second guessing gift card buying...

[eyehartdisney]

I don't know if they still do this, but if you have a disney store near your house, they'll combine all your gift cards onto one.

 

[shadeauxe]

What is the discount on the BJs cards?

 

[sam1998]

I have never had any problems with the gift cards working or with CM's being bothered by them. We used this last time to pay off our trip and are doing the same this time. We buy them at Kroger when they run the 4x fuel points campaign (a $250 gift card gets you $1 off per gallon of gas up to 35 gallons). It comes out to be the same as getting 14% off the gift cards since I'd have to buy gas anyway. We buy them in increments of $500 to pay off the trip, and then take multiple cards with $50-$100 on them to the parks to use. No trouble whatsoever!

 

[agavegirl1]

I am also interested in the App that was mentioned. I have 1-$100 card, 16-$50 cards and my Disney Rewards Card to keep track of. Like the Sharpie idea as well as charging on the band and paying at the desk. Although I like the anonymity of the cards at point of purchase. I will be using these as my "dining plan".

 

[Jrsy Boy]

Joining in with the other PPs who suggest charging everything to your room and then paying with the GCs at the front desk.

• I have never had an issue with doing this at the front desk, and in fact I think they are quite used to it. That said, I do try to go at "slow" times when there is not a line of people checking in. (I usually go in the late afternoon or evening).
• I go down every few days to reduce the balance, and they will then print an itemized receipt that shows all charges up to that minute (including the credits for the GCs so I can finally toss the receipts!) which is great for me to keep a handle on what we are spending.
  [*]Be sure to do this NLT the evening prior to departure or else they will automatically charge through to whatever credit card you have on file sometime overnight. (do not wait until the morning of your departure)
• This eliminates the need to carry (and potentially misplace) the GCs around with you -- keep them locked in the room safe! Also nice because you can apply the whole GC and not worry that there's a small remaining balance (like might happen if you are using it to pay for a meal or gifts, etc.) to then keep track of and apply at another purchase.
• The Target near me only sells $25 and $50 GCs for Disney, but our BJs has $100 ones (also with discount), which I find a little more convenient. Just FYI in case you belong to BJs.

Have a great trip!!

3:30am...I found this out when I asked if it would be OK to settle up with GCs before check out at 11am...then I headed down at 12:30am with my GCs because we'd just returned from MK. The CM who ran my GCs said she's had people come down with a stack of them that they'd been saving up since they'd booked their trip.

 

[maybeecatlady]

I am also interested in the App that was mentioned. I have 1-$100 card, 16-$50 cards and my Disney Rewards Card to keep track of. Like the Sharpie idea as well as charging on the band and paying at the desk. Although I like the anonymity of the cards at point of purchase. I will be using these as my "dining plan".

We are also using ours as our "dining plan"!!

 

[Sparkie]

I was new to Disney gift cards our last trip. But I have decided it really is the best way to go for our family.

Between 3 families for a 10 day trip we purchased roughly 3,000 in gift cards to cover meals, tips, souvenirs. I purchased the cards from Target using my red card. I numbered or used an alphabetical code on each families cards. We charged every thing to the room and I went down with the cards and paid off balances every couple of days. This trip we also changed resorts 4 times and never had a problem using our cards (by the way, I sampled resort hopping to try multiple resorts during our stay and this is not for us)

I went back and forth about purchasing the dining plan... and decided to use the TIW card and my gift cards as our dining plan. I had estimated what our meals would cost and came out about even. So the gift cards were our pre-paid dining plan.

When settling a balance at Bay Lake, the CM told me that with mydisneyexperience that guest would soon be able to load their gift cards to their reservation ahead of time and the balance would just be deducted as you go thus foregoing the need to go to the desk daily.

 

[Missymouse18]

I took over $200 in GC last month to WDW. I did not encounter one single problem. I will now use GCs every trip!!

 

[michsig]

This is a good idea! I think I will be trying this for my upcoming trip. I've used gift cards given to me as gifts or the gift card from the Disney Rewards Visa, but never actually thought of buying a bunch myself.

 

[SUSIEQ]

It is worth the savings for us, especially if I have an extra 5% off from prescription rewards.

Just FYI, the 5% pharmacy rewards don't work on the Disney gift cards anymore.

 

[Mrs. Ciz]

We pay off our entire trip with gift cards because we save a ton in gas perks. We by $500 gift cards at a time and pay the balance. But, you have to save them until the trip is over just in case. They can't refund you in any way except for putting it back on the gift card if you would ever need to.

Same with us! Buying the cards when Kroger has their 4xs fuel points promo and paying for them with my Disney Visa gives us a 15% discount!

We are also using ours as our "dining plan"!!

Yep! The cards are our dining plan too! Didn't have a problem at any of the restaurants in the parks, at the resorts or in DTD.

 

[AngiTN]

Another idea, for those that care to do it, you can load them in to the Disney Vacation Account. That's what I've done for this upcoming trip. It has been super easy to use to pay for our room, tickets, and even Harambe Night tickets. I have requested the bonus (I'll be getting back $80 from Disney) and the balance to be sent on a Gift Card. The caveat to the account is you are limited to a $500 card but after using the account to pay for everything that's not been a problem for me. I'll bring the rest to give to the resort to pay on our room charges. Now that Target has eliminated the Pharm reward the Vacation Account bonus was the best deal I could find, combined with the regular Red card bonus. The one store we have that does fuel perks does not sell Disney gift cards.

Done this for 4 trips now and need to go buy some for our trip in 2 weeks. Never had a problem and no CMs ever acted bothered by them. The only caveat is they rarely work when I swipe them and the CM usually ends up having to swipe at the register. It is worth the savings for us, especially if I have an extra 5% off from prescription rewards. There is a very handy iPhone app that will track your GC balances for you, too.

Thanks for the idea about the app.

 

[Bertnie20]

Just FYI, the 5% pharmacy rewards don't work on the Disney gift cards anymore.

I do it at king soopers for gas points, they often do 4x the points so I get a lot off in gas we do this to pay off our trip

 

[linbein]

Ar the gift cards you can buy on the Disney Store's website the same as the Play, Stay, Shop, Dine ones you can buy at the store? Or are they only good for Disney merchandise?

 

[kgoodb00]

I haven't had any issues with the GC's either but will say that instead of lugging cards around the parks with me, I charge everything I can to our room and each day I go down to the front desk and pay my charges off using the cards. I plan to do the same thing for our upcoming trip in August .

Exactly what I did last June. I think I bought about $1500 in gift cards from Target using my RedCard. So I saved $75. I just charged everything to the room and then paid it off every day or every other day. I also downloaded the Disney gift card app (I am not sure if the app still exists...) and entered and labeled each gift card so I could keep track of the balances. It worked out well and I will definitely be doing it again next year!!

 

[KimK2006]

I had no problem using multiple gift cards last week....

 

[bluezy]

I find gift cards to be an easy way for us to save for our Disney trips as well (along with the change jar that collects all of our loose change and some $5 bills -- that usually accumulates about $700 over a 2 year period). Like others have said, it's somehow "easier" to buy a (discounted) $25 or $50 gift card at BJ's than to transfer that amount of money to our vacation savings account. I do what others have said and basically charge everything to our room and then go to the front desk every few days to pay down the balance with gift cards. I also keep a few gift cards aside to give to our teenagers if they decide to go off on their own at the parks. I don't trust a 15 yo with full charging privileges on their ticket/MB so I'll just hand them a $25 gift card (or 2) so they can buy any meals or snacks they might need while they're off on their own.

And a word of warning about waiting until the last night of your trip to pay off your balance with gift cards (just our experience). We stayed at AoA last summer. There were 6 of us in our room (3 adults, 2 teens, and an 8 yo). We didn't use a dining plan on this trip so charging all of our meals and snacks to the room added up quickly. We had a credit card on file so the balance would automatically be charged once we hit the $500 limit. I knew that would happen and it wasn't a problem. I was keeping a rough running total of our expenditures and when we got to about $450, I stopped at the front desk to pay the balance down with gift cards. However, the balance had already been charged to our card because the front desk at AoA (at least at that time, not sure if it's still true) runs a report twice a day (late morning and evening) of room charge balances and if someone is getting close to the $500 mark, they will run the credit card through so that the guests aren't out in the parks somewhere trying to charge something back to the room and getting denied because they hit the $500 limit. It wasn't a big deal as I knew I didn't have enough gift cards to pay for our week's worth of charges anyway. So from that point on I just made sure to go back to the front desk by the time we were approaching $400. On our last night, I went to the front desk to pay down the balance with our last few gift cards and even though it was only about 6:00 and our room balance was barely over $350, it had already been charged to the credit card -- most likely because the CM reading over the printout saw how quickly we accrued charges and didn't want us to hit the limit. No big deal, that last ~$70 worth of gift cards just made the trip back home and were the start of the next Disney trip fund.

 

[itchin2go]

I have never had a problem, nor any annoyed CMs. I will say that we checked to see if there was a Disney Visa card discount before we used gift cards on our last trip. I'd rather have the 10% discount, and save the gift cards for somewhere else.

 

[karasmom]

Wow!

Thanks everyone. If I would have not started to buy them - these responses would make me buy gift cards

I will also consider just charging to the room and paying it off once a day.

I am however afraid that I will get major sticker shock about how much we spend every day if I have to pay it all at once lol

 

[Kat913]

Anyone know the discount at Bjs for the disney gift cards & what denominations they sell them in?