How to Get Discount Disney Gift Cards

Supply and demand are interesting topics. I know you came here for information on discount Disney gift cards, but hear me out… The higher the demand for a product is, the higher a company can charge for the product or service!

Disney has mastered the law of supply and demand. With an ever-increasing demand for tickets to their theme parks, souvenirs, and anything in between, their prices seem to keep increasing every year! And yet, we continue to pay the continuously increasing prices…

Thankfully, there are multiple ways you can save money on the otherwise budget-breaking vacation you’ve been planning for the past 10 years. With a few tricks, you might just save yourself a few hundred bucks or more and take that well-deserved vacation earlier than you expected. Here, we’ll show you multiple ways to get Disney discount gift cards to save you more than a penny or two on your next visit to “The Greatest Place on Earth.”

→ Related reading: The Complete Guide to Saving Money with Discounted Gift Cards

Different Types of Discount Disney Gift Cards

These days, businesses are getting creative in the ways they attract more customers to their stores. And Disney has maxed out the number of ways they offer discounts to their customers. There are two basic types of Disney discount gift cards that provide easy ways to save on almost anything Disney. Here’s a quick explanation of each and how to save the most money from them.

Rewards Cards

These are basic credit cards that offer rewards for purchases made. Most rewards cards have a predetermined percent cashback for all your purchases. Often, they may offer more cashback on particular categories such as restaurants, retail stores or gas stations. The points saved up on your card can be redeemed for credit or cash. The trick is finding the cards that offer discounts to Disney theme parks.

Another type of credit card offering awesome rewards are store-specific credit cards. Most retailers will offer a credit card that rewards you when used at the particular retail store. Examples of these are cards to particular grocery stores, cards offered by major clothing stores, or cards offered by major airlines. We’ll show you which ones offer the best Disney discounts below.

Disney Gift Cards

These are your ordinary gift cards offered at almost every grocery store, retail store and local convenience store around. Most Disney gift cards will come in $50 cards, $100 cards and others ranging from $25 – $500 allowing you to choose the amount to load on the gift card. Although purchasing a gift card doesn’t immediately save you money for your family vacation, there are a few quick hacks that can be used with gift cards that indirectly saves you some extra cash.

The Best Ways to Save Money at Disney With Rewards & Gift Cards

Given the two basic types of gift cards and rewards points available above, let’s walk through some of the best ways to use them to save you a lot of money.

Purchase Disney Gift Cards at Discounted Prices

Yup, it’s true! You can actually purchase Disney gift cards at a discounted price. Some people end up purchasing tons of Disney gift cards to pay for their entire vacation (theme park entrance rooms at a Disney hotel or resort, and meal plans for the parks), because they get a discount on all the cards! How does it work? Most wholesale clubs like Sam’s Club and BJ’s offer these gift cards at rates often as high as a 5% discount. When you’re paying several hundred or even a few thousand dollars, 5% can represent a big savings.

Wholesale clubs most likely require a yearly membership fee, but that fee is very minimal, sometimes even just $10 per year. Here are some details of the three popular wholesale clubs to purchase Disney gift cards at major discounted prices.

Sam’s Club

A Sam’s Club membership costs $45 per year (they also offer a lot of promos for discounted membership). Members of Sam’s Club can purchase gift cards both in store and online, and that includes Disney gift cards. You can purchase Disney gift cards at Sam’s Club at around 1% – 3% off, depending on the dollar amount you put on the gift cards. For example, you could purchase a $50 gift card at $48 as a Sam’s Club member.

BJ’s Wholesale

BJ’s has an annual membership fee of $55, but they also have promos for membership at prices as low as just $10 (they also offer trial memberships). You can then buy household goods at near wholesale prices, and this includes Disney gift cards.

As a member of BJ’s, you can shop online for Disney gift cards and purchase, for example, a $100 gift card for $96, or at a 4% discount! What’s more, is you can purchase the gift cards with a rewards credit card that offers even more points and cash back that can go to your Disney vacation.

Target REDcard

We all know and love Target, and chances are that they have a store within a short distance of most of your home. The Target REDcard is an in-store card that offers its customers a 5% discount when using it to make in-store purchases and online purchases at Target.com, and that includes Disney gift cards.

How Much Can You Save? If you have a family of 4, chances are you spend a decent amount of money per month at retail stores like Target. Let’s imagine you spend about $500 per month at Target, that means you’d be racking up 5% in rewards points per month, or the equivalent of $25 per month. Do that for an entire year and you’ve saved up $300 just for doing your regular shopping at Target.

If you like saving money, please see:

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Disney Chase Visa Rewards Card

Chase is known for their awesome perks on credit cards, and they’ve done it again with special rewards programs for those Disney fans out there. Chase bank has partnered with Disney to offer special perks to their special credit card program. Some of the perks offered by the Disney Chase Visa Rewards card are:

• 10% off at the following:
  • Disney merchandise purchased with the Disney Chase Rewards Card at Disneyland, Disney Cruises, Disney’s online store and Disney World.
  • A large selection of dining areas at both Disney World and Disneyland.
• 15% off at the following:
  • Disney tours at both Disney World and Disneyland
  • Spa treatments with Disney Cruise lines, Disney World and Disneyland
• Disney Rewards Dollars
  • When using your Disney Chase Rewards Card for regular purchases and living expenses, you can get up to 2% cash back on select types of stores such as Grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations and Disney stores.
  • All purchases outside of the specified categories offering 2% will get an automatic 1% cash back on all your purchases.
  • Check with Chase to confirm the types of purchases offering 2% cash back, often times you have the option to choose among a select few categories to get the 2% back.

How Much Can You Save? Let’s say a family of 4 is planning a trip to Disneyland. They plan a year in advance to save money and budget the vacation. For the year leading up to the vacation, they make the following purchases on their Disney Chase Rewards Card:

• Purchases that qualify for 2% cash back: Total spending of $13,200 x 0.02 = $264 of rewards
  • $750 per month on groceries x 12 months = $9,000
  • $250 per month on gas for their cars x 12 months = $3,000
  • $100 per month eating out at restaurants x 12 months = $1,200
• Purchases that qualify for 1% cash back: Total spending of $10,000 x 0.01 = $100 of rewards
  • $200 per month on miscellaneous expenses x 12 months = $2,400

They saved up $264 of rewards from purchases qualifying for 2% cash back and $100 of rewards from purchases qualifying for 1% cash back. The total cash back rewards they saved from spending the year prior to their trip to Disneyland was $364. Not bad!

Keep in mind the conservative numbers, so this may largely be an understatement. Total spending for a family of 4 on basic living expenses was just $23,200 for the entire year. And this isn’t counting the rewards they will receive for purchases made at Disneyland, which may be 10% and 15% depending on their purchases.

Disney Discounts Through Credit Card Portals

You’re probably asking yourself what the heck a credit card portal is. Don’t worry, it’s nothing fancy, just an easy way to save some more money. If you’re familiar with cashback websites or affiliate marketing, then you already know how this works, because a credit card portal works the same way!

When credit cards partner with major retail brands, they can make extra money by sending online shoppers to the partnered retail stores. When a referred customer makes a purchase, the credit card company gets a small commission paid to them from the retailer for sending them online shoppers.

The credit card company then turns around and passes on a portion of that commission to you in the form of cashback or rewards for shopping at their partnered retailers.

Here’s how it works:

1. Sign in to your credit card issuer’s website (like Chase if you have the Disney Chase Rewards Card).
2. Browse for the online shopping offers listed within your account
3. Click on the link that takes you to that particular offer
4. Make a purchase (preferably with your credit card, you’ll get the regular rewards points plus the discount or rewards from the selected offer)
5. Save up your points from selected offers and use them at Disney!

Examples of offers through credit card portals may be 5% – 15% + off certain products, dollar amounts off when purchasing particular brand names, or promotions on newly released products with partnered retailers.

Discounts Through Cashback Websites

Cashback websites work in the same way as discussed with the credit card portals. Rather than being a credit card company or a bank, cashback websites attract millions of customers to sign up for free cashback account and partner with thousands of retailers to offer discounts and cashback when purchases are made at the partnered retail stores.

Cashback websites that offer you points for cash, or direct cashback will be the best options when planning to save money and get discounts for your Disney vacation. Here’s how cashback websites work:

1. Set up a free account
2. Link your bank account or PayPal account
3. Start browsing available cashback rewards offered
4. Click on the link within your account that takes you to the offer
5. Make a purchase and get cash back!

Keep in mind not all cashback websites offer direct cash back, so to take advantage of saving for your Disney vacation, it’s easiest to stick with the ones that give cashback rather than credit towards particular stores.

The best cashback websites that offer cash as rewards are:

1. Ibotta: They work with thousands of retailers and allow you to shop online and in store for cash back. After choosing the offers you wish to use, you can upload your receipt and redeem your free money.
2. Rakuten (formerly called Ebates): Ebates was recently purchased by Rakuten, in case you are familiar with either names. They offer up to 40% cash back at over 2,500 stores and pay you in cash rather than rewards or points. You can be paid via PayPal or a check mailed to your house.
3. Dosh: Dosh is an app that you can download on your smartphone. You then link your debit card to the app, and automatically get cash back. How does this work? Dosh automatically aligns your purchases with their available offers and send you the cash as your balance builds up.

This may or may not have Disney specific offers through any of the listed cashback websites, as the offers vary as agreements with partnered retailers change. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were occasional cash back offers specific to Disney purchases.

Rather, you can save extra money with cashback websites and programs on top of the other cash rewards listed above, taking advantage of double points, double cashback and more money saved!

→ Related reading: How to Stack Rewards and Cash Back

How to Get $1,000 off Your Next Disney Vacation

To illustrate the power of the multiple available programs to save on your Disney vacation, here’s a realistic hypothetical scenario. We will use a family of 4 for this scenario, which you can easily adjust to fit your family expenses.

The Smith Family has a household income of $60,000 per year, or $5,000 per month. Their monthly expenses are as follows:

• House payment: $1,300
• House upkeep (utilities, gas, water, etc.): $250
• Insurance: $500
• Food: $750
• Clothing: $250
• Misc. household expenses: $300
• Gas for cars: $250
• Restaurants: $200
• Misc. Entertainment: $200
• Car loans: $400
• Other Debt: $100
• Savings for Disney vacation: $500

The Smith Family is a member of BJ’s Wholesale, they took advantage of the Disney Chase Rewards Card, shop at Target with their REDcard regularly, they visit Chase.com regularly to view the offers in the credit card portal and have signed up for the cashback rewards websites. Here’s a breakdown of what they can save in each category:

• House upkeep (utilities, gas, water, etc.): $250
  • Purchased with Chase card, saving 1% cashback = $2.50
• Insurance: $500
  • Purchased with Chase card, saving 1% cashback = $5.00
• Food: $750
  • Purchased at Target with Target REDcard, saving 5% cashback = $37.50
• Clothing: $250
  • Purchased at Target with Target REDcard, saving 5% cashback = $12.50
• Misc. household expenses: $300
  • Purchased with Chase card, saving 1% cashback = $3.00
• Gas for cars: $250
  • Purchased with Chase card, saving 2% cashback = $5.00
• Restaurants: $200
  • Purchased with Chase card, saving 2% cashback = $2.00
• Misc. Entertainment: $200
  • Averaged 3% cashback with cashback membership websites = $6.00
• Savings for Disney vacation: $500
  • Purchased $300 worth of Disney gift cards at Target, saving 5% cashback = $9.00
  • Saved $200 cash in 1.5% bank savings account, growing to $2,416.57

Based on the above scenario, the Smith Family will save a total of $990 from all the discounts available. Finally, their 1.5% growth on their savings accounts made them an additional $16.57, for a total of $1,006.57 in savings. Realistic? Absolutely!

Disney Discount Gift Cards for Just A Few Minutes Work

The reality is that you can get major discounts on Disney gift cards just by being members of the right programs and offers. Once a member, the rest is on autopilot. Here’s a quick recap of the best programs available to save money for your Disney vacation:

• Take advantage of wholesale clubs like Sam’s Club and BJ’s Warehouse
• Who doesn’t love Target already? Use Target’s REDcard for 5% cashback, including Disney gift cards
• Join Chase’s Disney Visa Rewards Card program to make all your regular purchases with and get an additional 1% – 2% rewards. Chase even has campaigns allowing for new members a cash reward just for signing up, sometimes as much as $250!
• Take advantage of the credit card portals. Search your credit card online banking for their discount portal to use offers available with partnered retailers
• Sign up for the free cashback websites like Ibotta, Rakuten, and the Dosh app.
• Make sure you shop the best savings account interest rate! Hey, every little bit helps! That extra $16.57 put your savings up and over $1,000 for the year!
• Save money regularly, and purchase Disney gift cards through above-listed discount programs.

Whether you save money or not, Disneyland is always a good time. Add to that an additional $1,000+ in savings, and suddenly it seems as if Disney tickets are on sale!

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