We have been crazy lucky enough to visit Walt Disney World in Orlando about a million times. One year in the not so distant past, we even had annual passes (and we live in Pennsylvania, so that’s some pretty hardcore Disney devotion). One of the ways that we have made this work for us is by staying for free in our Disney hotels using our Miles & Points. Many of the hotels have been off-property, and we are totally fine with that, often preferring to trade proximity to the parks for lots of extra space. That is a whole debate in itself though. I will show you how to use Miles & Points for both on-property and off-property Disney hotels to make them free. The following are places we have stayed & points we have used.
The Swan & Dolphin are 2 adjacent hotels that are located right in the heart of Walt Disney World, but they are operated by Starwood and not Disney. This is great for you because it means you can use your SPG points to stay at this hotel for almost free (you usually still have to pay a resort fee). At the time of this writing, The Swan and The Dolphin are each 10,000 points per night, with the additional benefit of the 5th night free when using points. 40,000 SPG points for 5 nights at a Disney “on-property” hotel is a fabulous deal. You can even call the reservations department to ask if they have any suites or larger rooms available. If so, they will often let you use extra points (like 11,500 vs 10,000) to book one of the larger rooms. We have stayed at both of these hotels a couple of times, and will be reviewing them in another post (But a little hint: Thumbs Up!).
This is another great hotel near Disney World (and also near Universal Orlando) that you can get for free using your SPG points. It is also 10,000 points per night or 40,000 points for 5 nights. Although not on-property, you will get lots of space plus a kitchen. You will need a car, as it is about 10 miles from both The Magic Kingdom (some of the other Disney parks are a bit closer), and 10 miles from Universal.
When we stayed at the Sheraton Vistana Village, it was a better deal for us to use American Airlines miles to “pay” for our hotel. We had tons of AAdvantage Miles that we were not planning on using for flights, and the value was much better than using our SPG points at the time. We were also able to choose a room type, since AAdvantage uses your miles to book through a travel agency. The miles correlate to the price of the room, so you can sometimes just use more miles for a larger room type. We were able to use our miles to get a huge 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom condo with a full kitchen and washer/dryer.
Similar to the Sheraton Vistana Village, we were able to book this timeshare resort hotel using our AAdvantage Miles. It ended up being a very, very low amount of miles per night for the room that we booked (something like 6,000 miles). We had a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom unit with a full kitchen, washer/dryer, living room, and lanai. It was about 15-20 minutes by car from the Main Gate to Disney. Not a bad drive at all.
Marriott has several properties in the Orlando area, and this is consistently ranked as one of the best. Once again, we were able to score a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom unit with full kitchen, washer/dryer, living room, lanai. It was one of our favorite places we have ever stayed, and we have friends who just got back and loved it as well. It is close to Sea World and Aquatica (so fun), and an easy drive to Disney and Universal as well. While you will need a significant amount of points to stay at this Category 7 property, you can often get 70,000 points just by signing up for the Chase Marriott card and completing the spend requirements, which is enough for 2 nights on a regular reward (or 4 if your significant other or travel companion gets the card too).
| Nights Stay | Points Needed |
Point Savers* |
|---|---|---|
| One night | 35,000 | 30,000 |
| Two nights | 70,000 | 60,000 |
| Three nights | 105,000 | 90,000 |
| Four nights | 140,000 | 120,000 |
| Five nights | 140,000 | 120,000 |
* Some locations offer these limited-time, reduced-point offers.
You can also book some on-site, Disney-owned properties using your American Airlines miles. This is something we almost did last time we visited Orlando, but we decided to (gasp!) go to Universal Orlando for the first time instead. More on that later. Here are some tips for using miles to book Disney Properties:
Assuming you have AAdvantage Miles in your account, you should make sure you log in to get the best prices. For some reason, the price (in miles) always goes down once I log in (and I have no status of any kind on AA, as I haven’t paid for an airline flight in 10 years). For example, when I go to the website (without logging in) and put in June 7, 2014 for Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort, it gave me the cost of 27,467 miles per night. After I log in, the cost is 16,500 miles per night…huge difference!
Here are some examples of some more of Disney’s own hotels that show up on the AAdvantage site, searching the random date of June 7, 2014. (TIP: since there are hundreds of hotels in the area, type “Disney’s” in the search box, and the Disney-owned hotels will pop up like this):
As you can see, the miles for each of Disney’s hotels vary widely, but so does the cost in dollars. You have to make your comparisons for your dates based on many factors. As an example, I checked the same date on the Disney reservations website for Port Orleans Riverside. The price was $205 (which included a promotion discount). The cost in miles would be about 19,000. It’s not a stellar points redemption value, but maybe you have millions of AAdvantage miles that you earned on your company’s dime? Sometimes we are points-rich and cash-poor and we just would much rather use our miles. We tend to save more money by using miles/points to stay offsite (and even more when there is a kitchen to help cut down on food costs). We have paid to stay in many on-property Disney hotels though (Wilderness Lodge, Animal Kingdom Lodge, Port Orleans French Quarter, Boardwalk, Grand Floridian). There are so many factors that go in to making the choice that is best suited to the family’s needs at the time, so it is helpful to evaluate all of your options.
There are also many, many more options for free Disney hotels using miles and points, and I will explore this further in a future post.
Have you ever used your miles and points for a free Disney hotel?
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[…] extremely family friendly. We used American Airlines miles to pay for our hotel, as I detailed here in this post about Disney Hotels, so it was free for us to stay here. I don’t remember the […]
[…] not signed in. We have also booked Disney hotels using this method & you can read about that here. For our 4 nights (during a holiday, high-season period) we “paid” 21,000 – […]
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I has no clue you could use Aa miles to book rooms!!!this is huge for our Disney trip!
So glad the information was helpful! Enjoy your trip!
This post was tremendous! I read all of your blog updates and have started saving them as favorites now! Looking forward to the rest of your Disney posts in particular, but loved the recent ones on Baltimore and Lancaster too!
(It was nice meeting you at Michele’s party, hope to see you again!).
Laura
Thanks Laura! Glad you are enjoying the blog:) Hope to see you again soon!
As much as I love miles & points, I just can’t bring myself to use them at Disney World — I have to be on property. Fundamentally, I am more of a Disney geek than a miles & points geek, and getting the perks of being at a Disney property (particularly extra morning hours and easy transportation) wins out every time. Plus, I love the Polynesian so when I have the cash to do it, I do!
Thanks for a great article. I go to Disneyland all the time, but we’ve yet to take the kids to Disney World. Hoping to do that next year.
Thanks Leslie! We have been to WDW so many times & have stayed at almost all of the Disney onsite deluxe properties (we even went for our honeymoon 15 years ago…gah!). I do love staying onsite, but there have been times when we needed/wanted more space, especially on a long trip. Plus with so many trips going on for us each year, using points for Disney has really helped to stretch our travel budget. But I do love those Disney properties for the “feel” of them. Love the Poly too…first place I ever stayed at Disney when I was a kid a million years ago:)