Anyone else reconsidering paying DCL with gift cards?

[mommy2allyandaveri]

The majority of our cruise is on gift cards. I kept them all. It will be a pain if I am refunded but I guess it's ok. I can apply it to another disney cruise or another disney related vacation. Disney gets a lot of our money so giving it back to them is inevitable for our family.

 

[gotomu212]

It wouldn't matter if you paid with gift cards, cash, credit card. Your payment in advance for a service not yet received means Disney owes you a debt in the amount paid subject to any agreed upon rates (for example you cancel after the PIF window).

If a company goes out of business due to bankruptcy, generally customers are the last to collect. Other businesses would collect first (any unpaid port fees, fuel charges, food suppliers, etc).

If a company is restructuing their debt, it depends on how the resettlement of debt is done.

I think by the time that Disney files for bankruptcy there will be much much more to have worried about.

I can’t imagine we’re going to get out of this without a few of the major cruise lines declaring bankruptcy to restructure. Given their unique physical assets (cruise ships) there’s not the same market for breaking them apart. I believe their situation looks more like the American airline market where we’ve gone through cycles where companies restructure/change ownership/merge interests but are generally left operational with current reservations honored.

Hope that’s the case and with Disney gift cards you can at least spend elsewhere. For me though it was always way too large a sum to tie up in a gift card for the 5% or 8% savings.

 

[AgentMama]

I'm also in the position of having about $10,000 locked up in Disney gift cards if I take a refund on the cruise and cancel the WDW stay before the cruise. The BJs discount no longer seems like such a great deal. Oh well. Eventually the gift cards will get used.

You win, we don't have near that tied up. And eventually, we'll use our gift cards too, but I don't think the risk is worth the reward anymore, we'll either utilize cash back on our credit cards or forgo the discount all together. We're fortunate, that as of right now, we haven't felt a financial impact from this. But things could change and then having gift cards instead of refunds obviously wouldn't be ideal.

 

[IceSkatingPrincess]

I paid for my whole med cruise and a substantial amount of onboard credit with gift cards. It is a bit of a bummer that my money is now tied up for awhile and I don't know when we can travel again, but I'm not too upset. When this passes we will either cruise Disney again or take a trip to the parks so it will get used eventually. I saved a lot by purchasing gift cards with black friday promotions, so for me it was worth it. This was my big graduation trip and I was trying to maximize savings everywhere I could.

 

[SL6827]

I have never understood the gift card buying. It seems it takes an awful amount of time to then trade real money for fake money. Considering that many credit cards offer 2-3% in rewards, the extra 2-3% is really not worth the hassle but that's me.

Didn't take me much time at all to buy discounted Walmart gift cards to use online at Sams for a total discount of around 7%. But now I am thinking about whether or not to continue this practice.

 

[mommy2allyandaveri]

I have never understood the gift card buying. It seems it takes an awful amount of time to then trade real money for fake money. Considering that many credit cards offer 2-3% in rewards, the extra 2-3% is really not worth the hassle but that's me.

3% of a 10k vacation is $300. Worth it to me for sure. I'm super cheap and love to save a buck. I feel like we are able to do more vacations like this because of my frugal ways.

 

[Mom24Princesses]

On our last Cruise I had just learned about the -5% at Target deal. Bought $1500 - ($1425) in GCs to pay it off right at the deadline. So it wasn’t refundable for many reasons at that point. I booked a cruise about March 1 for 9/2021. I used my Disney Visa. I was planning to buy DGCs each month for $200 until we need to pay it off but pay it off at the end. If I don’t use them for DCL we’ll use them at WDW or DL.

 

[BadPinkTink]

A few years ago in Ireland / Europe HMV went bust and hundreds of people were left with worthless gift cards with huge amounts of money. There was a time period in Ireland / Europe when some very big companies went bust , companies that no one expected and thought would survive the economic crash. After seeing that it made me realize that its not a good idea to have large sums of money on a gift card. I still use gift cards/ vouchers but I would never put more than €50 on one now.

 

[WDWLODGE]

We are booked on a cruise next month that was paid for completely with gift cards. Would I do it again, absolutely. We typically save between 11-16% by using gift cards. Our Disney vacations are budgeted for ahead a time, so we won't need the funds. No doubt we'll be vacationing with Disney again as soon as possible, so they'll get used. Keep those gift cards & make a habit of writing the date of every transaction & dollar amount for each card. Never put more than a $1000 on a gift card & keep them in a safe place until your trip is finished.

 

[BartmanLA]

Worrying about DCL going bankrupt? I believe that DCL's over all budgetary impact on the entire Disney empire is around 2% of total costs, parks, resorts, studios, tv shows etc... It's unlikely it will have a massive impact on their bottom line, sure some stock holders might not get as large a dividend at the end of the year as they had hoped, but I think DCL is in a much better position to recover from this shut down than other cruise lines like Carnival or or Norwegian, who have much more money invested in a singular enterprise ie cruise ships.

 

[SL6827]

Part of me really feels like I should try and go the cash route now in case we end up going to Disneyland instead of a Disney cruise next year. I could use the gift cards to buy our tickets and such. But I could use cash to get a better possible price on the lodging if I went through Orbitz or Cheap Tickets. Something to think about.