How We Booked Disney Flights for Six (and a Rental Car) for $67.20

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We just booked our November Disney trip: round-trip flights for all six of us, plus a full-size SUV for the week. Total out of pocket: $67.20.

That’s not free travel. Tickets and the hotel are still coming, and the points didn’t appear out of nowhere. But getting six people to Orlando and back with a car waiting is usually the biggest single bill of a Disney trip, and for us it came down to taxes and fees. Here’s exactly how we did it, step by step.

The quick version

Those taxes work out to $5.60 per person on each flight, which is the standard U.S. security fee. Nobody gets out of that one.

Step 1: Price it in cash first

Points feel free, which is exactly how they get wasted. Before transferring anything, we looked up the cash price for all six seats. The fares were $119 per person on JetBlue and $151 per person on Southwest.

For six of us, that’s $1,620 in cash for the flights alone. That number is the benchmark every points decision gets measured against.

Step 2: Check that the points are worth it

A quick way to know if you’re getting a good deal: take the cash price, subtract the taxes you still pay, and divide by the points. Anything above about 1.3 cents per point is a solid use.

• Southwest: ($906 − $33.60) ÷ 39,000 points = about 2.2 cents per point. That’s excellent, well above what Southwest points usually get.
• JetBlue: ($714 − $33.60) ÷ 48,000 points = about 1.4 cents per point. Right where a good redemption should be.

If the math had come out low, we would have paid cash and saved the points for another trip.

Step 3: Find the seats, then transfer

Our points came from Chase Ultimate Rewards, which transfer one-to-one to both Southwest and JetBlue. Both fly nonstop from Washington National (DCA) to Orlando, so we priced each leg on both airlines and picked the best deal each way.

Step 4: Let a card credit cover the car

The rental car was the easiest win. Our Capital One Venture X comes with a $300 travel credit each year for bookings made through Capital One Travel. We booked a full-size SUV for the week there, and the $240 cost came entirely out of that credit.

That card has a $395 annual fee, so the credit is really how we earn part of the fee back. The other $60 is still waiting to be used before our card year resets.

What it really cost

Here’s the honest math. Booked with cash, these flights would have been $1,620, before the car. We paid $67.20.

The catch is that 87,000 Chase points had to come from somewhere: everyday spending, sign-up bonuses and a card with an annual fee. We’ll get into how we think about that in Why “Free Travel” Is a Myth. The short version: points are a tool, and this is what it looks like when the tool is used well.

What’s next

Transportation is done. Now comes the part points can’t cover: park tickets, food and the hotel. For where we stay and why, read The Disney Hotel Room Big Families Don’t Know About. We’ll share the full trip budget when we’re back in November.