Gift Cards

[peppymrscaudle]

We leave for our trip Saturday morning and we will be purchasing gift cards once we get down there to use instead of our debit/credit card. We have roughly $1000 to spend during the week. Of course I don't want to spend that much, so I'm thinking of maybe $500 in Disney gift cards and $500 in Visa. But as far as the Disney GC are concerned what is the best way to do this. I'm not sure how to do the increments-$25, $50? I definitely don't want to get all of it on one, but I don't want to carry around a boat load of GC's as well.

Any help from some of the experienced traveler's would be great!

 

[Disneyaddictz]

I just bought gift cards from target!! $900 worth and only paid $855! Target has the red card that gets you 5% off if you sign up for the target debit ( just your own checking account) I did $50 each and plan to bring a sharpie marker to notate balance. I won't be using for little purchases but for all our meals. I added up the amount I would DEF spend on our ADR and bib bidi bop boutique and just got that amount to keep it simple. Most our meals will be just under $100 so we shouldn't have too many cards with leftovers! Good luck!

Sent from my iPad using DISBoards

 

[peppymrscaudle]

That's a great idea! We live in a small town, so unfortunately there is no Target here.( Only Wal-Mart and K-Mart). I have to drive about an hour to Savannah to get to Target, so I may just wait until we get into Florida and go to one there. I have our ADR's calculated, Pirate thingy (whatever it's called). That makes perfect sense to only put the amount you need on there! Thanks!

 

[angelmom27]

I am getting my gift cards from Target too with the debit red card. I am going to have them linked to my KTTW card so I only have one card to pay with.

 

[msmama]

Do you local stores have any fuel perks for buying GC's? That may be another way to save while buying GC's.

I *think* the Visa ones cost money and I've heard stories about people having trouble using them, so I, personally, would stay away from those.

Are you staying on property? If you are, you could always charge things on your KTTW card and then pay it down ever day or so (either with GC's or with the cash you've saved).

 

[wiigirl]

I am getting my gift cards from Target too with the debit red card. I am going to have them linked to my KTTW card so I only have one card to pay with.

Smart!

 

[peppymrscaudle]

We are staying off property in a timeshare. I have a ton of fuel perks through shell. I will check it out and see if they have anything. When I say small town--I mean small. They just opened an Olive Garden and Hobby Lobby here and people think we're competing with the big city now.

 

[Best Aunt]

When I say small town--I mean small.

Do you have a Walgreens? They sell Disney gift cards - you choose the amount to put on them. Just thought I'd mention it in case you want to get some in advance.

The Target near me sells Disney gift cards, but only the $50 ones.

Not sure why you don't just want to use your debit/credit card while you're down there, but I don't think you asked for advice about that.

People get Disney gift cards at Target because they get a discount when they use their Target store credit card to make a purchase.

Sometimes Sam's Club sells the gift cards at a discount.

Some people buy the gift cards in advance, a little at a time, as a method of saving/budgeting for their trip.

Otherwise, if you're just paying dollar-for-dollar for gift cards you will spend yourself, and you're buying them during your trip, I'm not sure what the advantage is.

You can buy the pre-paid Visa cards at lots of places, like Staples and CVS, but they usually have a $4.95 fee. So you'd pay $54.95 for a $50 gift card. Watch out for service fees on that type of card, like if you don't use it fast enough. Again, it doesn't seem to me like there would be an advantage to you in doing this.

 

[QueenQueso]

I have seen the 'choose your own amount' gift cards in walgreens and Kroger, and then several places carry the designated amount ones. If you get the designated ones, I would get the highest amount you can, to cut down on the number of cards you are carrying. You can get cards at the disney online store too, but since you're leaving next week you woulnd't have time for that.

My initial plan was to buy the visa card, but it had a fee to start it (the higher the amount on the card, the higher the fees were!) plus a monthly service charge if you didn't use it right away. What I did instead was bought 2 cards at Kroger and loaded the max amount onto them, $500 each. That gave me like 4,000 fuel points too (100 points is 10 cents off of a gallon of gas, so that's awesome). If I don't spend it all while I am down there, I can always use what is left on there to buy future birthday or Christmas gifts online until it is used up, but I expect to use it all and more since we are not on the dining plan.

 

[Disneyaddictz]

Gift cards are a nice way to save over a long period of time, if you make several ADR like us it was kind of like pre paying for the meals!

 

[Claire&TheBoys]

We stayed at Shades of Green once, so we didn't have the ability to charge back to our room. I bought $100 giftcards for my husband and me with cash at one of the gift shops. We each used off our cards for quick-service meals, snacks and other purchases until the balance got down to probably less than $10 (the balance left prints on receipts). Then I took the giftcards back to a gift shop and re-loaded with more cash. It was very easy.

 

[DaniMoon]

If you have an iphone, there is a Disney Gift Card app, you input the numbers and it tracks the cards for you.

I am not sure if about other phones.

 

[Lady V]

Our kroger is giving 4X the fuel points right now on gift cards.

 

[LetsDoDisney!]

If you have an iphone, there is a Disney Gift Card app, you input the numbers and it tracks the cards for you.

I am not sure if about other phones.

Is this the actual name of the app? I'm not finding it in the Google Play Store for Android.

 

[MinnieLovesMickey]

Is this the actual name of the app? I'm not finding it in the Google Play Store for Android.

It's not available through Google Play, just iTunes.