Advice on combining gift cards

[EmmyL258]

Just wondering how people are combining gift cards to use on an upcoming vacation.

I know the disney savings account is terrible so I wasn't planning on using that.

I have about $1000 in individual cards, plus over $200 in disney rewards from my credit card. I'm planning to use the cards to pay for food and souvenirs in the parks. Should I combine them all into one card? or a few different ones?

I know that you apply the gift cards to your room account at the end of your stay if you charge to the room, but I wasn't sure if it made sense to combine them and then just use the card in the parks to pay for things or divide them into maybe a few cards?

thoughts? TIA!

 

[jknewberry]

There is a website www.disneygiftcard.com where you can load up to 5 gift cards and transfer balances between them. I just started combining cards today, it was easy! Just be aware that you can only have 5 cards on there, so delete the ones that have no balance and leave at least one slot for adding to the others, if that makes sense.

I am using it to create at $1000 gift cards to use to pay for dining or tickets for our trip. We are getting the dining plan, then I plan to use it to pay off any charges to our hotel room (staying on site). That way I can charge to my Magic Band and keep the gift card in the hotel room.

Kelly

 

[KSL]

This is new to me, so bear with me....
Let's say I want to buy park tickets for my family totaling over $1000. If I can only combine smaller gift cards (up to 5, sounds like) to a maximum of $1000, and if you can only enter one gift card per ticket purchase transaction, does that mean the best I can do with gift cards is to apply the one $1000 combined gift card to my purchase and have to pay the balance another way (credit card)? That doesn't seem right... I feel like I'm missing something...
Help!

 

[KSL]

Oh, and to reply to the OP, on a previous trip I had about 15 $100 gift cards and what I did was keep them in the safe in the room while charging everything to my MagicBand. Then I went to the front desk a couple of times throughout our stay to apply a few at a time. I always picked a time that was not busy, and the CMs were always very happy to apply as many cards as I had (I think I did 5 one time and was sheepish about processing that many but the lobby was deserted and they were happy to do it). Personally, I'd rather not carry one gift card with a huge amount of money on it in the parks with me, but that's just me. I know for some, keeping track of 15 small cards is equally stressful!

 

[jknewberry]

The number of gift cards you use to combine to get the $1000 is unlimited, you just have to delete the ones you deplete (have $0 balance). As a precaution, I am saving the gift cards with $0 balance. You can only have 5 saved gift cards at a time, so for me I will probably delete a card once it gets to $1000 since there is nothing else I can do with it at that point, until it is time to use it. When we go on our trip, I will add the $1000 cards back into the system so that I can easily track their balance each night from my room (bringing a laptop) or check on them using my smart phone if needed.

We are planning on renting DVC points and getting the dining plan, so to buy the dining plan I will have to hand over my credit card number or up to four (it might be 6) gift card numbers for the DVC owner to make the dining plan purchase. Right now, the plan we want is about $2025, so I would have two $1000 cards to give them, plus a smaller once to make up the rest of the balance. So if I give them a third one with $100 on it, have them use those to pay, then I will transfer the balance remaining off of the $100 gift card back over to one of my other cards, and then not use any of those 3 cards again. I doubt a DVC member renting out their points through a broker would steal from me using the gift cards, but even so that would minimize my risk.

Hmm... I am not sure about only using one to buy tickets. I will have to look into that as well. Maybe you would have to buy the tickets in more than one transaction? Split them up so that nothing is over $1000 and then just add them to your account later to link them? I might end up buying tickets from an outside vendor like Undercover Tourist.

 

[jknewberry]

I just chatted with a cast member about buying tickets using gift cards, she said you can only use one at a time. She said to buy some tickets that were less than $1000 in one transaction then go back through with another transaction to buy the rest.

 

[robinb]

I've brought multiple gift cards with me, put them in the safe and pulled some out daily for purchases. That was before MBs. Using MBs just seems easier to me so last vacation I combined the gift cards and paid my bill the night before check out.

When I combined I would name the one to add 'temp' and then delete it as soon as I combined it.

Fwiw I was able to use multiple gift cards on park passes but it's easier for the CMs to combine them.

 

[Marionnette]

I just chatted with a cast member about buying tickets using gift cards, she said you can only use one at a time. She said to buy some tickets that were less than $1000 in one transaction then go back through with another transaction to buy the rest.

Yup!

To add to that, combine your GCs to up to $1K on a single GC. Buy as many tickets as you can with that GC, up to the total number that you need. You'll end up with a small balance on that GC.

Now, go back to disneygiftcard .com and combine that balance onto another GC, along with enough GCs to cover the cost of your next ticket purchase (up to a max of $1). Then use then newly combined GC to buy more Disney tickets.

Do the purchase tickets/combine GCs/purchase tickets thing until you've bought all of the tickets you need.

 

[supersnoop]

I just chatted with a cast member about buying tickets using gift cards, she said you can only use one at a time. She said to buy some tickets that were less than $1000 in one transaction then go back through with another transaction to buy the rest.

She was wrong. The front line folks can accept up to 4 gift cards in a single transaction, and if you escalate to the actual ticketing folks, they can take an unlimited number of gift cards.

 

[jknewberry]

@supersnoop By 'front line folks' do you mean in person? I am not sure about OP but I am planning on buying online ahead of time, but I was also wondering about calling in and doing it in one transaction. Not too big of a deal to me, it just seems like an odd rule to have. Thanks for the info!

 

[Erin D]

I went through this yesterday and just to clarify if you purchase tickets ONLINE you can only use 1 GC and 1 additional form of payment. I had 4 $250 GCs that I wanted to use to purchase park tickets so I combined them onto one GC using www.disneygiftcard.com and then did my purchase online. It will apply whatever amount is on the GC towards your purchase and if there is a balance you input your CC info to cover it. If you purchase over the phone or in person you can use more than one GC.

I was very happy to hear about this process when I called and talked to a CM yesterday because last month on our trip we had 15 different cards that we took to the parks and then on a cruise and I had to # them in the order to use them and the amount on each in hopes of keeping track of them and not ending up with small balances on all 15.

 

[hsmamato2]

I use the old school sharpie method to keep track I have the card page open, and each gc I have gets a 'sharpie' number written on the front, then input one by one,with the nickname being the number I wrote on each physical card.(i.e. 1,2,3....)
So I currently (from last trip,zero balances) have 3 cards I like to use for general parks usage-(one for each fam member) To add more cards so my "use" cards have a balance for next trip (yes,it's nickname is literally "use" "mom" "dad" "etc",online and in sharpie)
I add a card, then transfer that amount to the card of my choice(one of my 3) and then delete it. ( online delete of physical card #-since you can only have 5 cards in your acct. at a time)
repeat until all your cards are in the acct,(in my case,on one of my 3 "use" cards)
then ALL cards go in a file cabinet,in a clearly marked envelope(sharpie also lol) until the balance has been drained,with no chance of any refund activity happening (in my case,after trip is all done,as I use them for food,etc while on trip)
I like to keep the cards I will currently be USING on the web page, b/c it does a GREAT job of keeping track of purchases,and balance left on my card as I use it!