Would love some feedback on using disney giftcards to pay off a trip!

[stephyamber]

Has anyone ever bought disney gift cards from your local supermarket to gain fuel perks and then used them to pay for your disney trip? Does it work? How did You go about doing it?

 

[3Gsandme]

We did use Disney gift cards to pay for our trip. We didn't go through the grocery store because we has a team member friend at Target willing to stack up her team member and red card discount for us. It gave us the most savings.

You can enter the card numbers one at a time on-line. Dh ended up calling in and doing it over the phone. It was time consuming but worked fine.

 

[umwhat]

Has anyone ever bought disney gift cards from your local supermarket to gain fuel perks and then used them to pay for your disney trip? Does it work? How did You go about doing it?

Yep! I've done it. Once you book, there's a spot on the website to make payments. You put in each card one by one. It's cumbersome but it's not really a big deal.

You can also call all of the gift cards in to make a payment on your vacation. It's a decent way to do it. We usually buy a few gift cards whenever we can. Helps to offset the huge expense by doing it little by little. Plus, gas points!

 

[georgina]

Yes, I have done it. Sometimes Giant Eagle has double fuel perks so that adds up to about 12% back per card if you can get 30 gallons of gas at a time. Last month they had a special - buy $100 worth of Disney GC, get a $10 off your next shopping trip coupon. I think I went 6 times during the two weeks they offered that! (It was one coupon per transaction)

To redeem, I called Disney a few days before our last trip and gave the card numbers over the phone. I also took the actual cards with me just in case, but I didn't need them. The higher denomination you can get, the less painful it is to call them in.

 

[EMAW_KSU]

That is how we paid for our last trip. The cards we used you could set the amount on them when purchased so there were not as many payments needed. We also charged to our room and used gift cards to pay for that. The extra credit that was left at the end of our stay was credited to the card on file.

 

[havaneselover]

This is how I pay for my Disney cruises. Probably the only way I can afford them. I buy them at Kroger when they run 4x points. The only bad thing for me is that I use a travel agent and I hate to inconvenience her, but it's almost a 20% savings for me.

With all my discounts (on board booking, using a travel agent, buying gift cards at Kroger) I'm getting about 33% off.

 

[Cesarlovesdisney12]

I recently learned about this way to pay for Disney and it saved us $193 for thsi trip! I went thru SAMs Club and they had the 3-pack $150 gift card for $142.50 & when buying about 26 packs it saves money! Target also offers 5% off w/ the red card.

 

[musicmantrs]

For our last trip we had a lot of gift cards and we pre payed some and then kept what we estimated we would need for expenses in the parks. This helped me because I'm really cheap and we felt like we "needed" to use the gift cards and splurged on quite a few items that we wouldn't have paid for. We put it all on the Key to the World cards and paid at the front desk on the last day.

 

[ceecee]

I just did it! We got 4X rewards at Kroger in March and got $500 cards x 3 which is 6 fill ups at $1.00 off, then we did it again April 2 and got rewards for May (the next month). Then for the balance and I still can't believe we did this....we went to Target and got 5% back which equaled $125.00 savings, it took 40 minutes to enter them DH read the #'s and I typed them in $50 at a time. It was kind of fun and worth the $ for the time it took.

 

[tikitorie]

I've done this twice using gift cards from my grocery store to earn gas points and also buying gift cards through my children's school scrip program to be my fundraising quota. I also buy extra for spending while I'm at Disney...works great

 

[figment3258]

We are doing this for our upcoming trip. We save up the money to to bjs buy the 100$ gift cards for 96$ and put it on our disney visa getting points and savings then just call and add them over the phone super easy and it's a nice savings

 

[Buzzsgramma]

About once a month I would buy a $100 Disney gift card for ourselves,also grown kids know for me at least...Christmas, birthday etc...I like to receive same gift cards....
This usually pays for most all our meals .....since we are DVC we dont need them for the hotel...
I generally go down to the desk by ck in the night before and pay with all the gift cards on our bill...

 

[epsmith921]

I did this on a room only reservation last year. I did have to call to enter the numbers and they were from target with the 5% red card discount, but it was relatively easy. I just bought a few at a time and would call them in. I did keep all the cards and bring them with me just in case but didn't need them.

I even gave one at checkin and it was no trouble. It was a bit manual at the club level checkin but my husband had a beer, I had a diet coke, so we were very happy campers at checkin!

I absolutely plan to do this again. It also makes it easy for family to help by giving you a Disney gift card for the trip! We were extremely grateful to be on the receiving end of a few of those!

 

[stephyamber]

Sounds like it worked! I believe our local grocery store will most likely run the 4xs discount in May so I'm going to be on the lookout! Thanks everyone!

 

[abmitch01]

is it worth dong if you stay outside the world and buy your tickets from Undercover Tourist? I guess you would mostly use them in the world for dining?

 

[feezle]

We have done it many times in the past. We drive, so having that first full tank free is great (not to mention the extra 11 or so gallons in gas cans at home). We are going in October and staying offsite. We will be buying our tickets through Disney though and getting a few hundred extra in gift cards for meals and souvenirs. I'm waiting for either double fuel perks or the $10 back on $100 deal. Between that and my 6% back on my AMEX I will be saving quite a bit.

 

[usd2bmd]

Please make sure you keep the gift cards. If for any reason you have to cancel the trip the money will be refunded to the gift cards.

 

[ceecee]

Please make sure you keep the gift cards. If for any reason you have to cancel the trip the money will be refunded to the gift cards.

I wondered about that. I think I may have thrown the first one away.

 

[Patience]

I did it last year. I kept all of the cards until we returned. Our trip cost $2000 so we saved $100 by using our red card to buy Disney cards. Very easy. In 2011, I bought Disney cards at Sam's. That was the year they gave a $10 gift card to the Disney Store with every $100 Disney gift card. I used the Disney Store gift cards to buy a few things for the trip and for Christmas that year. That was a nice promotion!

 

[seidelhd]

I just got back from Kroger and bought $2000 in Disney gift cards to help pay for our cruise this summer. They are doing the 4X promotion through 4/22. Unfortunately, I don't think we fill out our cars enough to take advantage of the $1.00/gallon x 8 that we now qualify for.

I also paid for the gift cards with my AMEX Blue Cash card, which gives me an extra 6% off grocery store purchases (I hope gift cards are not excluded).

I'd like to be able to combine the 4 cards onto one, but have been seeing mixed messages about the ability to do this.