Advice on using Disney gift cards

[Suze10860]

Please be patient with me on this one. I feel like I’m missing something here, but I’m not exactly sure what it is.

I’m a little confused about the best way to utilize Disney Gift Cards during our next stay. We were there in February of this year, and I had about $600 worth of e-cards (from Sam’s) that I used, but it wasn’t a smooth process. At the Biergarten on our first day, the server had me follow her across the restaurant to input the card info at a terminal, and then couldn’t quite figure out how to use the card directly, so I charged the meal to our room. That made me hesitant to use the e-cards directly at restaurants, so I ended up charging most meals to our room.

Which was fine, but I then spent more time than I wanted to at the front desk of the Yacht Club while e-card info was physically typed into a computer each time I wanted to pay my balance before it was charged to the credit card on file. It seems a bit old school. Not sure why they couldn’t just scan a barcode, but they couldn’t. And yes, I’ve read differing accounts on this forum, but our credit card was charged on the second day we were there to cover a couple of hundred dollars, and they told me at the front desk to come down every other day to avoid credit card charges.

If I’m understanding correctly, you can’t add Disney gift cards from Sam’s (either e-cards or physical cards) directly to your Apple Wallet. Which I think would be the easiest way to use them.

I’m just curious what others do. Get actual physical cards and hand them over at restaurants like a credit card? Can I charge meals to the room and then have the resort scan the physical card to credit my account?

I prefer to charge as little as possible to our credit card while there, so I’d like to figure out the easiest way to make use of gift cards that I’ll purchase in advance at a small discount.

Thanks to anyone who might offer some advice!

 

[Dug720]

I'd get a physical card (or more depending on how much you are going to combine) and merge the electronic cards onto it via disneygiftcard.com - you can put up to $1000 on one physical card.

 

[LoveDaisy]

I also get a physical gift card and combine/add them to physical card.

I use the cards in parks and charge some things back to the room, east to use.

If charging back to the room make sure you stop by the front desk or if staying club level by someone there to have them apply the gift cards to pay off your charges. My experience has been all charges go through when you hit the limit (this varies by hotel level) or on the last night of your stay.

 

[eticketplease]

Please be patient with me on this one. I feel like I’m missing something here, but I’m not exactly sure what it is.

I’m a little confused about the best way to utilize Disney Gift Cards during our next stay. We were there in February of this year, and I had about $600 worth of e-cards (from Sam’s) that I used, but it wasn’t a smooth process. At the Biergarten on our first day, the server had me follow her across the restaurant to input the card info at a terminal, and then couldn’t quite figure out how to use the card directly, so I charged the meal to our room. That made me hesitant to use the e-cards directly at restaurants, so I ended up charging most meals to our room.

Which was fine, but I then spent more time than I wanted to at the front desk of the Yacht Club while e-card info was physically typed into a computer each time I wanted to pay my balance before it was charged to the credit card on file. It seems a bit old school. Not sure why they couldn’t just scan a barcode, but they couldn’t. And yes, I’ve read differing accounts on this forum, but our credit card was charged on the second day we were there to cover a couple of hundred dollars, and they told me at the front desk to come down every other day to avoid credit card charges.

If I’m understanding correctly, you can’t add Disney gift cards from Sam’s (either e-cards or physical cards) directly to your Apple Wallet. Which I think would be the easiest way to use them.

I’m just curious what others do. Get actual physical cards and hand them over at restaurants like a credit card? Can I charge meals to the room and then have the resort scan the physical card to credit my account?

I prefer to charge as little as possible to our credit card while there, so I’d like to figure out the easiest way to make use of gift cards that I’ll purchase in advance at a small discount.

Thanks to anyone who might offer some advice!

First things first congrats on realizing Gift Cards acquired at a discount regardless of where acquired is the best way to pay for things at Disney!!

There are a few places in WDW that can scan the barcode on the cards you acquired from Sam's but those would mostly be retail establishments.
Hotels do not have barcode scanners and will have to type them in.
We always use our magicbands and charge everything to the room and then stop by the front desk later that evening to pay off our charges. I have gone a few nights without doing so but generally it is everynight as I don't want the hassle of them refunding to my card and then charging the gift card. Since you were staying at a deluxe property (Yacht Club) your card should not have been charged until you had a $1,500 balance on your room unless things have changed.

You can add the Disney Gift cards to your ApplePay wallet but they just show a barcode just like the one's you had at Sam's along with the numbers so this will not help at the front desk or at the multitude of table service restaurants. so when we pay at the hotel front desk we use a physical card.

Each Disney Gift Card can have a maximum of $1,000 on it.
What you would do is buy a physical card from anywhere ie use a Target Red Card to get 5% off at Target and pick up a $25 card.
Then you would visit www.disneygiftcard.com and login to your Disney Account.
At the top row near your name your will click on "My Cards"
Next you will click on Add A Card.
Gently scratch off the EAN/PIN Number from your Physical Card and enter the information to add the card.
I write a number on the card with a sharpie so I can keep track of it since I buy hundreds of cards a year and then use the card # as the card nickname but unfortunately 69 is flagged so I have to enter that as something else.
Add your other cards (You can have up to 6 at one time on the website)
Once your cards are loaded Find the name you gave the physical card and click on "Transfer Funds to this card"
You will then click up to 3 cards to combine to the physical card.
The new balance after combining will show near the top.

It will then allow you to delete the cards that have $0 on them now or leave them in your account.
Reminder you can only have 6 at once showing so if you have more to combine you would have to delete some to add more cards.
In this example I am combining 4 cards into 1 and the new balance on Random 142 would be $369.11
If I had 2 $500 cards and tried to combine with Random 142's balance of $219.11 it would not work as the cards can not have more than $1,000 on them.
When combining you can not say take $500 from Card 1 and $280.89 from Card 2's $500 balance it is all or nothing when it comes to combining.

Some notes on combining cards.
The site will only allow you to transfer so many times to one card in a day.
If you had $1,000 in $25 cards you would have 40 cards.
You would need to combine 4 cards into $100 and repeat until you were down to 10 cards.
Then you would take 4 and combine it to $400 and do once more and then you would be down to 4 cards, 2 $400 and 2 $100 cards.
You can then combine those cards into one $1,000 card.
I always leave off the one card I want to take with until the end so that I can be sure it can be transferred to.

The other thing people advise is to delete cards off the disneygiftcard website.
I have never had an issue but others have claimed their cards have been hacked after leaving them on the site.

If you did want to go the Apple Wallet method that you had asked about earlier you would follow the same steps except instead of purchasing a physical card you would need to buy a digital card that supports Apple Wallet.
The only place that sells those is www.shopdisney.com so you would just purchase a $25 card and then combine.
Again this is just like your Sam's card and has a barcode and displays the card number and Pin so the hotel and many restaurants would have to take your phone and enter the information into the register as it is not Tap to Pay.



Hope this helps.

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[TheOneWithTheTriplets]

Another vote for physical cards. I like to order low denomination direct from the Disney Store so that I can pick different designs. That way, I can easily keep notes along the lines of, " Lion king has $1000, Monsters inc has $750..."

 

[gottalovepluto]

If you are going to use gc you need to pack your patience. Things go wrong sometimes. If you want to charge to your room and not get pre-authorization holds on your cc, you will need to visit the front desk daily/bi-daily and it’s gonna be a time suck.

In your shoes I would get a physical gc (I recommend ordering a $25 one from ShopDisney, not only are the designs better but to me it feels more secure, I know no one at the store might have tampered with it). Load all gc you get to the physical card. Spend using the physical card, do not charge to your room. 95% of the time it will process fine. (The 5% when it won’t run tends to be Joffrey’s stands for me lol, but if you get a newer gc from shop Disney that has the tiny scannable bar code on the back they can scan that when their mag strip reader is down.)

As far as “charging” your cc, it’s pre-authorization holds. It appears to you your card was charged because your available credit drops and you get purchase alerts and see the charges pending- but it was not. The charging part doesn’t happen until early morning check-out day. You don’t have to pay via the cc just because they tapped it for pre-authorization, you can still pay the charges with a gc at the front desk night before check-out. But, the holds can take time to drop off your cc, thereby reducing your available credit.

 

[eticketplease]

If you want to charge to your room and not get pre-authorization holds on your cc

I didn't think there was away to avoid the holds?

It doesn't effect us but it would certainly help those folks that use debit cards instead of CC

 

[MICKIMINI]

Another vote for physical cards. I like to order low denomination direct from the Disney Store so that I can pick different designs. That way, I can easily keep notes along the lines of, " Lion king has $1000, Monsters inc has $750..."

My strategy as well. I will put away several different designs for ADR's. I have a card on a wrist band and got one for my DIL. it is really helpful at Food & Wine. I also have smaller denominations (generic Mickey) like $25 and $50 when I send someone out for snacks or SB's coffee. Stopping at the desk is a pain. In October when staying at Poly, the tab got confusing as I was charging most things to the room...first time I ever did that and the last!

I do use Disney Visa as well when I can get the 10% discount, but like others here, it feels better to prepay for a bit of your trip!

 

[eticketplease]

My strategy as well. I will put away several different designs for ADR's. I have a card on a wrist band and got one for my DIL. it is really helpful at Food & Wine. I also have smaller denominations (generic Mickey) like $25 and $50 when I send someone out for snacks or SB's coffee. Stopping at the desk is a pain. In October when staying at Poly, the tab got confusing as I was charging most things to the room...first time I ever did that and the last!

I do use Disney Visa as well when I can get the 10% discount, but like others here, it feels better to prepay for a bit of your trip!

Why was it a pain? Were you splitting costs? The portfolio shows exactly how much was charged, the time and place and who in your party paid.

That is the main reason I charge to the room so I can estimate how much will be needed for our next trip.

I also don’t have to worry about losing a card in the parks even if using one of the small wristband ones from F&W or the water parks. I also don’t have to have a bunch of small ones if DS wants a popcorn refill MB works great for that.

 

[Suze10860]

Thank you! These are the best most informative answers!.

And to the person asking why it was a pain, all I can say is because I thought it was. Everyone has their own system that works for them, right?

 

[gottalovepluto]

I didn't think there was away to avoid the holds?

It doesn't effect us but it would certainly help those folks that use debit cards instead of CC

True, my bad. You cannot avoid all the holds, you will still have the initial hold. You can avoid the extra holds by paying down your account frequently.

 

[gottalovepluto]

… to the person asking why it was a pain, all I can say is because I thought it was. Everyone has their own system that works for them, right?

For some folks this is super easy. For others, it’s a severe annoyance to their vacation. I don’t advise any of my friends to do it, the hassle is not worth it for them. I operate differently and I thrive in the hunt for a discount so it’s worth it to me. But in the case of people who want to do it but encounter issues if we can pinpoint why some part of it was an issue we can try to help them avoid that in the future.

Your main annoyance was time at the front desk so I tried to gently address that by saying you cannot get around it. You need to look at the savings and say is it worth charging to my room for this? Lots of people use gift cards and turn off room charging because it is worth using the gc in person but not worth hassling with the front desk and/or they stick to their budgets better when using the gc in person as the charges as the remaining balance is given every time you make a purchase.

 

[bluezy]

I'd definitely get a physical gift card and load the e-cards on to that/those. However, I've found that the easiest way to use any gift card is to use them to pay off our package. I usually accumulate about $2000 worth of discounted gift cards for a trip. To me, it's much easier to use those cards to pay off the package/room prior to arrival. No need to carry a card around the parks, keep track of anything, or make a trip to the front desk during our stay to pay off the room charges. I just find it simpler to only use a credit card/room charging once we're there and use our vacation savings account to pay that off when we get home. YMMV.

 

[Suze10860]

I'd definitely get a physical gift card and load the e-cards on to that/those.

So just to double confirm, if I buy 2 physical $25 gift cards from ShopDisney, I could then use the disneycard.com website to "load" them with the e-cards I get at a discount from Sam's Club, with a limit of $1,000 per card. I would then be able to use these 2 physical cards just like I'd use a credit card at restaurants and in the parks.

And of course, I'd still have the option of charging anything necessary to our room.

 

[TheOneWithTheTriplets]

So just to double confirm, if I buy 2 physical $25 gift cards from ShopDisney, I could then use the disneycard.com website to "load" them with the e-cards I get at a discount from Sam's Club, with a limit of $1,000 per card. I would then be able to use these 2 physical cards just like I'd use a credit card at restaurants and in the parks.

And of course, I'd still have the option of charging anything necessary to our room.

Yes, that would work.

A couple of comments:

Whenever I'm traveling with physical gift cards, I make sure to have the full numbers in a note on my phone. I also keep at least one previously loaded but empty card (you could print one of your sams cards) in that note and in my luggage back at the room. In the event my wallet is lost or stolen, I can just paste the number for the lost gift card onto the Disney site, load the blank card as well, and transfer the funds back to the valid card that I have in the room. If I'm traveling with more than 1k in DGC, I bring as many blanks as I have value that could need to be transferred. (I also make sure to split them up for travel, so I'll have a real and a blank and Hubby will have one of each as well. That way, if one of us misplaces our wallet, we can easily transfer to the other one's blank.)

That same note on your phone can be used if you're doing mobile order. You can just copy past from that note to your mobile order screen if you'd like to pay for those meals on your gift card.

 

[Bearval]

I also get a physical gift card and combine/add them to physical card.

I use the cards in parks and charge some things back to the room, east to use.

If charging back to the room make sure you stop by the front desk or if staying club level by someone there to have them apply the gift cards to pay off your charges. My experience has been all charges go through when you hit the limit (this varies by hotel level) or on the last night of your stay.

Just be aware that most of the newer Disney gift cards are now made of cardboard and are not water proof. Found this out the hard way a couple of years ago but was able to salvage the card. I "saved" and old plastic one that I transfer other cards onto so that it is safe from getting damaged from either the water rides or a soaking Florida pop-up rainstorm

 

[mary_jones]

Thank you all for the info

 

[eticketplease]

Just be aware that most of the newer Disney gift cards are now made of cardboard and are not water proof. Found this out the hard way a couple of years ago but was able to salvage the card. I "saved" and old plastic one that I transfer other cards onto so that it is safe from getting damaged from either the water rides or a soaking Florida pop-up rainstorm

Good point!! These also do not peel off very easily and have had reports of the pin # coming off so please scratch gently on these.

A few including myself have reported that CVS has had the plastic Disney cards so if you have a chase offer or a cc that has bonus points at grocery stores it might be a good idea to pick up a $25 card to hold on to if they are available in your area.

 

[TheOneWithTheTriplets]

Just be aware that most of the newer Disney gift cards are now made of cardboard and are not water proof. Found this out the hard way a couple of years ago but was able to salvage the card. I "saved" and old plastic one that I transfer other cards onto so that it is safe from getting damaged from either the water rides or a soaking Florida pop-up rainstorm

Good point!! These also do not peel off very easily and have had reports of the pin # coming off so please scratch gently on these.

A few including myself have reported that CVS has had the plastic Disney cards so if you have a chase offer or a cc that has bonus points at grocery stores it might be a good idea to pick up a $25 card to hold on to if they are available in your area.

As of now, the custom designs you order from the Disney Store online are still the hard plastic. I like to use those as my keepers because they've also never been on a store display case where a scammer could have tampered with them.

 

[samsonjs]

I have $500 on a cardboard card bought from a store and loaded it into Disneycard to confirm it. If it’s confirmed to have the money could it still be tampered with after loaded? Is it still worth transferring to a plastic card from Disney?