Buying tickets with Disney GC ... at a discount

[ljca79]

Is there a way to buy tickets at a discount, either through Disney or a broker, and using Disney GC as payment (partial or full)?

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

You can purchase discounted Disney gift cards or churn gift cards for a discount and then use those to purchase tickets directly from Disney. This is how I purchased our tickets for our February trip. The retail cost was $828 for two 6 day adult park hoppers. Through churning gift cards I only paid $604.44.

 

[Alesia]

Is there a way to buy tickets at a discount, either through Disney or a broker, and using Disney GC as payment (partial or full)?

You can only use a disney gift card if you're buying directly from Disney. The tickets will not be discounted.

 

[ljca79]

Right. I have lots of Disney gift cards and am now trying to figure out how to spend them. Do I just pay rack rate for tickets? Or is there a way to use them to purchase tickets at a discount.

 

[DreamIsaWish]

The only "discounted" source of tickets I can think of is the YES program educational tickets, but they do NOT take Disney gift cards for payment (technically it's an outside vendor running the administrative part of the program on Disney's behalf).

If you get a package deal (hotel, tickets, etc.) then you can use the gift cards. But I don't think Disney sells any tickets only at a discount (unless you qualify for special types of annual passes like Florida resident).

 

[Alesia]

Right. I have lots of Disney gift cards and am now trying to figure out how to spend them. Do I just pay rack rate for tickets? Or is there a way to use them to purchase tickets at a discount.

You cannot purchase discounted tickets directly from Disney. If you want to use Disney gift cards to buy your tickets, you can only buy them from Disney. Therefore, if you want to use the gift cards to buy tickets, you will have to pay full price for the tickets.

A smarter plan would be to buy your tickets at a discount from Undercover Tourist and use the gift cards when you're in the parks.

 

[havaneselover]

You cannot purchase discounted tickets directly from Disney. If you want to use Disney gift cards to buy your tickets, you can only buy them from Disney. Therefore, if you want to use the gift cards to buy tickets, you will have to pay full price for the tickets.

A smarter plan would be to buy your tickets at a discount from Undercover Tourist and use the gift cards when you're in the parks.

It's not smarter if you get 20% off Disney gift cards which is probably way below the average discount I've gotten over the last eight months.

 

[ljca79]

Thanks! I have a good corporate discount option, but I wanted to be sure I could not use gift cards somewhere before going that route.

 

[wendow]

I pay full price to Disney for the tickets and use discounted gift cards to pay. This is a much bigger savings than buying from UT or another discounted reseller. It really just depends on how much savings you can get with the gift cards. I average about 27% savings.

 

[ICF]

ok, i'll be the one to ask....how are people getting 20+% discount on Disney gc's?

I can see 5-10% -- but 20+ seems like a lot.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

I am getting well over 20% on average on gift cards. My usual route looks like this:

Purchase discounted Target gift cards (5-10%), purchase eBay gift cards from Target (5-10%), purchase Target cards from eBay during x4-x5 eBay bucks promotion (5-7%) then finally purchase Disney gift cards from Target (5%). This can get you about 20-30% discount.

There have been a lot of discounts lately that have made it go even higher, for example in the last two months: target sold discounted eBay gift cards, eBay sold discounted Target gift cards, Target sold discounted Disney gift cards.

On December 20, you can start with a 10% discount on Target gift cards. With that, my average savings will probably be increasing even more, since most of my initial Target cards for my upcoming trip were bought from Cardpool for a 7% discount in September.

 

[havaneselover]

ok, i'll be the one to ask....how are people getting 20+% discount on Disney gc's?

I can see 5-10% -- but 20+ seems like a lot.

Amex offers, Kroger fuel points, churning through eBay, red card discount, etc.

 

[Marionnette]

ok, i'll be the one to ask....how are people getting 20+% discount on Disney gc's?

I can see 5-10% -- but 20+ seems like a lot.

Read the Disney Gift Card Deals thread. I suggest starting about 5 pages from the end and working your way forward to the most current posts.

 

[Alesia]

It's not smarter if you get 20% off Disney gift cards which is probably way below the average discount I've gotten over the last eight months.

But, in this case, the OP already has the gift cards and gave no indication that they were purchased at a discount.

 

[havaneselover]

But, in this case, the OP already has the gift cards and gave no indication that they were purchased at a discount.

I don't really see your point. Sunday is a pretty easy opportunity to buy Disney gift cards at at least a 15% discount if you have a red card. If you can buy target gift cards at a discount from Raise or a supermarket the savings will be even bigger.

 

[Alesia]

I don't really see your point. Sunday is a pretty easy opportunity to buy Disney gift cards at at least a 15% discount if you have a red card. If you can buy target gift cards at a discount from Raise or a supermarket the savings will be even bigger.

She's not asking about buying gift cards at a discount. She already has gift cards that she paid full price for. In this situation, she is better off buying her tickets at a discount and saving the gift cards to use at the park. She is looking for the best use of the cards she already has.

 

[havaneselover]

She's not asking about buying gift cards at a discount. She already has gift cards that she paid full price for. In this situation, she is better off buying her tickets at a discount and saving the gift cards to use at the park. She is looking for the best use of the cards she already has.

Thank you for bolding part of your response--super helpful (well, not really as that's irrelevant since they are a sunk cost)! It doesn't matter if she already has gift cards or not. The Target discount this week is bigger than the undercover tourist discount. So if she uses the gift cards she has for spending money and still needs to buy tickets, the cheapest way to do that is to buy tickets from Disney using gift cards purchased at a discount.

 

[ljca79]

I bought all of my gift cards at an average of 14.5% off. Thanks all.