,000 points which is good for $410 towards any type of travel.

The Barclay points can be redeemed for flights, rental cars, hotels, park tickets – anything travel related!  The card also earns 2 points per every dollar spent so it’s like getting a 2% rebate on spending.

Chase Sapphire Preferred
chase-sapphire-preferred

The Chase Sapphire Preferred card awards new accounts with 50,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points after spending $3,000 in 3 months plus the annual fee is waived for the first year.

The beauty of this card is that the Chase Ultimate Reward points can be transferred out to many different hotel & airline program, making them very flexible.

For example if you transferred out 50,000 Chase Points to Southwest Rapid Rewards points it would be worth $700 towards flights on Southwest!

Other transfer partners of Chase Ultimate Rewards Points are:

  • Southwest: Redeem for $700 worth of Southwest flights

  • United: Redeem for 2 round trip flights from anywhere in the US

  • Hyatt: Redeem for free nights at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress

  • Marriott: Redeem for over 15 Marriott properties just off site.

  • Plus transfer out to British AirwaysKorean AirIHGRitz-Carlton and Amtrak.

Overall I can’t recommend anyone to get the Chase Disney Visa cards.  The discounts, rewards and other perks just don’t create enough value compared to many of the other cards out there today.  The spending requirements to get any type of reward are just too high for many people including myself.

5 comments… add one
  1. There is the Members Only Meet and Greet at Epcot, with the free (daily?) printed photo perk. And at Epcot Food and Wine, they had a special lounge set up with free soda (It was too packed to be of much use to us in our visit in late October; all the seats taken by folks who looked like they were camping out.) I just got my first statement and made a phone call to Customer Service as it looked like my online bill pay was going to fall a couple days after the due date (no processing over the weekend). CS said that there was no grace period and a $35 dollar late fee and 29% interest rate hike would likely be applied. We did a over the phone bill pay to cover the first balance, but will pay off this card completely and cancel it next month. These guys are bad news. Get the perks. And get out. Glad I didn’t but more than a few ADR meals on this card. (BTW, I would/will get this card again. Min purchase, and cancel after trip. Those M&G were worth the hassle 🙂 )

    Reply
    1. That’s too bad you had a bad experience with the card! In my experience if you sometimes call back and get another person they may be willing to waive the fee and rate hike. But credit card companies are in the business of making $ and that’s one way they do it unfortunately.

      Reply
    2. Just like any other credit card. Pay it on time and you won’t have a problem.

      Reply
  2. I’m getting this card as we’re planning a family trip to Disney this year. I figure I’ll use it for 6 months, get the discounts at the park, do the free “meet and greet” that the offer commenter mentioned and then cancel the card. I agree with you that there are many other great cards out there, but this one fits my needs for this year.

    Reply

Leave a Comment