Let me help where I can. I am Platinum so have had a few cruises.
As far as the Disney GC's, yes, you can use them to pay for your cruise. I would suggest combining the smaller ones into the $1000 limit on the GC website so that when you do use them you don't have to input a ton, just one or two. Now, if you are booking through
Dreams Unlimited, they don't like to have more than 10 cards applied to the booking at time so that's something to think about if you decide to keep them in little chunks.
Yes, you can pay for drinks and suvies with GC's. If you are using them in the shops you can use the GC directly however for drinks and miscellaneous food items, think candy/popcorn, they will charge that back to your room so you would need to apply GC's to your account. You can do this at any time. If you apply to much to your account, don't use it all, they will put the excess back on to a GC so do not throw them out. Most people like to apply all their cards to their room account and just charge everything to their room. It's the easiest way.
Since tips are charged to your room, if you don't prepay them, you can use GC's applied to your account to pay for those as well. Same with excursions. You don't pay for excursions until you board so you can pay for them by applying GC's to your account.
As far as GC's go though, if you are getting them with points, either AM or PC, I would do it. If you are using cash to pay for them, I wouldn't. The reason why is because you can never be sure of the rate you will get. A $50 GC purchased 6 months ago looked like a good deal, it would have been worth about $40 US. Today, that card would be worth about $35 US and the rate doesn't look like it's going to get better. If you had taken that $50 you paid for the GC 6 months ago and converted to US at the bank you would have $40 US today and not the $35 value of the GC that could lose even more. Sorry if this sounds like a lecture and it's only
my opinion. Everyone has their own way to do things.
As for cabins, have you cruised before? Do you think you will use a veranda? We thought we would and had three before I realized we didn't use it hardly at all and started looking at ocean view cabins to save funds. We know book 8A's on deck 5 if we can get one, there are only 4 of the good ones.
Again, this is only my opinion, my thoughts. It's not right for everyone but I have taken my financial background and used it to get the best bang for my buck.
(I love all the extras but I know in my heart that maybe I’d like the extra $ in my pocket vs some of the things…including maybe genie+).
We’re officially booked for a visit to WDW next spring!
