Credit Cards, Hotel Cost, Travel Cost

One of the best ways to earn Hilton HHonors points (which can give you free rooms at the Hilton Hotels and Resorts family of hotels) is to to sign up for one of the four types of Hilton-sponsored credit cards. American Express Hilton Surpass card One Hilton-sponsored card is the American Express Hilton Surpass card.  It has a $75 annual fee.  There is usually a signup bonus offered with the card; the bonus varies from 60,000-85,000 HHonors points, which are credited to your account after you spend a certain amount within the first 3 months of card membership. The American Express Hilton Surpass card has great earning potential: – Earn 12 HHonors points per dollar spent at participating Hilton properties – Earn 6 HHonors points per dollar spent at U.S. restaurants, supermarkets (unfortunately, warehouse stores are not considered supermarkets in this regard), and standalone gas stations – Earn 3 HHonors points per dollar spent everywhere else You will also receive HHonors Gold status for as long as you have the card.  If you spend $40,000 per year on the card, you will also receive Diamond status.  The loyalty rewards benefits for HHonors are described on the HHonors website. American Express HHonors card The American Express HHonors card has no annual fee.  There is usually a signup bonus that ranges from 40,000-60,000 HHonors points when you spend $750 on the card within the first 3 months of card membership. This card has the same categories as the Surpass card, just with lower category bonuses: – Earn 7 HHonors points per dollar spent at participating Hilton properties – Earn 5 HHonors points per dollar spent at US restaurants, supermarkets (excluding warehouse stores), and standalone gas stations – Earn 3 HHonors points per dollar spent everywhere else You will also receive HHonors Silver status for as long as you have the card.  If you spend $20,000 per year on the card, you will receive Gold status.

Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve read more

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Disney Cruise

Cruising is a great alternative to a Disney Parks vacation: it’s basically a nice relaxing vacation in a floating Disney resort hotel that takes you to a wonderful set of destinations.  Disney offers cruises to many locations including the Caribbean, Alaska, and Europe. read more

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Hotel Cost, Travel Cost

ihg-brands

IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) Rewards Club is one of our favorite hotel programs.  The IHG hotel family includes the InterContinental, Hualuxe, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Even Hotels, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites, and Candlewood Suites brands of hotels.  Other than the InterContinental hotels, I don’t know that I would consider any of those brands to be luxury brands.  What IHG lacks in luxury, it makes up for in quantity.  There are Holiday Inn Express hotels everywhere across the United States. read more

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Planning

One of our favorite travel tools is TripIt.  TripIt is a web site (with associated mobile apps) that gathers details of your travel, including hotel reservations, airline tickets, cruise itineraries, rental cars, and other travel information.  TripIt then presents you with a comprehensive itinerary in a simplified format that allows you to easily view the information. read more

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Disney Parks, Food Cost, Hotel Cost

One of the tricks I’ve described before is to look at alternate travel arrangements.  When considering whether to upgrade our tickets this summer to annual passes, I looked for economical travel/lodging arrangements for other possible trips.  We had several school breaks to consider, including a Halloween-based trip (which includes some teacher work days in November) and an early February trip (using teacher work days as well).  Since these were “quick” trips to fit into a fixed calendar, we needed to be able to fly down to Florida in order to maximize our Disney time. read more

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Disney Gift Cards

There’s great news for those that acquire numerous Disney Gift Cards through discounted means. The disneygiftcards.com website has been updated with additional functionality. Previously, the site only allowed you to check the balance on your Disney Gift Cards, and the interface was a bit clunky and hard to use. Since the site was refreshed, you can store up to 5 gift cards on the site at once. More importantly, you can also combine multiple gift cards together, transferring the balance from one to another. The most you can transfer and store on one card is $1000. You can delete emptied gift cards from the site to make room for adding more. Also, if you fill one of your gift cards up to $1000, you can also remove it from the site. Removing the card from the site doesn’t change its stored balance. You can always add it back to the site later as well. If you lose a card, you can call in and have them freeze the remaining balance on the card. read more

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Disney Parks, Planning

One of the best kept secrets at Disney World and Disneyland is rope drop (with apologies to Disney Vacation Club for stealing your thunder).  Rope drop is the time when the park opens.  Arriving at the park for rope drop is one of the best ways to maximize your time at the Disney parks. read more

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Disney Cruise

I don’t know that you could ever call a Disney cruise “cheap.”  However, you can find some less expensive Disney cruises.  Here are some of our techniques for taking less expensive cruises: read more

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