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As magic as a trip to Disney World may be, the price tag of a vacation at the happiest place on earth gives most of us sticker shock. Disney is only going to keep raising their prices, which is why we’re dedicated to finding you the best ways to save the most on your next magical trip to visit Mickey Mouse!
Today’s post is going to cover two ways to save big on Disney trips:
1. Using Marriott points to reduce a $400/night stay to $75 at a Deluxe Resort (and easy ways to earn the points)
2. Purchasing $450 worth of Disney World tickets for $325 by purchasing convention tickets (without attending a convention)
Using Hotel Points to Stay on Disney Property
First: why stay on Disney property? For one thing, with four parks, dozens of resorts and thousands of acres, Walt Disney World is enormous. It’s its own little ecosystem complete with three different transportation options (monorail, buses & skyliner). Plus, staying on property in any of the resorts brings you closer to the magic in the morning–and closer to your bed when you’re leaving the parks after fireworks.
More importantly, staying on property gives you priority access to purchase Individual Lighting Lanes at 7am.
Individual Lightning Lanes
Each of the four Disney World parks has an attraction so popular with a line so long that Disney sells one-off line-shorteners for those rides called Individual Lightning Lanes. Guests enter the attraction using the same line as Genie +, but the rides aren’t a part of a daily Genie + purchase, so you have to either buy ILL separately or take your chances waiting forever in the standby line. You’ll find ILLs for Magic Kingdom’s Seven Dwarves Mine Train, Animal Kingdom’s Pandora, Hollywood Studios Rise of the Resistance and EPCOTs Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind for sale in the My Disney Experience App, and Deluxe Resort Guests will have access to them at 7am, earlier than anyone else on or off property! This matters because sometimes lightning lanes sell out, and even if they don’t, the earlier you have access to purchase, the more control you’ll have over your day (because you can choose the entry time that works best for you!).
EPCOT’s Guardian’s of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind has no standby line and is ONLY available through virtual queue or purchased individual lightning lane. All guests have access to try for a virtual queue boarding group daily at 7am, but only on-property guests can grab a boarding group at 7am and then immediately take their pick of the Cosmic Rewind lightning lanes for sale for the remainder of the day. Remember, you must have a resort booked for your park day and loaded into My Disney Experience.
Extended Evening Hours
Staying on property at a Disney Deluxe Resort comes with a perk unavailable anywhere else; most importantly: a couple nights a week, allows Deluxe Resort Guests to stay in certain parks for two Extended Evening Hours after the park closes, enjoying low crowds and lines!
EPCOT
Every Monday night, Deluxe Resort guests can stay in EPCOT for two extra hours after the park closes and ride attractions including:
Beauty and the Beast Sing-Along
Frozen Ever After
Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros
Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind (details below)
Mission: SPACE
Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure
Soarin’ Around the World
Spaceship Earth
Test Track
The Seas with Nemo & Friends
Monday extra hours at EPCOT means something extra-special: an additional Cosmic Rewind virtual queue opens at 6pm, and even if you’ve had a virtual queue earlier in the day, you can try to secure another spot during extra evening hours! That means Deluxe Resort Guests could technically ride Cosmic Rewind three times in one day: either a 7am or 1pm virtual queue, a purchased lightning lane, and an extended evening hours virtual queue.
Magic Kingdom
Extended Evening Hours at Magic Kingdom rotate back and forth between Tuesday and Wednesday nights (check the calendar here). Guests can stay in the park two hours after closing and ride the following rides:
“it’s a small world”
Astro Orbiter
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin
Country Bear Jamboree
Dumbo the Flying Elephant
Haunted Mansion
Mad Tea Party
Mickey’s PhilharMagic
Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor
Peter Pan’s Flight
Pirates of the Caribbean
Prince Charming Regal Carrousel
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
Space Mountain
Swiss Family Treehouse
The Barnstormer
The Magic Carpets of Aladdin
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
Tomorrowland Speedway
Under the Sea ~ Journey of The Little Mermaid
Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room
Extra hours at Magic Kingdom are a great time to ride Seven Dwarves Mine Train, just in case you didn’t want to purchase the ILL for that ride during that day!
Using Marriott Points to Stay at a Deluxe Disney Resort
There are three unicorn properties that are both Marriott owned and considered Disney Deluxe Resorts: The Dolphin, Swan and the newest Swan Reserve. Located at the EPCOT resort area, these properties are within walking distance of both Hollywood Studios and EPCOT. Having a stay at any of these three properties loaded into My Disney Experience qualifies you for Extended Evening Hours both the day you check in and the day you check out (that means even a one night stay earns you special park perks for two days).
The Easiest way to Earn Marriott Points
Our favorite way to fast-track earning Marriott points is to open credit cards and earn welcome bonuses good for booking Marriotts. Here are two cards we recommend:
Our method: open a credit card, spend $3000 and earn the welcome bonus, pay the card off every month, then if you have a partner to travel with, refer them to the card using your personal referral link and they can earn Marriott points as well!
As a general rule, Marriott will only give any one individual a Marriott welcome bonus every 24 months. You can close or product change the Chase Marriott card and reopen it to earn the bonus every 24 months; the Marriott Amex is a “once in a lifetime” card, which some people say means you can open it every seven years, YMMV.
This post explains how to open and re-open these two cards and always replenish your stockpile of Marriott points:
Using Points at the Marriott Deluxe Disney Resorts
from the Marriott Business Amex card
Both cards include an annual anniversary free night certificate for a night at a Marriott up to 35K points. Nights at the Swan, Dolphin and Swan Reserve range from 45,000-65,000 points a nights, and you can always top a certificate off with up to 15,000 Marriott points. And remember: if you amass enough points to book four redemption nights at a Marriott, the fifth night is free (cannot mix certificates with points for a fifth free night). Be advised: you’ll pay a $40/night resort fee and $35/night parking fee at all three properties.
Because nights at these properties can sometimes run $400/night or more, using points to discount the room rate to $75/night will save you lots on lodging while earning you the perks mentioned above!
Big Savings With Disney Convention Rate Tickets
It’s nearly impossible to get discounted Disney tickets. You can save a few dollars purchasing through a third party, or spend time collecting discounted Disney Gift cards in order to save 10% on admission.
One way to find significantly discounted Disney tickets is by searching for conventions happening at Disney World during your trip and purchasing tickets using the public links on conference sites (FYI do NOT book the discounted block of convention rooms). Prices vary, but you should be able to save between 20-25% using this trick. Here’s how it works.
1. Search ‘My Disney Group January 2024,’ but insert the month and year of your visit. Several conference sites should appear.
2. Begin visiting each site to determine if they’ve published a publicly accessible link for tickets.
3. Checkout as you would normally (it routes you through a version of Disney’s standard ticket site), except you will not be purchasing dated tickets/making a reservation at the same time as you purchase, which differentiates this method–you’ll still have to make park reservations.
4. Do not choose ‘will call;’ have the tickets mailed to your physical address.
5. Once you’ve checked out, you’ll receive a confirmation number in your email that you can then link in your account (visit the MyDisneyExperience tab, scroll down and hover over ‘tickets’ and choose ‘link tickets,’ then enter your confirmation number where in the ‘ID number’ field and hit ‘next.’)
Convention ticket discounts vary: we’ve paid $325 for $450 worth of park hoppers, and heard of people paying $2300 for $2900 five-day single park tickets (their tickets also came with a free day at a water park for a family of five!). You can often find Twilight tickets for around $75/each, allowing you to enter the park around 5pm and stay until close. If you pair this with a Deluxe resort and the right park on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, you could end up with 8 park hours for $75/ticket!
If you’d like to hear more about convention tickets and Marriott deluxe resorts, checkout this episode of the The Disney Points Podcast:
Takeaways
No more paying full price for Disney World! You can have your cake and eat it too, now that you’ve learned the tricks to deeply discounted Deluxe Resorts and Disney World park tickets. You’re all set for a more magical trip to one of the happiest places on earth!
Almost Free Traveling 
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