I’m stepping out of lurkdom to say, “I’m going to Disney World!!!” I will turn 50 over Memorial Day weekend, and YESTERDAY I got my husband on board with a trip to WDW in June to celebrate! Sqeeeeeeee!!! I am so excited!
We will travel Tuesday, June 13 - Wednesday, June 21 and stay at the All-Star Movies resort. This is a new one for us and I picked it because we are watching our pennies this trip, more so than the others we’ve taken. We did a trip in 2012 and stayed at Coronado Springs and in the 2019 we stayed at Caribbean Beach. We loved both resorts. I picked ASMo bc it’s still on property and I think my 8 year old(and I) will enjoy that theming most of the all the All Star resorts (I know they are all the same on the inside).
Travel party is my husband, and our sons, who will be 19 and 8 on the trip.
My first question … I have just over $1,000 in Southwest travel funds from a 2020 trip that got canceled. Our flights from CLE to MCO on SW will run close to $1,600. So we will “save some money” that I already spent two years ago. I see that SW is offering a $300 statement credit for opening a credit card, and that would make our trip even more affordable (because for us, pennies count). Does anyone know if I would be able to both open the credit card AND use my travel funds. I’m not sure why I think that might not be possible, but I don’t want to go through the cc application process if I won’t be able to do both.
Thanks for any info, insight and advice you can provide. I enjoy and appreciate this community so much. It’s so nice to have this to look forward to and I’ve thrown myself full force into the planning.
I have a SW trip I’m booking soon using points (my family and I also canceled a trip in 2020). My understanding is you can only use 1 form of payment per ticket so its often a good idea to book one ways not round trips. I have enough points to book a round trip but DW and DD only have enough to book one-way on points.
If you have a Sam’s club membership they sell $500 e-gift cards for $450 which is a pretty good deal. We plan to pay our non-point balance with those. Also SW customers service is pretty good (when theres not a meltdown going on) so just calling them up is useful too. Hopefully this makes sense and good luck! Im going to be at ASmusic in that timeframe too! As for the SW credit card i think you could book the non-point part with that and receive the statement credit after the fact.
The SW statement credit isn’t something you use separately to pay. To pay for trip you’d just use the card to pay any balance between your travel and the final cost. After using the card, your credit card statement should have a credit applied, reducing the amount you owe on the card. Hope that makes sense.
I am pretty familiar with Southwest and its cards from Chase. I am unaware of a $300 statement credit for new card. Typically you get points and depending on the card you get can get a $75 statement credit annually.
As long as you pay some cash, the statement credit will kick in and you will get that.
If you are saying the points are worth $300 then I am not aware you can mix a cash and points reservation so that likely will not work.
Question for you on the credit you have, those used to expire after one year and SW recently changed that. Please do double check your credit is still good.
Thanks to all who weighed in here. It’s like I magically forgot how credit card statement credits work. Admittedly, it’s been years since I opened a new credit card. Plus I am pretty darn excited that I’m going to WDW.
First, I went to SW FAQs and learned that you can use up to three payment methods per person. Since I had four separate people and was using four separate travel funds (one for each person in my family) that counted as one payment method for each person. The SW card would be the second payment method, since all four of us had a balance on our tickets.
So for anyone who is interested …
I put my flights in my cart.
While in the check out area, I clicked the link in the statement credit box.
That took me to an online credit card application form. I filled it out, submitted, and almost immediately was approved. I then went back to the cart.
I applied my travel funds as a payment method.
I paid the balance using my new credit card.
I will get the statement credit once I meet all the conditions for getting it.
And I now have four airline tickets to WDW!
So we have a hotel reservation and plane tickets. Next up is park tickets and reservations. And then I think I’m largely set til ADR time! I look forward to catching up on trip reports and learning what all has changed since our Nov. 2019 trip.