How I Planned for a 16 Day Trip to Europe for Four Adults for $1,500 Using Points & Miles

Traveling to London, Paris, and Amsterdam including 3 days and 2 nights at Disneyland Paris for $1,506.57 didn’t happen by chance…it took a whole lot of planning to pull off! And now you can benefit from all my work and I’ll show you how I pulled it off.

Booking Flights

First let’s talk about flights. My home airport is PDX which has limited options to Europe compared to larger airports. For my family, we prioritize fewer stops over cheaper flight options that require more stops. The more stops the more potential for delays which I really wanted to avoid on the way, and was a little less concerned about coming home. Good thing too since we wound up delayed due to snow and arrived home 2 days later than planned!

When booking award flights it’s important to know that they aren’t completely free – you still have to pay the taxes/fees which depending on what airline you fly and where you’re going – can add up pretty fast. London in particular can have pretty high taxes/fees. We opted to fly into London first as it’s far cheaper to fly into than out of the UK and with the timing of Christmas we needed to see London first before Christmas and all the public transportation options shut down for a few days.

There’s a nonstop PDX – LHR British Airways flight that has reasonable taxes/fees in economy class which is what I targeted for this trip. I booked the award flight the day it opened up (355 days in advance) for 140,000 Avios + $320 for four adults. I transferred 140,000 Amex MR to British Airways Avios which isn’t the best redemption possible – a better deal would have been waiting for a transfer bonus but I didn’t want to risk losing the flight.

We flew home from Amsterdam as we wanted to spend Christmas in Paris in between. There is a nonstop flight from AMS – PDX with KLM but unfortunately, it cost more points than I wanted to spend. We wound up using 160,000 United points (topped off with a few Chase UR) + $405 for four economy tickets home with one stop. We didn’t actually get to fly this flight due to a snow storm – so we actually flew Lufthansa from Frankfurt to Portland with one stop when we arrived home two days late. We did get 20,000 United flights refunded for the trouble – and Lufthansa passed out a good amount of chocolate during the flight so I guess it ended well!

Booking Hotels & Disneyland Paris

Next I looked at booking hotels. Staying in hotels in Europe is different than here in the United States. Not only are the rooms fairly cozy they also have very strict occupancy laws and don’t seem to have many two queen bedroom setups. Our kids were college students at the time of our trip so we decided to just book two rooms everywhere and let the kids share a room while we shared the other. The only exception was Disneyland Paris because we stayed at a Disney resort and they do in fact offer two queen bedrooms. For Disney prices I held a family meeting and basically told them we’d suck it up and share a room for 2 nights of the trip. Unsurprisingly, my practical kids agreed it would be fine (they knew we’d only be in there to sleep and shower because it’s DISNEY!)

My first search is always Hyatt since they have the best redemption values and I had a lot of Chase UR I could transfer. We wound up staying at the Hyatt Place London East which cost us 108,000 points for 4 nights with 2 rooms (one king room and one twins). It was a serviceable hotel steps away from the Tesco which came in clutch for breakfast and snacks. It was also located pretty close to the Tube station and while it was situated fairly far east from the center of the city was absolutely fine for all of our sightseeing needs.

We moved from London to Disneyland Paris on Christmas Eve Day where we stayed through the morning of Dec 26th. After some research I realized it was cheaper to stay at a Disney property and buy tickets as a package than to stay off property. We wound up staying at the Sequoia Lodge for 2 nights with 3 days of Park Hopper Tickets for 4 adults which cost $1,781.57. I was able to use some Visa gift cards from an employer health app program which saved us $1,000 and made the cost for Disney hotel/tickets $781.57. One other tip I discovered was that you can book Disneyland Paris hotels/tickets from any of their different country’s websites and it’s cheaper to choose one from Europe and pay in euros. I went through the Ireland site since it’s in English (whatever country you book through all of your email communication will be in that language as a heads up!).

I originally booked the Hyatt Regency Etoile for our 5 night Paris stay but changed my mind because I was worried about the distance of the hotel from the center of town and seemed more “corporate” than charming French hotel. I wound up canceling the Hyatt and booked through the Chase Travel Portal at a points boost hotel (The Hotel Beloy) which turned out to be a fabulous decision. It cost 244,940 Chase UR + $194.66 taxes for two rooms in this charming hotel that was located literally across the street from one of the museums we visited. The location was amazing as it was also within easy distance of the Metro, train station, bus line, shopping, an excellent boulangerie, Notre Dame, and a pharmacy which came in clutch when one of my kids got sick.

In Amsterdam we once again stayed in a less exciting hotel slightly out of town, but within easy walking distance of the light rail system. I took advantage of a 25% Amex transfer bonus to pay 160,000 Hilton points for 5 nights of 2 rooms (fifth night free!). The hotel was a bit further from the Albert Heijn grocery store but still walkable, plus it offered free breakfast which my son absolutely managed to get a ton of value out of.

Here is the break down of all the Points/Miles and Cash spent on this trip:

For more info on what we did all those days in Europe check out my blog post here to help plan your own European Trip!