Sams Club GiftCards experience

[boufa]

Hey all, I tried a search but nothing recent has been posted. What kind of experience did any of you have buying the Disney Bonus giftcard at Sams Club?

I found a club that still has a significant stash of them and wanted to make sure it was worth it before I took the leap. (From what i read it was a xmas promo, I was stunned to find them still)

The offer is $100 gift card for $98.77 (ish?) and then you get a $10 Disney Store ONLY bonus gift card. (also Disneystore.com, it cannot be used anywhere in the parks, or DTD).

I figure I would need about 17 of them to pay off my trip. Thats about a $20 cash savings plus having $170 in Disney store credit. Seems like a better deal to me than the free gas from Giant Eagle. (It would work out to be 1 free tank of gas, with a max value of about $50).

Of course I would be stacking this all with a "points" credit card ($15 to best buy) or my cash back check card (about $8.50 in cash back). I don't have/want a Disney Visa.

Has anyone had success with this type of plan, or failure. Does anyone have any alternate recommendations?

 

[gymboqueenkaylee]

I bought 12 of them for my most recent trip and they worked out great actually. I was able to use the Bonus Gift Cards at my local Disney store to purchase things I needed(actually wanted hahaha) before I left for my trip. I used my gift cards to finish paying for my trip and they were super nice about having to put in all 12 cards too which I was surprised about!

 

[csharpwv]

We have a stack of them that we just bought as well - they were left over from Christmas. I think we bought 18 $100 gift cards

We are going to use them to pay off our cruise next year.

We haven't used the bonus cards yet - but I'm sure we will!

 

[boufa]

My wife's concern is "What do we do with $170 in gift cards to The Disney Store?" Really? We are going to spend nearly $2000 on a Disney Vacation with 2 little girls (5 and 8), and we couldn't find $170 worth of stuff at the Disney store?

Ultimately it sounds like the biggest bonus we can get for paying for our trip.

We may end up with a couple of extra to pay down out KTTW card balance at the end of the trip.

 

[gymboqueenkaylee]

Use some of them to buy things like t shirts and stuff before you go. Save the rest for some other time like Christmas or to buy birthday gifts for your kids friends when they go to parties. Just a suggestion.

 

[boufa]

Use some of them to buy things like t shirts and stuff before you go. Save the rest for some other time like Christmas or to buy birthday gifts for your kids friends when they go to parties. Just a suggestion.

I only had to say 2 things, and that will eat up about 1/3rd of it.... Lion King on DVD and Cars 2 (eventually) on DVD.

I forgot about Dumbo!... and the Fox and the Hound... maybe $170 in credit won't be enough!

 

[mrseace711]

How long is this offer good for to get the $10 gc back? We still have about $800 left to pay on our trip and $80 in gift cards PLUS saving a few bucks makes this one awesome deal =/ I wish I had known about this from the beginning though $200 in GC could have gotten us alot of extra stuff we do not need but want

 

[boufa]

How long is this offer good for to get the $10 gc back? We still have about $800 left to pay on our trip and $80 in gift cards PLUS saving a few bucks makes this one awesome deal =/ I wish I had known about this from the beginning though $200 in GC could have gotten us alot of extra stuff we do not need but want

That was my initial thought, that the offer would expire. They are actually packaged together.... so its as long as supplys lasts. My local store had approx 100 of them. I would imagine the further from Disney you get the more likely to find them. The older posts from November/December said that it was a stand alone display, at this point I would imagine that they are mixed in with the regular Sams Club giftcard racks.

 

[disneymomjcs]

My wife's concern is "What do we do with $170 in gift cards to The Disney Store?" Really? We are going to spend nearly $2000 on a Disney Vacation with 2 little girls (5 and 8), and we couldn't find $170 worth of stuff at the Disney store?

Ultimately it sounds like the biggest bonus we can get for paying for our trip.

We may end up with a couple of extra to pay down out KTTW card balance at the end of the trip.

Spread your pixie dust: You could buy lots of t-shirts and toys and let your girls donate them to a pediatric children's ward or burn unit and make some sick kids very happy.

 

[Fire14]

That was my initial thought, that the offer would expire. They are actually packaged together.... so its as long as supplys lasts. My local store had approx 100 of them. I would imagine the further from Disney you get the more likely to find them. The older posts from November/December said that it was a stand alone display, at this point I would imagine that they are mixed in with the regular Sams Club giftcard racks.

I found them around xmas time on stand alone displ;ay and back in march/april with other gift cards.
As for using bonus gift cards, I did my Xmas shopping bday shopping for my Cars/toy story crazy nephews.

 

[PrincessSuzanne]

I wish our Sams still had them. I would love to have the bonus cards, because there is a Dooney and Bourke purse I wold love too get my hands on.

Suzanne

 

[starry_solo]

We first bought 4 or 5, right after Christmas. Used the Disneystore bonus cards right away and had 3 of the regular cards left with varying amounts. Then bought 9 more so sis & I could upgrade our DLR annual passes before the prices increased. Used 2 of the varying amount cards and 8 of the new ones. Finished up the last of the cards we got at Christmas and am on the last $100 for Sam's.

But then, when Albertson's had their buy $100 of gift cards, get $20 shopping trip free, I got another $100 of Disney cards (2 $50 cards).

So, I think we should only have $200 left of Disney GC. We got to DLR at least once a month so we will probably use it fairly quickly.

 

[boufa]

Just bought mine... Best way to pay for a Disney Vacation! First the cards are only 98.87 each.. not much of a savings, but it adds up.

Second, we got the bonus card to the disneystore!

The Sams I went to (in Cleveland) said that they JUST GOT MORE IN!!!

My wife, who thought it was a bit silly, changed her mind when I described it like this.

"For our Disney Vacation when we pay for our hotel and our park tickets we get free dining, plus a extra package containing 2 autograph books, a copy of the Lion King on DVD/BR, a copy of Dumbo on DVD/BR, a copy of Cars 2 on DVD/BR, 2 personalized sets of Mickey Ears and 4 T-shirts free."

Its all in the marketing... cause that sounds like a heck of a deal.

 

[Feistygirl916]

Wow, this sounds like a great deal! I wish we had a Sams Club here in Portland! Are there any other stores that do this type of promo?

 

[HsvTeacher]

We bought some of the gift cards at Sam's for our April trip. We applied the gift cards to our KTTW account, and I used the bonus gift cards to buy a Disney Dooney & Bourke bag. Worked perfectly!

 

[kellydizfan]

I will have to ck out our Sam's Club. They were out of them the last time I was in the store. Hopefully they have more in stock. We leave in 51 days I think it is. I would apply it to my account.1

 

[nilseks]

Just wanted to point out one very important thing to keep in mind when you are buying your gift cards...if you are planning on using the cards to pay for your tickets separately from a package, you can only use ONE gift card per ticket purchase transaction. So in my case I was buying ~$900 worth of tickets, and they would only let me put one card toward the purchase, and I had to put the rest on my credit card. This is because they can only accept 2 forms of payment for tickets. I *think* it's different if you do it as a package but you might want to verify that. In my case we were using DVC points for the room. They would take as many gift cards as I wanted to use to pay for the dining plan, but again, only one toward the tickets. If you really wanted to you can purchase each ticket separately so you can use as many gift cards as you want tickets, but then you would have to pay the $5 shipping fee on each order (or pick up in person).

FORTUNATELY I had a friend who told me this in advance before I bought my gift cards so it worked out perfectly for us.

Hope I'm making sense on all this!!!

 

[starry_solo]

Really? I used 10 gift cards to pay for 2 premium annual passes at DLR last month (8 of the $100 ones and 2 others that had miscellaneous amounts on it). It may be dependent upon the cast member. However, you need to verify the amounts on the gift card first (or the cast member can do it for you) before she/he finalizes the amount and processes the order.

 

[alexandmaddie]

Just wanted to point out one very important thing to keep in mind when you are buying your gift cards...if you are planning on using the cards to pay for your tickets separately from a package, you can only use ONE gift card per ticket purchase transaction. So in my case I was buying ~$900 worth of tickets, and they would only let me put one card toward the purchase, and I had to put the rest on my credit card. This is because they can only accept 2 forms of payment for tickets. I *think* it's different if you do it as a package but you might want to verify that. In my case we were using DVC points for the room. They would take as many gift cards as I wanted to use to pay for the dining plan, but again, only one toward the tickets. If you really wanted to you can purchase each ticket separately so you can use as many gift cards as you want tickets, but then you would have to pay the $5 shipping fee on each order (or pick up in person).

FORTUNATELY I had a friend who told me this in advance before I bought my gift cards so it worked out perfectly for us.

Hope I'm making sense on all this!!!

I used 15 of them to pay for 5 annual passes, all in the same transaction.

 

[Kims09]

Just wanted to point out one very important thing to keep in mind when you are buying your gift cards...if you are planning on using the cards to pay for your tickets separately from a package, you can only use ONE gift card per ticket purchase transaction. So in my case I was buying ~$900 worth of tickets, and they would only let me put one card toward the purchase, and I had to put the rest on my credit card. This is because they can only accept 2 forms of payment for tickets. I *think* it's different if you do it as a package but you might want to verify that. In my case we were using DVC points for the room. They would take as many gift cards as I wanted to use to pay for the dining plan, but again, only one toward the tickets. If you really wanted to you can purchase each ticket separately so you can use as many gift cards as you want tickets, but then you would have to pay the $5 shipping fee on each order (or pick up in person).

FORTUNATELY I had a friend who told me this in advance before I bought my gift cards so it worked out perfectly for us.

Hope I'm making sense on all this!!!

Something like this happened to me as well. Unfortunately, as I get older my brain doesn't remember details like it used to. I am a (new) DVC'r as well. I purchased about $1800 worth of GCs with the intent of purchasing annual passes and the dining plan with the gift cards prior to our trip in February of 2011. Mixed in these gift cards, I had a $250 from the purchase of our DVC membership. I called DVC member services in January to purchase the dining plan and annual passes prior to our trip. I was able to purchase the dining plan in advance with the gift cards, but I wasn't able to for the annual passes. This is where my memory fails me....I believe the puchase of the dining plan was on a different system that could accept multiple gift cards. However, whatever system they utilize to sell annual passes could only accept two gift cards at a time. Member services made the suggestion of purchase the annual passes with the gift cards at the resort itself- which we did do. So it did work out that I was able to use the gift cards to purchase the annual passes.
However, I did have a couple of issues with this. First, I could visibly tell at first the cast member was little peeved at having to process that many gift cards to process our annual passes. However, she cheered up as the transaction moved forward. Second, the printed the annual pass in front of us, however the cast member said something wasn't correct with how the pass printed. This was the first time I had ever purchased an annual pass, so I'm not sure how it should have "correctly" looked. So everytime we attempted to use our annual pass the remainder of the trip for any type of discount, we were given dubious looks and the statement "well, this doesn't look like an annual pass." Each time, I had to pull out a receipt of our transaction as proof that they were annual passes. We're going again in October, so this is something that I still have to try to remedy.
A small note of caution tegarding the bonus cards, I just tried using them very recenty (on Thursday)at disneystore.com. I had a heck of a time trying to get the system to recognize them as a valid form of payment. I had to call disneystore.com, placed the order over the phone and had to read off each of the 18 different gift card numbers- it took me well over half an hour to place the order over the phone. Now I'm nervous that the transaction didn't even go through because I haven't received any type of email about the order. Sounds like another phone call is in order....