In September, we went on a trip that has been a few years in the making: Disneyland for my youngest child’s 5th birthday. We had a great time, and our costs were largely defrayed by the use of points. Here’s what we did:

Flew one-way into Las Vegas on Southwest.

Transferred some points from our Chase Sapphire Reserve to Southwest to have enough for 5 tickets. The fare dropped a few times after I first booked it, so I rebooked and was refunded the points difference. This was about 63,000 Southwest points, or $198/ticket, or about $1,000 value for all 5 of us.

Stayed one night in the Hyatt Place Las Vegas on Paradise Road. Used 8,000 Hyatt points. Hyatt Place is a decent brand that typically can fit a family of 5 or 6 thanks to the sofa bed. I had about 5,000 Hyatt points still in my account, so transferred 3,000 from Chase to top it off. I cannot recall the cash rate for that night, but I’m wanting to say it was in the low $200s.

We rented a minivan for 4 days from Las Vegas to Anaheim. I used Autoslash.com and rebooked when the price dropped. It was $208 and I paid using our Chase Sapphire Reserve, both for the 3x Ultimate Rewards points, but also for the primary Rental Car coverage. It ended up that we rented from Alamo via Priceline, and I had a Costco discount applied (Autoslash walked me through all of this). We returned the rental car right across the street from our Anaheim hotel — very convenient. No need to pay for a rental car + parking while at Disneyland!

We stayed 2 nights at The Ranch at Death Valley booked through Orbitz. I had originally used the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel portal, but then a sale happened and it was much cheaper to do the cash rate for this. Orbitz had a 15% off coupon code at the time, bringing it to $386 for 2 nights.

Death Valley was out of this world! Beautiful, barren, incredibly dry and hot (of course). It reminded me of a hair dryer on hot blast. I have a 4th grader, and we used the Every Kid in a Park program to gain free admittance.

We stayed 5 nights at the Residence Inn at Anaheim Resort/Convention Center on Katella Blvd. I used 140,000 Marriott points. When you stay 5 nights, you only need enough points for 4 nights. Sometimes this property has an affordable cash rate, but for our stay it was very expensive — upwards of $400/night! There was a convention next door and I suspect that affected rates. No matter to me on our points booking! We had some points collected from my American Express SPG card, and some from cash stays.

Thanks to my husband reaching Marriott Gold status last year during a status challenge, he was temporarily boosted to Platinum following the Marriott/SPG merger. The Platinum status gave us a room upgrade and we had a theme park view room. I was able to see fireworks from my bed! We could also see parts of Disney’s California Adventure, and it really was a treat to see from our 8th floor window.

Due to the 3-hour time difference, my kids were asleep by the time the 9 p.m. fireworks went off on some nights. I don’t know how much I’d be willing to pay for the room upgrade out of pocket … maybe $20-30/night. Online, it looks like the cash rate difference is an extra $50/night. This will probably be our greatest perk while we have Platinum status, and I’m glad we had that opportunity.

It was about 12-15 minutes of walking at a fairly brisk clip to reach the security checkpoint for Disneyland. Other hotels are even closer. The distance was fine for us and we didn’t use a stroller for this trip. If you’re going, I’d strongly suggest a hotel on Harbor or Katella that you can walk to the park. Don’t waste time driving.

I bought Disneyland park tickets from Undercover Tourist during a sale. We did 4-day hoppers. I paid with my Chase Sapphire Reserve and earned 3X UR for the transaction. Still, these tickets were pricey at about $1,500 total for 5 people.

We used a town car service for a ride to the John Wayne/Santa Ana airport, and flew home again on Southwest, again with points transferred from Chase. This flight was a little cheaper, at 52,900 Southwest points for everyone, or about $780 for all.

During our trip, we visited Hoover Dam, drove down the Vegas Strip and watched the fountains at the Bellagio, drove through Red Rock Canyon National Recreation Area, enjoyed In-N-Out Burger (twice, hah!), visited spots in Death Valley including Zabriski Point, Badwater Basin, sand dunes, drove Artist’s, and enjoyed their very warm swimming pool.

We spent a few hours at Laguna Beach and got a little wet in the Pacific, took the scenic route up to Anaheim, and spent 4 days bouncing around Disneyland. The park had a very different feel to us compared to our more familiar Walt Disney World in Florida, and it took some adjusting to get used to, weirdly enough. We had a great time, and my girls especially would love to visit again.

Breakfast was included with our hotel room, so we ate there in the mornings, picked up some snacks from the surprisingly well-stocked CVS nearby, and otherwise ate at restaurants nearby or within Disneyland. We also stopped at a grocery store in Las Vegas to stock up on snacks and gallons of water for our water bottles.

Factoring in park tickets, food, rental car, and airport parking, we did still spend a little more than $2,000. But, thanks to points, we didn’t pay for our flights or 6 nights of hotel. The points earned from our expenses on this trip will go toward travel in 2019. We’ve got some fun travel in the works — I’m cooking up trips to Arizona, Wyoming, and New England.