Help!! I messed up with my Disney Rewards Visa! - Page 2 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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We have gotten one at City Hall at MK the last couple of trips. Very easy. I actually like doing that so I don't have to carry the card down there or take a chance of losing it.
Shelly - Here's how we accumulated our points so quickly.
We upgraded to the Premier Disney Visa in early February. It cost $45 for the year, but we were given a 5% promo for the first 90 days for gas, groceries, restaurants & Disney purchases. Everything else was 2 or 3% (I want to say 2%). Living in California (in the greater Los Angeles area) the cost of groceries and gas is ridiculous!!!
Anyway, after the promo period, the rewards percentage was reduced to 2% - which is still better than it was. As of our last statement we had 513 points, which is pretty darn good, but so much easier to achieve because of the promotion.
I use my Disney Visa to book our WDW trips because I want to take advantage of the 6 months interest free benefit. Unfortunately my husband thwarts my efforts because he refuses to carry a credit card balance and believes that somehow it's still going to wind up costing him something. It's maddening but I can't change his mind.
Wow. That is an amazing point accumulation! We only have about $90 in rewards because I had carried a balance for a bit after our 2010 trip. I did not start using it again until I paid it off.
I do not understand how people can get so many points with only a 1% return. I pay for as many things as I can with my Disney Visa. I wish there was a way to put my mortgage and car payment on it--that would add the points up faster!
We usually accumulate over $500 in rewards every year. I've hit the cap of $750 a few times but that was when I could charge my son's tuition to the card without a penalty (that changed by his 3rd year in college). And my husband sometimes travels for work and is allowed to use his personal credit card for those expenses (including airfare), so we rack up points very quickly when that happens. I've also gotten a few "bonus" reward offers -- like a $50 bonus if I set up 2 different utilities to be charged to my Disney Visa every month. Though I can't say I've gotten any of those bonus offers lately -- probably because I use the card all the time. We cleared our Disney Rewards during our trip last June but have accumulated over $600 again since then.
I've also started using a Chase Freedom card (shhhhh! Don't tell my cute Disney Tinkerbell Visa) because we can accumulate rewards faster on certain charges with that card. We got a sign-on bonus of $300 in rewards dollars (after making $500 worth of purchases during the first 90 days of having the card) and we earn the standard 1% reward on all purchases. However, they also have bonus rewards every quarter where you earn an extra 5% bonus on charges in certain categories (for a total of 6% on those purchases). This quarter the bonus is for gas and restaurant purchases. Last quarter it was groceries and entertainment. We use the Chase Freedom card only for the bonus categories and we've accumulated a little over 600 rewards $ since January. Those rewards can be used for a number of things, one of them being cash (which we will use towards our Disney trip next June).
Shelly - Here's how we accumulated our points so quickly.
We upgraded to the Premier Disney Visa in early February. It cost $45 for the year, but we were given a 5% promo for the first 90 days for gas, groceries, restaurants & Disney purchases. Everything else was 2 or 3% (I want to say 2%). Living in California (in the greater Los Angeles area) the cost of groceries and gas is ridiculous!!!
Anyway, after the promo period, the rewards percentage was reduced to 2% - which is still better than it was. As of our last statement we had 513 points, which is pretty darn good, but so much easier to achieve because of the promotion.
I use my Disney Visa to book our WDW trips because I want to take advantage of the 6 months interest free benefit. Unfortunately my husband thwarts my efforts because he refuses to carry a credit card balance and believes that somehow it's still going to wind up costing him something. It's maddening but I can't change his mind.
I think business travel would be the way to accumulate! I do not like cards with annual fees so we passed on the Premier. If we earn less than $100 a year in rewards it is hard to justify the annual fee!
Quote:
Originally Posted by allgiggles
We usually accumulate over $500 in rewards every year. I've hit the cap of $750 a few times but that was when I could charge my son's tuition to the card without a penalty (that changed by his 3rd year in college). And my husband sometimes travels for work and is allowed to use his personal credit card for those expenses (including airfare), so we rack up points very quickly when that happens. I've also gotten a few "bonus" reward offers -- like a $50 bonus if I set up 2 different utilities to be charged to my Disney Visa every month. Though I can't say I've gotten any of those bonus offers lately -- probably because I use the card all the time. We cleared our Disney Rewards during our trip last June but have accumulated over $600 again since then.
I've also started using a Chase Freedom card (shhhhh! Don't tell my cute Disney Tinkerbell Visa) because we can accumulate rewards faster on certain charges with that card. We got a sign-on bonus of $300 in rewards dollars (after making $500 worth of purchases during the first 90 days of having the card) and we earn the standard 1% reward on all purchases. However, they also have bonus rewards every quarter where you earn an extra 5% bonus on charges in certain categories (for a total of 6% on those purchases). This quarter the bonus is for gas and restaurant purchases. Last quarter it was groceries and entertainment. We use the Chase Freedom card only for the bonus categories and we've accumulated a little over 600 rewards $ since January. Those rewards can be used for a number of things, one of them being cash (which we will use towards our Disney trip next June).
That sounds complicated! I generally use the Disney card for gas and groceries--unless I am shopping at SuperTarget where I use my Target debit card to get 5% off on the spot. Remembering that is complicated enough! LOL!
[QUOTE=benjiboo25;4001992]I think business travel would be the way to accumulate! I do not like cards with annual fees so we passed on the Premier. If we earn less than $100 a year in rewards it is hard to justify the annual fee!
I completely agree about annual fees, but when I considered the points we'd earn during the promo period and throughout the year, the $45 didn't hurt us. Depending on how things look next year I may opt out of the Premier and go back to my regular Disney Visa. I love my (supposedly) exclusive Premier card design, but not for $45 a year! Lol!
That sounds complicated! I generally use the Disney card for gas and groceries--unless I am shopping at SuperTarget where I use my Target debit card to get 5% off on the spot. Remembering that is complicated enough! LOL!
I don't have a problem remembering what the bonus category is each quarter, but I do need to make my husband a "cheat sheet". I put a little post-it note with the bonus category deals on his Disney Card (since that's the one we use for everything else) so that he remembers *not* to use that card for those things and switch to the Chase Freedom. This quarter is easy for him since 95% of the things he charges are gas or restaurants...I do all the shopping and bill paying.
I was searching the boards looking for the answer of how far ahead of the trip should I order my Disney Visa Rewards card, and stumbled across this thread. After reading this thread I am guessing the best plan of attack is to not order a rewards card ahead of time, but to instead to go to one of the locations listed in annc98's post. Thanks for the helpful advice!
Personally, I prefer to have it in hand when I leave for my trip. What I do is order it a couple months in advance with the minimum numbers of rewards dollars on it, which is 20. Then I wait until the last billing cycle before my trip ends to transfer the rest so that I can have the maximum possible number of reward dollars on my card.
Personally, I prefer to have it in hand when I leave for my trip. What I do is order it a couple months in advance with the minimum numbers of rewards dollars on it, which is 20. Then I wait until the last billing cycle before my trip ends to transfer the rest so that I can have the maximum possible number of reward dollars on my card.
That's exactly what I do. Once you've got the card you can keep adding rewards dollars to it before every trip until it expires. The Disney Visa has worked out great for me. I always pay it of fully so never pay any finance charges. For my next trip I'll be able to buy an annual pass with my rewards card!