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All your travel questions, answered every Thursday.
Travel support Thursday back again. That's right. Travel Thursday. Travel Thursday. We're back.
Oh, that song. I just it's why do you fight it? Just let it be. So anyway, today we are talking about
our new Disney video and all the behind the scenes stuff that it took to make this video. And this
was so much fun to make for us. Like such a fun, like creative thing for us to do. The video didn't
do all that well. It didn't do all that good, but I don't care. I'm so proud of it. I'm still proud
of it. And, and I think it's, uh, yeah, I think it's important to talk about like this was a very
different video for us to make, uh, made in basically an entirely different way. So where
should we start? Should we start with the idea? Well, I would, I would just like to preface if
you haven't seen this video yet. This is our four days in Disney world on a technically $0
budget. And the concept is it's a heist film with a nostalgic heart about two big adults just trying
to get to Disney world on a $0 budget. Trying to do Disney world for free. This is all season
long. I've been calling this one the weird one because, you know, in every TV show, you know,
friends, Ted Lasso, a ton of them, there's always one season, one episode of the season
that's just a little different, right? A black and white episode, an episode that's a musical.
Not everyone likes those episodes, but we had to do it for just for fun sake and just
for creative sake. So that's, if you haven't seen it yet, it's on our main channel,
four days in Disney world. Let's get to it behind the scenes. So why did we do it?
Okay. So the initial like the spark of creativity that came to life. I don't know.
So the initial idea for this video was trying to answer the question of how could we show
this whole credit card turning lifestyle that we're so deep into and has saved us so much money
and allowed us to travel to so many cool places. How can we show this in a really fun way by trying
to complete some totally ludicrous, but possibly really fun quest and not a way that's like us
sitting at a laptop with spreadsheets and explaining things, not that we've ever done that before.
Yes. To show the thing from start to finish. So I was watching the movie oceans 11 and I was just
like, this is the perfect tone for this movie because we're trying to like steal these points
away and get this really expensive experience for totally free. And that's like a very like
heist film sort of thing. So I was like, yes, that's exactly like how this movie should feel.
And then I realized to do this, we're probably going to have to like script something for the
first time since we've ever made movies. So the idea was like act one of this film is going to be
like getting all these points together, figuring out this Disney world system and kind of like
unlocking the Disney experience on a zero dollar budget. So I think, so I think in that vein,
I think we have to say that it is true that this video probably is not for everyone because this
isn't even like what we were necessarily interested in to begin with. Like we've never really been
the kind of people that like, let's go to Disneyland or Disney world. We know that it's expensive. We
know that it's, you know, not necessarily our interest when we're thinking about travel. We've
always been the kind of travelers that enjoy budget travel, travel to Vietnam, Philippine
somewhere different than the world that we come from. That being said, I feel like the challenge
of this was really what, what made it interesting to us. And the truth is, we had a lot of friends
who were interested in taking their kids to Disney world or Disneyland, and they were talking about
how expensive it had become. So crazy. And we wanted to do this experience here through a,
we're both a little hesitant about like whether or not Disney world would be fun for us personally.
Yeah. So we were both a little bit, I don't know, hesitant about doing Disney world. It just,
maybe we're too old for it. Maybe it wasn't going to be all that much fun. Maybe it's just,
I don't know, it definitely seemed like not a budget experience by any means, not an international
travel experience. There were a lot of things that were like outside of the normal stuff that we
love. But the idea of being able to show how to do all of this for totally free, using all these
credit card points and miles in like a sort of heist film format, that really interested me and
really made me feel like, oh yeah, this is, this is the right thing to make. Oh shoot. Yeah. A little
video Wisconsin came out there. All right. And I think this video ended up being the most fun
that we've had making a video in a really long time. It's one of those like, it's one of those
things that like I kept couching it to like, you know, I think we've been doing these videos,
these travel videos and these YouTube travel videos for so long now. There's this feeling
that we're like, we're in a good rhythm. We've got a format down. We really enjoy this format.
People are resonating with it. You don't want to mess with that. Yeah. And but it feels like
you're one, it feels like you're a little afraid to experiment. Whenever you find even the tiniest
bit of success on YouTube, you're like, don't touch it because everything feels so fragile all
the time. You feel like if you do any little move in the wrong direction, the whole internet's
going to erupt and be like, no, screw that. I'm going to get out of here. But we kind of like
came to a point where we're like, you know, there's this, Josh had this idea. He really wanted to try
making a fun, fun movie in this like similar ish format, but in a way that teaches people how we
use points and credit card miles. And in the past, we hadn't really figured that out or figured out
a way to do it in a way that like was fun and like hearted. Yeah. Without being too like,
not to teach you to like, welcome to my course. We have a course about the exact
risk, but we didn't want this to feel fun. Yeah. This to feel like you're uncovering a mystery.
And I think, I think it came to a point where we were like, like we've always been the kind of
people that we've always been the kind of people that I would say, when we had an idea, we were
open to each other's ideas and we would never shut them down just for the sake of like,
it's almost like we have to pitch to each other sometimes. And I remember when you were pitching
this idea to me, all these concerns that we both just listed, you know, it not being our usual
three days in and not being applicable to everybody, it being a different like location
in the U S not something that people are into. All of these came up, but ultimately we've been the
kind of people that have been like, if we have an idea, we have to just try it. Even if it doesn't
do well, you know, sometimes you just have to do something for the sake of like wanting to do
something. Yeah. And I think had this video done better, I think we would now be thinking very
seriously about like, how do I get an entire honeymoon for free? How do I get two weeks in
Japan for free? How do I get three days in an all inclusive in Cancun? There's lots of things that
could fit inside of this format, but something about either the way that we filmed it or about
the subject matter didn't connect with a lot of people. Yeah. And that's okay. I mean, I think,
so let's talk a little bit about like, for those of you that haven't seen it, definitely feel free
to watch it on our channel, but this one is definitely different. So how is it different
than our typical like three days in two weeks in videos? Yeah. First of all, it's, it's very much
a movie, but also a silly like comedy. You can tell that we're making this just the two of us
kind of movie. For sure. For sure. It's exactly that. And also it's a little, it's a little bit
scripted. Like we were reenacting things that happened over a period of like nine months.
And we had to reenact them all in like a half a week of filming, right? So we had to do a little
acting. Yeah. I guess a little acting. I mean, a lot of it is because we're not actors. Yeah.
It's like a little bit based on true stories in that like some of the scenes when we dance and
have dance parties when we're pre-approved for a credit card, those are actually like what we do.
Yeah. So the way that we took this from idea to reality was started out by storyboarding the
entire thing. So we had three really like concise acts for this video that I think were really obvious
at the beginning. Act one was figuring out the entire credit card system, signing up for a bunch
of credit cards and getting so many points that we'd be able to offset the full cost of going to
Disney World for four days. Asterisk. I blew it and I totally forgot about the sign up fees for
each one of these credit, like the annual fees for each of these credit cards. I blew it and
forgot about that. So we would have need to sign up for probably one more credit card and do the
minimum spend to then be able to pay off all those annual fees. But also the annual fees tend to get
offset by the stuff that they offer. I don't know. A lot of people got upset in the comments about
this oversight. It was definitely an oversight. But by and large, we got like a four to $5,000
trip to Disney World for actually zero dollars out of pocket. For just buying the stuff that we
do. And that I think was the premise of this, like how do we teach what like the whole premise
and what the whole point of credit card churning is, is signing up for credit cards and spending
on credit cards like you typically would, you know, buying gas, buying groceries, all these
different things that you would typically do to amass all these points and bonuses that will
help you offset the cost of travel. So yeah, like I think that was like the chunk of Act 1.
That was Act 1 was like uncovering the mystery, figuring out just how hard this thing was going
to be. And then like giving ourselves a reason to go on this quest in the first place, which was
our friend who legitimately had wanted to take their kid to Disney World but could not afford it
and then being like, please show me how this is possible. So we did that. Act 1 kind of like
ended with the big Act 1 break going into two, which is like, we're going to Disney World.
We don't know anything about how any of this stuff works. And that was all of Act 2 was like
uncovering the entire Disney World experience from day one, day two, and most of day three in
Disney World of how do we give food? How do we live with just $100 and a target gift card
to be able to feed ourselves every single day? Is the hotel actually free? Is the Uber thing
going to work to get us from the airport to our hotel? Are our tickets real? Which genuinely,
they did not seem real the entire time until we talked to this lady and she did a whole bunch
of stuff on a computer. I don't think our tickets were real until that happened. It was kind of
uncovering like in the first act was this heist film trying to be a get something for free.
Act 2 was like, okay, we got this thing for free, but it's not really what we thought it was.
You know, we thought it was going to be a little bit lame. We thought we were too old for it.
Well, and we spent all this time trying to get to Disney World on just points and miles that
that we really were not prepared for the actual journey of going to Disney World,
which is not too dissimilar to our actual travels, international travel sometimes.
That's exactly how it works. So the act to like a downturn, not that there's a downturn really
and like a video about Disney World was just us realizing that we're going to be able to do
a lot less with this entire experience than we thought because we were spending so much time
in lines and also really uncovering the true cost for people who weren't doing this for free.
Just how expensive Disney World was for your average person who's going, we're talking easily.
People were spending $10 to $20,000 to bring them and their kids there for a week. That was
like the normal and just like seeing like, whoa, maybe this like type of vacation is not for
everybody and it shouldn't just be the default thought. We don't want to give it away too much,
but I think act three is when we start to understand and empathize with
the people that go to Disney like why it's worth it and love Disney so much because we
definitely got caught up into all of it and we felt the Disney magic and we understood why people
save so much to bring their kids to Disney World and Disneyland without really like telling the
whole story. I think I look back at this video with fondness, not just for the journey of us
like going through the process of filming this in a different way, but also going to Disney World
and at the end looking back and saying like, I totally get why people do this. I totally get why
people do things hard mode for the sake of other people for bringing their kids to Disney
and for the fun of it. Like it takes a lot. It's expensive and it takes a lot of planning,
but like the fun of it is what makes it all worth it.
For sure. And I think it's worth noting that we did not know where act two and act three of this
movie we're going to land before we actually left for Disney World. We had an idea. We knew that by
the time we left that we didn't know really anything about Disney World because we were
just so busy filming the thing. This video could have very well ended up at the end of it being
like we don't think we don't think Disney's worth it for anyone anymore. It's gone. It's way. It's
lost all of its magic, all the charm, but that just wasn't the case. We had a blast while we were
filming it. I cried tears of joy every single day. Got to feel like a little kid again. Yeah. The
first time in a really long time. There is some of that Disney magic. It's still there. And a lot
of that truly was the perfect analogy for like why we made this video to begin with. Yeah. We
didn't think that it was going to be that analogy. Like I honestly just thought we were going to make
this fun thing and either era was going to do well or flop, but we just wanted to try it.
I did not think that the end of the Disney World experience was going to be, I don't know,
paralleling what I think, what I imagine a lot of parents do to plan and save for their kids trip
to Disney. A lot of work. It's a lot of work, but the joy and the fun that comes from it is worth
it. And I remember thinking at the time when we were filming this, like, is it going to be worth
it? Are we, we're going through all of this, but like the, the filming process, all of it was
challenging and new and different and so much fun and all of it was worth it. Let's walk through,
let's like walk through what we did. Yeah. So we started the entire thing from start to finish,
which for us is just like by the biggest sticky notes you can possibly get, get a big window,
like this one right here and just write down every single scene that you can think of in your head
that needs to exist in the video. So for us, that was like, okay, we need to have this part where we
like try to dig in and then we need to have this part where like we get taken by the police and
then this part where we actually figure out the hotels and how we can get those for free and then
this part where we can figure out the flights and now we get those free and every single idea,
we're talking like hundreds of sticky notes and then we take some of those and start putting them
in order and then some of them don't fit and let's just go into like the ideas with no home,
basically the idea graveyard and. And we kind of just did this in the span of like,
actually we started, we started brainstorming actually for this while we were walking our
third Camino, which we did and did not film this last summer, this last spring, we were walking
and we kind of on one of those days, we just like wrote down all of our ideas for this Disney video
and then started putting it together on these sticky notes and that's kind of where it began,
just this like big brainstorming session where everything fits, what things look like, because
we knew we weren't going to be like in the typical, like usually our videos are very spontaneous,
like film everything as we go, very shaky shots. This one is a lot more intentional setup, right?
Like you have to set up each shot, set up the tripod, make sure everything's framed nicely.
So there was a lot more intentionality behind every single scene.
Yeah, yeah. And then once we figured out kind of roughly what order the scenes were going to go in
and where the act breaks would happen, like between act one, two and three, then we start like
crudely, terribly drawing approximately how we want these things to look. So as we're booking
this thing, it'd be great if like it was the two of us looking at each other. As we're actually
booking, we have this big thing across the booking zone and we like drew that, or we draw like me
digging in the backyard and then my dad tackling me and these like really crude drawings
to help us think through and make sure that we're like both trying to make the same movie at the
same time and then to ensure that we're not overshooting and that we're actually like getting
the stuff that we need on camera, because for a lot of these things, especially in this Disney
video, we're only going to have like one shot at actually filming them. And scenes like the car
rolling up, stopping, getting out and giving us like the mail for that day that we're going to
run inside with it. Your dad, the true MVP, Oscar, he's not only a mailman, he's a security guard.
So that was basically our process for making this video. And I think that that's the way
most people who do this kind of like scripted style of kind of even though this wasn't.
You mean actual filmmakers, they probably have a lot more to that process. But yeah,
generally it was a lot more scripted, a lot more planning in advance. But the actual Disney part
of it still was very, very spontaneous and very just like, let's see how this goes, which actually
ended up being way more fun than we anticipated. But the best part, the best part by far was making
that crazy arts and crafts whiteboard with all the weird conspiracy theories on it.
Oh my gosh, it was so good. It felt good to be able to put that kind of like love
into the video to be able to have time to make that, set it up and actually use it as a prop.
Yeah, there were moments where I was like printing out all these different, all these different like
things like looking on Reddit, what's the best shovel or what's the, what's the, what's this
campsite like or, oh, we got to save this coupon. And there are some hidden gems. If you look at
that, that board, just like one liners that would come to my mind. I was like, if I write this in
big red marker, it's going to make sense, right? It's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Just to feel
that kind of like mania or that energy. When you want something so badly. And there's only one way
to get it. And it's always the most ridiculous way. And that's what we were shooting for was that,
that kind of energy throughout this whole thing. The dancing parts, obviously super fun, which we
actually do every time that we get a new credit card. And I think just being able to challenge
ourselves creatively, making something in a style that we've never made before. I think that was my
favorite part of this by far of this entire process. Yeah, it was just, it was so much fun to be able
to do something with this much intention and to have such a clear vision of exactly the film we
wanted to make where usually we're just like taking whatever the world gives us. We're just out there
wandering around, hoping for cool stuff to happen. And it was nice to be able to like dip our toes
a little bit into like filmmaking and acting and all these other things that are adjacent to what
we do, but not really, not really in our core competencies. Yeah. It's a little bit of like a
mix of scripted, not scripted, acting silly. It's just downright silly, right? Obviously,
this whole video is meant to be like a joke, right? Like it's a joke about how expensive
Disney World has gotten. It's a joke about how ridiculous it is that Americans can sign up for
credit cards so easily and party when they do get pre-approved. All of this is supposed to be a joke,
but in a way that I think had heart too. So that's what made it really fun. Yeah. And thinking about
all of that was something really different than our usual, which is like just go out into the world
and let the world surprise us. Yeah. Yeah. Just totally different process. I think some of the
parts that were a bit more challenging are that we didn't like as much. I mean, definitely standing
in line at Disney World. We spent so much time standing in line. Yeah. Half of our day spent
filming was just waiting to get on the next ride or get on the next ride. And it felt,
it felt inefficient for the way that we normally make movies and definitely for the way that we
normally travel. But I don't know. The rides were a lot of the times worth it. Not always. I'd say
some of the rides were pretty lame. And it felt like we just weren't able to maximize our time
while we were doing it. This is exactly why we had hesitation to make this because Disney is not
like our go-to either when we travel. And we had a feeling that the audience also wouldn't resonate
well with Disney, but there is some truth to it. Like it is a place that we wouldn't choose all the
time. It's like super expensive. It's very commercialized. There's a ton of people. And there's,
it's just, you can't, it's hard to do on a budget. It's really hard to do on a budget.
And also, do you ever want to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich again?
That is one of my least favorite things. Actually, I don't think I want to see one for months.
It's PB and J sandwiches, but also just like looking back at what we had to do to get to that
point of like making sure that we're eating no more than $100 worth of food from Target for four
days. It was a challenge. And that props to the people that make it happen, not only for themselves,
but also for families just watching that or that having to cut spam, having to cut cold spam
on a plate with not even a knife, just a fork, the blunt end of a fork.
Not a proud moment.
It was so disgusting. And it was one of those moments where I was like, I don't think,
I don't think we should eat like this again. We need to do better. We need to do better.
Even if we got to bump the budget up a little bit on the things we make, we can't, this is,
we're so ashamed at the end of that.
But I also think that even though this was primarily the main premise of the whole thing,
points and credit cards, using that to your benefit, there is always something that's a
little bit hard for me in showing videos like this. I don't know if it's because it's very
exclusive. Figuring out credit cards, points and miles has been vastly helpful for us,
vastly helpful for us. When we're traveling, we want to stay in really cool places at hotels
and use them to offset costs for flights. But knowing that credit card points is only available
mostly to US citizens. And it has to be done in a very specific way, right?
You like that disclaimer while jokingly done is very true. We never want to like
encourage people to do this unless they try to actually do it responsibly.
But it's hard. Yeah, that one was a challenge for me.
Yeah, it definitely felt like we were making this for a relatively small subset of people
who could actually do this, which is why we wanted to make it as fun as it was,
anybody could enjoy it. But still the whole time, it felt a little,
it just felt a little off that it wasn't truly attainable for everyone who was watching.
That feels different than what we normally make.
Where we try to make it to be like the largest swath of people could have this experience
in as easy of a method as possible. This one definitely felt a little too targeted
for what we were making. And I think we talk about this in the actual video,
and we make a joke of it, but truly spending that many points on Disney World
Or on like an Uber gift card. Or that Hunter Roller target gift card
was truly heart wrenching because it is genuinely not a good deal.
But some people, that's how they travel.
Yeah, this was the only way to accomplish this mission.
But I think this Disney video was so fun to make.
Definitely like a little sad that it didn't do all the well,
so we don't get to make more of them in the future, right?
But it was a blast. And we both got very nostalgic and weepy at the end of this.
And being able to like reconnect with what it felt like to be a little kid,
even if just for a little brief moment made the entire thing worth making.
And I think that was really the surprising lesson truly out of the entire process, right?
In YouTube land, we like, there's like this idea that once you found something that works
quote unquote on the internet, you stick to it.
Don't change it under any circumstances. Be afraid to do anything different.
Don't experiment. Don't try anything new.
Stick with what works because that's what makes the audience happy.
That's what makes the algorithm happy.
But I think out of all of this, I mean, yes, it wasn't ROI positive.
And it's not hitting big numbers on YouTube.
But it is one of those things that I look back.
And I think I'm really glad that we tried it and I'm really glad that we did it.
And that we made something that we enjoyed making.
Yeah. And I'm so proud of the thing that we made.
And it seems like, I don't know, the people who are watching it seem to really like it.
And that's all that really matters to me.
Yeah. We would love to know your thoughts.
Like if you guys liked this four days in Disney World on a budget video,
let us know in the comments.
If you didn't let us know and let us know why.
But if you have other ideas, we'd love to hear from you.
We're going to keep, you know, keep making our usual three days and two weeks
in because those are always a blast for us.
But maybe we'll have one or two weird ones in the future.
For sure. We're not going to stop experimenting.
For sure. Okay. Bye.
See ya.