Jumping right back in…
THE PERKS ARE HERE TO SAVE THE DAY
Disney Visa
Back before our first trip I signed up for the standard Chase Disney Visa - 1% rewards, no annual fee. (My wife was an authorized user on my card.) With a Disney trip planned, we used it quite freely and racked up a few hundred dollars in rewards. We used them to pay for some meals and give the kids spending money.
However, when compared to our Amex rewards it really didn’t offer the return on points, so we moved back to using Amex as our main card. (Pretty good return on Home Depot cards from them! Editing this parenthetical in 2025 to say: Do not listen to 2017 John and use Amex or Chase points to buy gift cards. It ain’t a good deal. Just say no.)
Over the 2 1/2 years since we were last at Disney, we’ve continued to use our Disney Visa when Amex can’t be, but with no great intention and the rewards began to stockpile.
When I began to look into learning more about using credit card rewards, I realized there were two important things I could use in our favor:
- My wife could get her own card in her name - using my referral and earning her own sign-up bonus
- You can earn a sign-up bonus on a Chase card every 24 months even if you already had a card.
So, my wife used a referral from me to get her own Disney Visa. I get $50. (which was added to my own card’s Rewards points after her 1st use of her card.) We spent the initial $500 within 3 months, and she received a $200 bonus gift card in the mail. (Arrived within a week of the monthly card cycle closing.)
When we received those bonuses, I requested my rewards on a Disney gift card. Once that arrived, I called up to cancel my Disney Visa, opened a new browser tab, used my wife’s referral link and applied for a new card. Approved in minutes.
We then used the card and earned another $50 and another $200 in Disney Rewards.
Between previous referrals, amassed rewards and these new ones, this is how it panned out:
Barclaycard Arrival Plus
Next, I focused on the Barclaycard Arrival Plus MasterCard: They have a sign-up bonus where you get 50,000 (count 'em!) points after you spend $3,000 in 3 months.
Among other perks too numerous to list here, they give you 2x points for every dollar you spend. That means once you’ve spent the initial $3,000 to earn the bonus, you will have 56,000 points ready to use.
Both my wife and I applied for these cards and their approval process was immediate.
While they have all sorts of things you can redeem these points on - most are not a good points to dollars value.
But - there is a really nice feature: Travel Reimbursement. You can use those rewards on your card to get a statement credit for any expense on your card that is coded as travel. Hotel, Car Rental, Airfare - and it turns out tickets purchased from Undercover Tourist!
In basic practice, those 56,000 points are equal to $560 in travel reimbursement.
HOWEVER, There are a few things to note when using Barclay Arrival points:
- Whenever you use points, they give you a 5% rebate of points back in your account. For example, if you have 20,000 points, and use 10,000 points, you will get 500 points rebate (10,000 x 5%) end up with 10,500 in your account.
- There is a minimum 10,000 point threshold to redeem a reimbursement.
- Most Importantly: You do NOT always want to use the most points possible when redeeming them.
This part might get a little confusing, but here goes. Let’s say you spend $3,000 exactly to get your sign-on bonus and you have 56,000 points burning a hole in your pocket. You then purchase Disney park tickets from Undercover Tourist, and they cost $761 so you want to use your travel reimbursement on them.
On your rewards page you see the UT tickets are eligible, and you have at least 56,000 points to use.
When you click on the Redeem link, you get some options:
Look! you can knock off $550 from your statement with ONE CLICK! BUT - DON’T DO IT! You can get more bang for your points here. Take a look at following chart:
At left you can see you have 56,000 points available. If you use 55,000 points right now, you’ll get a $550 statement credit and have 1,000 points left over. You’ll then get a 5% points rebate of 2,750 so you will have 3,750 points left to use in the future.
Because the minimum amount of points you can use for a reimbursement is 10,000 - you will have to spend an additional $3,125 on the card to use those leftover points.
Still, not too bad - but what if I told you you could get $50 more from those points without spending any more money? (or maybe just a little.)
Look at this chart for a better way to use those points:
Again, you start with 56,000 points, but what if you decide to use just 50,000 of them right now? You’ll get a $500 statement credit, and at the end of the transaction you’ll have 8,500 points left to use. Now look at the bottom box in red: you only need to spend $750 to reach the 10,000 point minimum so you can use them.
That is certainly MUCH better than having to spend $3,125!
BUT WAIT - It gets better! You probably don’t need to spend any more money at all!
Barclay has their own Travel Community where you can post photos and travel stories - and they give you points that post to your card rewards! If you link your community profile to your Arrival card, and create a profile they’ll give you 500 points. That is equal to spending $250 on the card! So many exclamation points!
For every story and photo you post, you’ll get more points. I set up my profile and posted a total of 4 stories and ended up with more than enough points to bring my card rewards up over the 10,000 minimum I needed - without spending another penny.
I plan to redeem the 10,000 points for a travel reimbursement using one of our hotel stay days on the trip. For that same amount of spending and points, I will have gotten $600 in travel reimbursements.
And remember folks - wife and I BOTH have Barclaycard Arrival cards - so we’re going to rack up $1,200 in travel reimbursements.
OK, I think that may be enough for this post - I’ll wrap this all up with a big finish in the next one!