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The enchanting Disneyland Paris is a bucket-list travel destination for Disney enthusiasts. While airfare to Europe and other costs might intimidate you into thinking it’s unaffordable, don’t let that keep you from your dream vacation!
The truth is: if you follow our advice, Disneyland Paris may be even cheaper than a trip to Walt Disney World! Exactly how much a Disneyland Paris trip costs depends on all the usual factors: when you visit, for how long, and finding great deals on airfare, lodging, and admission. We’ll cover all of that and more in this post.
We’ve visited Disneyland Paris for almost free and have seven tips to share that will help anyone afford a trip to Disneyland in France!
1. Book Flights During the Off-Season
Winter is the cheapest time to visit Disneyland Paris; during the months of January, February or March, flights and lodging will typically cost the least. Because airfare is often the most expensive cost for any vacation, let’s start there!
Search the off-season months: January, February and March. I’ve been able to find RT economy airfare from Seattle under $500, and from Los Angeles & Chicago under $400, just to name a few.
If your schedule is flexible, planning you trip around low cash fares is one way to save big on a Disneyland Paris trip. Using google price alerts you can set up alerts for up to six different routes & receive notifications on low fares.
Repositioning
We all have our favorite airport, typically the one that’s closest to us. But do you ever look at other larger airports around you? They will often offer more flights for lower prices.
I live in Portland, Oregon, so I always start with Portland International Airport, but will also look at Seattle, Vancouver B.C., San Francisco or Los Angeles when I’m considering an overseas flight. Those airports aren’t really driving distance for me, but if I found a killer flight deal departing from one of them, it might be worth it to reposition myself there (fly to that airport from Portland on a cheap flight).
The thing is, many people don’t have the ability the drop everything and travel on cheap cash flights, or to reposition. That’s where points and miles can really come in handy!
2. Pay for Airfare With Credit Card Points
Our Story
Our family has kids in public schools, so we’re limited to traveling during their breaks. That means we can’t simply purchase low cash fares when we find them and travel on a whim. Consequently, much of our free travel involves redeeming credit card points and miles for flights.
This is how we earn points and miles to fly multiple places each year:
1. opening credit cards
2. putting all our regular spending on the cards
3. paying them off every month
4. using the welcome bonuses we earn for travel expenses!
Our credit scores remain well over 800 and have only increased as we’ve opened more cards over the years. Some we keep open because of annual benefits, some we downgrade after a year to a no-annual fee card, and a few we close after a year.
We’ve saved tens of thousands of dollars on travel since 2017 using credit card points and miles, and we’re still opening cards and earning almost free travel!
Earn Flexible Points & Book Disneyland Paris Airfare
Some of the most flexible points you can earn to cover flights to Disneyland Paris are Chase Ultimate Rewards, and the card we recommend starting with is the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card.
Open the Preferred Card, spend $4000 in three months and you’ll earn 60,000 points for only a $95 annual fee. Those 60k points can then be transferred to Air France (or another Airline, like United) and used to purchase airfare paying only taxes and fees!
For Example
Let’s consider traveling to Disneyland Paris for an October Fall Break. Looking at Chicago O’Hare-Charles De Gaulle, Paris 11 months in advance, I found the following AirFrance roundtrip economy flight:
The cash price for this economy flight to Disneyland Paris is over $1000/person! But with the Preferred welcome bonus, you could fly two people roundtrip for less than $400 in taxes and fees! In this instance, covering flights with points would save at least $1600 on two tickets for a dream vacation to Disneyland Paris.
Try it out: search AirFrance’s site for Paris airfare from your preferred airport! This will give you an idea of which holidays/school breaks will have the low 15K redemptions.
How to Earn an Additional 75K Rewards & 2.5 More Flights
If you have another adult traveling to Disneyland Paris with you who can also open credit cards, send them your Sapphire Preferred referral link (located in the Chase app) and you’ll earn 15,000 bonus miles when they also open the card! Once they earn their 60,000 points welcome bonus, you’ll have a combined 135,000 Ultimate Rewards to use on AirFrance flights. That translates into nine one-way flights at 15K & $96.04 each. Considering the cash price for each one-way fare is $561, two Preferred welcome bonuses will save you over $4000 in flights!
We’ll talk about ways to use credit card welcome bonuses for lodging and admission below, but first let’s look at how the length of your stay can save you money.
3. Make it a one or two day Trip From Paris
If you’re traveling all the way to France, you’ll probably want to spend the bulk of your time in the city of lights. Tack on Disneyland Paris as a day trip–or, stay one or two nights in Chessy and head back to the city before the last 11pm train (or, head straight to the airport from Disneyland Paris like we did). Reducing Disneyland Paris to a one or two day trip from the city will save you cash you’d be spending on multiple nights lodging at the parks!
Here’s what to consider when deciding how many days you need at the parks:
A one-day trip: you can save on lodging altogether if you take the train out and back from the city in one day, but you’ll have to purchase a park hopper, and maybe Premier Access (their version of Genie Plus/Lightning Lane). That way you can ride all the top rides and more in one day (Crush’s Coaster, Avengers Assemble, Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, Big Thunder Mountain and Hyperspace Mountain).
A three-day trip: for the fan wanting to see and do everything, you’ll likely want three days: two days at Disneyland Paris and one at Walt Disney Studios. In our opinion, no need for park hopper or even Premier Access if you’re committing to three days–spend that money staying at a Disneyland Paris Resort instead, so you can gain early entry to the parks and skip a few long lines every morning! You can also save time by skipping lines using single rider, as long as everyone in your party is over seven years old. Single Rider Lines include:
Disneyland Paris:
Hyperspace Mountain
Walt Disney Studios:
Avenger’s Assemble
Crush’s Coaster
RC Racer
Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure
Toy Soldier’s Parachute Dro
A two-day trip: We think this is the sweet spot. Maybe we’re biased because this is what we did on our trip, but here’s why we liked two days in the park: we didn’t feel quite pressured enough to spring for Premier Access–instead, we stayed at a Disney Resort in order to have early entry to maximize both our park days. We took the train to Disneyland Paris early in the morning on our first park day, dropped our luggage at the hotel and headed for the parks.
Another way to save money on Disneyland Paris is to take advantage of their unique discounts.
3. Save on Admission With Various Discounts
Disneyland Paris is generous with their discounted tickets, offering both a 50% military discount, and a 25% disability discount.
Disneyland Paris Disability Discount
With an official document proving disability accepted by Disneyland Paris, you and an accompanying person are entitled to a 25% discount on an Annual Pass or a one-day/one-or-two-park ticket (cannot be purchased online–purchase at the entrance to the Disney parks or from hotel concierge). Make sure to bring everyone’s Passport to the park!
Military Discount
Active and retired military personnel can benefit from a 50% discount on Disney Park tickets–and you can purchase them online! All you need is a government issued military card from the UK, the US or France as proof of military service. If you purchase a dated military ticket, you do not need to register your visit date.
If you’re not eligible for one of these discounts, do what we did and purchase your Disneyland Paris tickets with credit card points!
4. Use Credit Card Points to Purchase Disneyland Paris Tickets and Resorts
Luckily, admission to Disneyland Paris costs less than Disney World, but to make your tickets truly free involves credit card points. If you’re responsible with credit cards, it’s always better to use them instead of cash, because you can 1. earn points and miles purchasing admission on your credit card, and then 2. cover some or all of the admission cost with the miles you earn on the card!
There’s only one way to get an elevated 1.25 point value for Disneyland Paris Admission & Resorts, and it’s through the BILT rewards portal. Anyone who lives in a BILT building, holds the BILT credit card and/or participates in the promos on their site can earn & redeem BILT points at an elevated 1.25 for Disney! (more on the BILT card below)
Our favorite travel credit card earns miles we’ve redeemed for for Disney admission: the Capital One Venture X card. Open the card and earn 75,000 miles when you spend $4000. This card comes with a $395 annual fee, but you’ll want to keep it open year after year like we do, because you’ll have unlimited free airport lounge access through Priority Pass. To see if Priority Pass is a perk you could use, download the app and search airports you frequent to see if there are eligible restaurants and lounges. Charles De Gaulle Airport has multiple qualifying lounges, so you can definitely use it there!
Other Venture X Benefits include 10,000 points on your cards anniversary every year, and an annual $300 travel credit which we used towards our Disneyland Paris Resort (more on that below). And, in the event you don’t want to keep the card open year after year, you can simply downgrade it after a year to a no annual fee Capital One card.
Erasing Tickets on the Capital One Venture X
In order to use miles to erase your tickets, you’ll need to make sure the tickets code as “travel” on your credit card–purchasing them from travel agent website AttractionTickets.com instead of straight from Disney ensures they will code the correct way. The 75,000 miles you earn after spending $4000 in three months equals $750 towards admission. This will more than pay for a family of 4 to visit both parks with park hopper for two days during off-peak priced dates.
In addition to using purchase eraser to make your tickets free, below we’ll show you how to use the $300 annual travel credit for a Disneyland resort! First though, we will recommend some off-property hotels to stay in at a very low cost!
5. Stay off Property in a new Marriott or IHG
While there aren’t currently any Hyatts near Disneyland Paris, there’s a new Marriott and IHG we recommend off property, which both offer rooms around $100/night! We wrote this separate blog post with all the details:
6. Use Points for a Disneyland Paris Resort
You can search for Disney Resorts in the Chase Portal or the BILT rewards portal; if you have the Chase Preferred card we mentioned above, your Ultimate Rewards are worth 1.25 in their portal, as are BILT rewards in the BILT portal.
Earning BILT points
The BILT card is the only card you can use to pay rent for no fee! The Bilt Mastercard® has $0 annual fee and earns 1X points on rent payments without a transaction fee, up to 50,000 points each calendar year, 2x points on travel, 3x points on dining and 1x points on other purchase. Earn points when you make 5 transactions that post each statement period.
Book a Disney Resort Through Capital One Travel
Another alternative is booking through the Capital One Travel portal, and that’s where our favorite travel card, the Venture X, comes in handy once again. It earns welcome bonus miles good for erasing tickets, and also offers an annual $300 travel credit we’ve used to book a Disneyland Paris resort in the portal.
Off-peak in January, you can book two nights at Disney’s Santa Fe for less than $300:
During a holiday like Thanksgiving week, the price is almost double, but the travel credit would more than cover one night:
Either way, booking a stay using the Venture X through Capital One Travel will trigger the card’s $300 travel credit, which will either cover two nights off-peak or one night peak, or reduce a two-night peak stay by half. The credit shows up on your statement separate from the hotel charge–meaning you can also completely or partially erase the full charge with miles, if you have them in your account.
As an added bonus, you’ll also earn 10x miles booking the resort on your Venture X through the portal!
7. Buy a Navigo Pass to take the Metro Around Paris & to the Parks
We bought Navigo Decouverte Passes on our Capital One Venture X as soon as we got off the Eurostar in Paris. That means we earned 2x miles buying them, and because they’re a travel expense, they’re eligible for purchase eraser using Capital One miles.
We purchase passes because it’s the easiest way to get around and supports public transportation. Ours covered a combo of the metro, buses and even the Sacre Couer funicular at Montmarte, and also the RER to Chessy for Disneyland Paris.
C O S T
It cost us $82.20 for three Navigo passes/holders good M-Sun. You can buy passes M-Th good for the current calendar week. (F, Sat or Sun arrivals must pay as you go for the weekend & can also purchase a pass in advance for the next week)
W H E R E T O P U R C H A S E
When you get off the Eurostar in Paris, find not a kiosk but a staffed ticket window. There you can purchase passes & reusable holder.
P H O T O T R I C K
Here’s a trick I learned: instead of paying $8/each extra for photos when you purchase the passes, simply ask the front desk at your hotel to make 2 copies of each passport, cut the photos out and voila! Apply a photo to each pass (Use the extra copy of your passport to carry around with you & lock your real passport in the room safe).
T I P: The passes were sometimes temperamental. If you tap it wrong and your pass deactivates for several minutes, jump the turnstile. We made the mistake of waiting at the turnstiles for our pass to reset, until we noticed locals jumping the turnstile and encouraging us to do the same!
N A V I G A T I N G
We didn’t use apps to navigate—just searched maps on our phones.
NOTE: you CAN use the pass to take the train from Chessy/Disneyland Paris to CDG airport, but it goes back through Paris and takes a total of 70 minutes. The other option is a 9 minute train from Chessy to CDG that costs $20/person, or a taxi costs ~$80.
To hear more about our recent trip to Disneyland Paris, check out this episode of The Disney Points Podcast:
Takeaways
Whether traveling peak or off-peak, with cash or points, these seven tips should help you save hundreds to thousands of dollars on your dream Disneyland Paris vacation!
Learn more about how we travel for almost free on instagram @almostfreetraveling, or contact us at almostfreetraveling@gmail.com
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