Plastic Money

[blademankev]

Has anyone used the American Express money cards advertised in First Choice, whereby you load the card with dollars and then use it instead of travellers cheques etc??

 

[alisonbestford]

We used one at Easter and were lucky enough to get one of the promotional offers through Thomas Cook - buy $2000 and get $250 free

We found it really easy to use and the only place that didn't accept it was at the Crazy Golf place at the beach

My original intention was to visit the cash machine 2 or 3 times during our trip to withdraw larger amounts of cash ( with a small withdrawal charge) but I ended up just using it as a credit card (no fees) and keeping a record of our spending as we went along.
I believe you can get an up to date balance from one of the stores - Target?
I checked the balance online every few days or so

The 'free' money far outweighed both the lower exchange rate offered by American Express and any expected fees.
We'd definitely use it again

 

[DiveLeader]

We used this on our August visit this year. We used it as a credit card and again kept a running total of our spend. I did try using the cash machines in Disney and the card would not read in the machines so if we had needed cash this may have been a problem. We did find a machine (Bank of America) close to our accommodation that would have given us cash but the machine was empty and as I had some cash and we could put the tip on the card in a resturant we did not bother. We would use one again but would also take some cash. Hope this helps.

 

[alisonbestford]

The cash machines I tended to use were outside the local Publix supermarkets

We did take cash along too though

 

[lady&tramp]

We used these last year thanks to the free $$$ promotion. You can also check your balance by phone which was very simple to do, but we did take quite a bit of cash also and just used the cards for shopping and in restaurants. I made sure to keep the receipts to i would have an idea of how much was left on it!

 

[Adz1984]

This is certainly something i will look into using, if you dont spend all the money on the card can you take the money back off it?

 

[alisonbestford]

I believe you can take it out of an ATM that takes American Express cards but you only get the lower rate - same as if you were changing back currency
Alternatively you can leave the cash on for up to 3 years (I think)
That's how it was explained to me, at the Travel Agents, anyway