Chase and Disney have announced a brand new credit card option, the Chase Disney Inspire Visa credit card! In this post, I’ll outline the basics of the card, including situations in which it makes the most sense, why you might consider other cards, and even where it might fit into a “points & miles” wallet. Read on to learn all about the Chase Disney Inspire Visa Credit Card!
What Is the Chase Disney Inspire Visa Credit Card
The Chase Disney Inspire Visa card is a new credit card offered by Chase bank that has some perks that might be particularly appealing to Disney fans. The card is the third in the lineup of Chase Disney Visa credit cards, which we’ve already written about here.
ICYMI, I actually started this site (almost a decade ago!) with the aim of writing at the intersection of travel hacking (credit card points & miles) and Disney. Hence the goofy name that I’ve been stuck with.
I’m still a pretty active “lurker” in the points and miles community, and I in these summer-planning days, I spend most of my free time on seats.aero trying to find award availability (at least when I’m not on Google maps, hoping some new travel destination will materialize).
It’s getting harder and harder to get value out of “premium” credit cards these days, with many adopting a “coupon book” model where you pay an annual fee in excess of $500 upfront in exchange for a bunch of credits (usually totaling more than the annual fee) that are complex to use.
So when I saw there was a new Chase Disney card coming out, I assumed it would be along these lines. I was pleasantly surprised though, and I’ll discuss in this post why it’s actually pretty clear where the value proposition for this card lies.
Disclaimer
Nothing in this post is meant to convey financial advice. It’s for informational purposes only, with the goal of giving you some things to consider in evaluating whether this card is correct for you. Inevitably, your individual and family financial profile matter in making this decision. Official information about the card can be found at DisneyRewards.com.
Meet Stitch at a Chase Disney Visa greeting
Basics of the Chase Disney Inspire Visa Credit Card
I’m going to start with the basics, which is the information 95% of you need to know. I’ll close with a little more technical discussion aimed at people who are a little more involved in using points and miles.
The Disney Inspire Card Has An Annual Fee
The annual fee for the card is $149. This means you’ll only want the card if the math makes sense, at least in the longterm. In the immediate term, the are pros and cons to opening the card with the plan of earning the signup bonus and then later trying to product change to a different (no fee) card. I won’t discussion this option in more detail, though.
Disney Inspire Signup Bonus
The Inspire card currently has a pretty appealing signup bonus. Per the Disney Rewards site:
New Disney Inspire Visa Cardmembers can earn up to $600. Get a $300 Disney Gift Card eGift to use today upon approval + earn a $300 statement credit after you spend $1,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
If you value the $300 Disney eGift at $300, that’s enough to cover the annual fee for four years, which is a notable offer (for only $1,000 spend), I’d say.
As always, there’s an opportunity cost to earning a signup bonus with one card, and that’s that you could be earning a signup bonus with another card. “$600” is a notable bonus, but even the Chase Sapphire Preferred offers 75,000 points (for $5000 spend in 3 months) with only a $95 annual fee right now.
With that in mind, we can talk more about the longterm value of the card. That requires us to step into the world of Disney Rewards Dollars.
The Disney Inspire Card Lives In The Disney Rewards Dollar Ecosystem
Like the other Chase Disney cards, this one will earn you Disney Rewards Dollars with every purchase. Disney Rewards Dollars are dollars that can be spent on most things Disney, including at Disney stores and on Disney vacations.
For most people reading this blog, a Disney Rewards Dollar is going to be worth about $1. It can’t be worth more than that (it’s just used for $1 at Disney), and it’s worth less than that only if you have to substitute spending at Disney for some other spending in order to get use out of it. But we all probably already spend enough at Disney to get use of any ordinary amount of Disney Rewards Dollars, so they’re worth $1 each.
You’ll Have Access To Three Important Credits / Bonuses
Before we even get to what the card earns for spending, the real meat here is a set of three credits / bonuses you can earn:
200 Disney Rewards Dollars after spending $2,000 per anniversary year at Disney Resorts in the U.S. and Disney Cruise Line bookings
$100 statement credit after spending $200 per anniversary year on Disney Theme Park Ticket purchases in the U.S. (including Walt Disney World Annual Passes, Disneyland Magic Key Passes and Disney Water Park Tickets)
$10 monthly statement credit for qualifying Disney streaming purchases ($120 total per year)
You can probably value the 200 Disney Rewards Dollars at $200 simply because anyone spending the required $2,000 on Disney Resort or Cruises will be spending 200 Disney Rewards Dollars on ordinary purchases at the parks / cruise ship.
This brings the value of these three perks to $420. It’s not hard to see how the $149 annual fee can pretty easily be justified (or at least close to it) just by these credits and bonuses.
For many readers I suspect this is enough to make the card worth considering. If you opened the card today (while the launch signup bonus is active) and made the following purchases:
$2,000 Disney Cruise
$491 for a six-day Disney World ticket (there’s a Disney ticket promo ongoing)
You’d get:
The $300 Disney eGift card signup bonus
the $300 statement credit signup bonus
200 Disney Rewards Dollars
and the $100 ticket statement credit
for a total of $900 in value back. You paid $149 for the annual fee, so that’s $751 net, or $1,740 spent for $2,491 of value on Disney travel.
But if you’re the type who cares about points and miles, or someone who uses a premium credit card like the Chase Sapphire Reserve, things get more complicated. I’ll return to this later, but for now I want to wrap up a more basic discussion of the card.
The Card Earns Disney Dollars on Every Purchase
With the Disney Inspire card, you’ll get Disney Rewards Dollars for every purchase. Here are the earning rates (measured in Disney Rewards Dollars):
10% on purchases made using your Disney Inspire Visa Card directly at DisneyPlus.com, Hulu.com and Plus.ESPN.com.
3% on all card purchases at gas stations and most Disney U.S. locations.
2% on all card purchases at grocery stores and restaurants.
1% on all other card purchases.
Let’s start with the bad news. The standard for cash back (and that’s not Disney bucks) is 2%. Plenty of cards without annual fees offer 2% back. This card’s general earning rate is only 1%, and restaurants only earn 2%.
The card offers 3% back on gas stations and at most Disney US locations, plus 10% on Disney streaming services. These are the areas where it offers the most longterm earning power, but really it’s the bonuses (above) and perks (below) where the value lies.
Other Perks and Discounts
We have a review of the Chase Disney Visa credit cards plus a look at our favorite Chase Disney Visa Perks. These are things common to all the Chase Disney cards. Just for reference, they include:
10% off select dining locations at Disney World and Disneyland
10% off select Disney merchandise purchases at Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, Disney Store, and DisneyStore.com
15% off select tours, like our favorite, Keys to the Kingdom, at Disney World and Disneyland
Special character experiences at Disney World and Disneyland
Access to select cardmember discounts on Disney vacations
Special 0% financing on select Disney vacation packages
When you’re thinking about dollars and cents, keep in mind those perks are also available via the lower- and no-fee Chase Disney cards.
Basic Conclusion
With its nice signup bonus and solid annual credits/bonuses, the Disney Inspire card offers enough for many Disney fans to justify the $149 annual fee. Just keep in mind that the no-fee version of the card has great perks, too, and if you’re not getting the annual value out of the bonuses/credits, then the low earning on everyday spend might not make it the best longterm fit for you.
Fitting the Disney Inspire Into A Points & Miles Wallet
Okay, this is the “advanced” section of the post. If you have a card like the Chase Sapphire Reserve, Citi Strata Elite, or American Express Platinum (or even some others), you’ll want to consider whether it makes sense to put your travel purchases on a Disney Inspire card.
As a baseline, earning rates on travel purchases have weakened in recent years. For example, the Chase Sapphire Reserve went from 3X points on all travel to 4X points on direct hotel and flight bookings (notably, this excludes cruises) and 8X on purchases through the Chase Travel Portal.
So, the Disney Inspire is a more compelling card than it would have been a few years ago. That said, there’s still some work to be done. I’m going to start with the streaming perks before moving onto the big ticket item—Disney travel.
Breaking Down the Streaming Perks
As noted above, the card has a $10 per month credit for select Disney+ purchases. If you’re paying $11.99 (we’ll call it $12 for math’s sake) per month (the standard Disney+ price), you’ll get full use of the credit. I believe these purchases will earn 10% back on the full payment while also collecting the $10/month credit.
If that’s correct, the math looks like:
Pay $144 for Disney+, earn 14.4 Disney Rewards Dollars, earn $120 statement credits
If I’m incorrect and the 10% is only after the credit, the math looks like:
Pay $144 for Disney+, earn $120 statement credits, earn 2.4 Disney Rewards Dollars
It’s a difference of 12 Disney Rewards Dollars (10% of the $120 statement credits).
Personally, I already have multiple cards that can cover my Disney+ subscription. (The credit card “coupon book” model has gotten so complicated that it’s hard to even decide which card’s “coupon” to use for a given service). But if this is a perk you’ll get full advantage of, it almost covers the entire $149 annual fee on its own.
And then there’s Disney travel…
A Hypothetical Disney Traveler
Let’s consider a not-so-hypothetical Disney traveler—me. I spend more than $2,000 each year on Disney resorts (I’m not using cruises here, but I’ll return to that). And I’m an annual passholder, to the cost of around $1,600 last year.
With those two purchases, on a Disney Inspire card, I’d have earned:
108 Disney Rewards Dollars (at 3% back)
200 bonus Disney Rewards Dollars
A $100 statement credit
I value those at $408 combined, which means my net expense for these two purchases is $3,192.
If I instead put the $2,000 resort bookings on a Chase Sapphire Reserve (earning 4X points on hotels booked directly) and the $1,600 tickets on a Citi DoubleCash (earning 2% cash back on everything), I’ll earn:
8,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points
$32 or 3,200 Citi ThankYou points
For the sake of this example, we can count this just as 11,200 points. To match my $408 savings using the Disney Inspire card, I’d have to value those points at 3.6 cents a piece. That’s pretty well on the high end of what I’d ever get redeeming points.
If you include the Disney Inspire’s annual fee in the calculation, the savings are only brought down to $259 ($408 minutes $149). Then I only need to value the points at 2.3 cents each, which is definitely reasonable.
Of course, once we start comparing annual fees, things get tricky. The Chase Sapphire Reserve has an annual fee of $795. Can I fully justify that by other aspects of the card? Maybe. But it’s clear the Disney Inspire card at least offers straightforward value for people who will earn these credits and bonuses.
Finally, a word about cruises. With few cards offering good earning rates for general travel (cruises are usually just general travel), a guest who spends $2,000 a year on Disney cruises is probably a perfect fit for the Disney Inspire. They’ll get the 60 rewards dollars (I believe, but at least 20 in any case), plus the 200 bonus dollars. That’ll be enough to justify the annual fee.