I now have several of the good deal cards (Chase Sapphire X2, Chase Freedom) and I was looking around the rewards site for travel options. we are wanting to plan a trip to Disney next summer. Here is my question. I noticed that I can purchase travel on American with my points or I can transfer my points to Continental. Is there an advantage to transferring to Continental over just flying American? We will fly out of DFW and I think that if I fly Continental we will have to stop in Houston (not sure). I'm still learning a lot about all this cc stuff and I just not getting it yet. I have about 75,000 combined chase points right now and working on my next 50,000. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

I just used a bunch of AA miles for our Disney trip. DL was running a discounted rate, and I had some ecredits, so it was only $420 for 4 tickets RT. Then I used AA miles to stay at a Disney resort, and purchase our park hopper passes. Also, DL runs a special in the fall for free dining plan with resort stay and park hopper passes purchase.

For 3 passes (my youngest isn't 3 yet so she doesn't need a Disney pass), plus our 5 nights at a cheap Disney resort(and the free dining package), I used 130K AA miles. I'll take it because it's money I would've spent out of pocket anyways.

For WDW, I would recommend using frequent flyer miles to get there. Then, use SPG or HHonors to stay at one of the on-property hotels. If going to DisneyLAND, I would recommend using miles to fly and HHonors or SPG to book the cheapest hotel possible - points-wise. Often, this is Hampton Inn for 12,500 HHonors points/night. Sure, you will be 20 miles from Disneyland, but if rental car, gas, parking, and Disney passes are your only expenses - outside of food/souvenirs, you're getting off WAY cheap.

If you're making even 2 trips to Disneyland, the annual pass may be worth it. If you're making 3 trips between WDW & Disneyland, Premier Pass typically is worth it. Trading miles for passes does not tend to offer a good exchange rate, but as DavidAL insinuated, a case can be made that it is better to spend miles/points now and dollars later.

BTW, we are going to WDW in early October, Disneyland in February, and will take 2-3 more trips between the 2 locations before next October. Given that we're working to meet the $4,500 Amex minimum spend for 30,000 points bonus, we're using SPG Amex on Premier passes in October. The Premier Passes clearly will pay for themselves, given our plans, and it will be nice to have 35,000+ SPG points for future use at WDW. We will be holding around 220k AAdvantage miles, 80,000 BA Executive Club miles, 80,000 US Air miles, 40,000 Capital One miles (essentially "penny points"), 120,000 HHonors points, and 40,000 SPG points following the October & February trips. Our companions for the Feb. Disneyland trip are picking up the Disneyland hotel costs, and we already booked airfare on American through British Airways Exec Club.

I usually just spend my FF miles on flights.. and get accomodations by paying.. I scored a 2,100 sq ft condo over Christmas Break with a lake side view for $100 per night..

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A lot depends on how much cash airfares are going for on the dates you travel, versus what kind of availability there is for frequent-flyer awards. Points earned with the Chase Sapphire card can be transferred to the British Airways Executive Club program, and BAEC miles can be redeemed for travel on AA. In fact, BA permits free, en-route stopovers on awards, so (currently) for the same number of miles as your MCO-DFW return flight would cost, you could redeem for MCO-DFW (lengthy stopover) - LAX/LAS/SFO, etc. (Note, however, that major changes to the BAEC program are expected in mid-November, 2011, so if you cannot book your trip before then, you would need to carefully examine the revised program to determine whether it offers good value for your particular trip.)

I know the general rule of thumb is to only use miles for award tickets because you can get the most out of each mile, but I only "paid" $105 for my roundtrip ticket, which will earn me about 2500 mqms and 5000 miles, so it would be dumb to use miles for an award ticket. The way I see it with a family, is it's much more "valuable" for my family to spend a week at Disney for free (except the discounted airfare), than to use those 130K miles to fly to Timbuktu. It's money I would've spent anyways at Disney, that would've cost me about $2K, so I earned about $.015 per mile buy buying the hotel and park hopper passes with AA miles.

I find that hotel rooms are very competitive around the Disney area, so we never use our miles/points in that area. Also a great place to get a condo which is nice to have vs a hotel room.

We will use miles to fly. On American you might find a one way flight to Orlando for 25k for coach AND 25K for a first class mile saver. I think it is very hard to find mile saver on coach in the summer to Orlando. So if you are going to pay 25k might as well fly first class!

And if you do get a mile saver FC ticket on American you can fly non-stop and your luggage is also free!!

Sometimes we don't even use miles for roundtrip. We might buy a one way ticket and then use miles for the return....just depends on pricing!

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The OP does not have AA miles; he has Chase points which can be converted to BA miles. BA miles can be redeemed for AA award seats that are available as MileSAAvers, but not for AAnytime award seats. And BA charges 37,500 miles for a one-way First Class award from DFW to MCO, so that would be a pretty poor redemption value.

1.5 cents per point isn't too shabby.. so long as you do the numbers and the currency seems reasonable, I would pull the trigger on hotel rooms as well.. Generally for our use, we value our miles at 2 cents per mile.. but last year Christmas Break, Expedia dropped a Round trip ticket from Calgary to Orlando to only $320 pp all taxes and fees in.. I grabbed it, and decided to use my miles elsewhere..

No mile savers in Canada.. but good to know its available on American.. I shall keep that in mind.. In Canada, miles competition is very limited..

Okay, now I'm confused more than ever. Thanks to everyone for the great Disney tips, but I am not even there yet. I'm just trying to figure out how to get there.

Maybe I should clarify.

I have about 75,000 points available to use through my various chase cards. If I go to my Chase account and click on ultimate rewards, it takes me to the site where I can by stuff. At that point there are two tabs; one for travel and one for transferring points.

My question is why should I transfer points? I can click on the travel tab and purchase a ticket to fly anywhere, even on Continental by using my points. What I don't understand is why would it be advantageous to transfer my points? I can also reserve a Marriot hotel room by clicking on the travel tab, but I can also transfer my points to Marriot rewards. Why?

Please understand that I don't understand and I think most of you are way past this point. I'm just trying to cram all of this great info in my little brain and use the points the best way that I can. Thanks for being patient and I will really want to use the cool Disney tips on down the road.

Sorry about that.. should have addressed some of your concerns..

The purpose of transferring points is to accumulate enough points into one account to achieve the redemption you are seeking..

For example, if you want 3 tickets to MCO at 25,000 miles per ticket.. so total of 75,000 miles for 3 tickets.. then you will need to transfer to one account to compile enough for the 75,000 miles for 3 tickets.. otherwise you can't redeem..

If you need 2 tickets at 25,000 miles per ticket.. then you will need to transfer enough miles to get to the 50,000 mile level in your frequent flyer account, so that you can redeem for the airline tickets..

Concentrate on that first is my recommendation before trying to get free hotel nights, unless there is a great promo.. Post the promo links, and we'll evaluate it here for you..

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The point that the OP needs to understand is that when you use your points as cash to buy something, you pay whatever the price is at that time. If a DFW-MCO-DFW Coach roundtrip is going for $400, you would end up paying more points than if you could get the same trip as an award for 25,000 BA miles. That's why you have to see if there is award availability for your desired dates of travel, and then determine whether it would cost fewer points to redeem for award travel (using BA miles), or to use the points as cash and just purchase a regular ticket.

Breakdown should be on the difference of base fare.. Fees are still needed to be paid by the customer upon redemption.. So a round trip of $400, there may be $80 in fees.. so the base fare would be $320.. divide that by 25,000. and ends up 1.28 cents per mile.. so not bad..

I would try to find redemptions that are more or less around 2 cents for coach fare.. I understand when you start getting into first class some FTers value their miles as high as 5 or 6 cents or more per mile.. Great value!