charging to room

[phnguyk]

I've tried to search this, but can't seem to find the answer.

We are going to Disney in December and don't want to use any credit cards. We would like to have charging privledges on our tickets for tips and souviners and would like to use our visa debit card for that. My question is how much money needs to be on the card to begin with to be approved for room charging?

tia!

 

[P.I. Squirrel]

At check in, all resorts will pre authorize a debit card by placing a $1.00 temporary charge on your debit card. This is only temporary, and disappears. If the $1.00 is not denied by your bank, they place a $500 limit for values (I believe $1000 for deluxe) on your room key. Then, at checkout, they charge the full amount to your debit card.

 

[phnguyk]

Thanks for the info! I knew someone here could help me!
You guys are the best!

 

[Cheshire Figment]

It is $500 for value, $1,000 for moderate, and $1,500 for deluxe and DVC.

If you reach your limit they will ordinarily, in the nightly cycle, run through the charges and start again.

I have had people come to my water park ticket window and try to do a hotel charge and it has been denied. Normally all it will take is one phone call to the front desk to run the charges through and they start again and the whole thing takes less than five minutes.

 

[SandrA9810]

Just remember, the night of your check out when they run the thing for express checkout, all charges are put through. If you use your room key after that has been processed, they will run it again that night, so you'll see two charges.

Just be very very careful of who's got charging privilege and when they use it. I think you can have it so any one under 18 doesn't get the use of it.

 

[P.I. Squirrel]

Just be very very careful of who's got charging privilege and when they use it. I think you can have it so any one under 18 doesn't get the use of it.

Yes. You can specify which room keys have privelages. We set only the adults for charges.

This is helpful during free dining. There have been reports on the board of horror stories during FD in which a meal had been charged to the room, instead of deducting from the dining credits. By using a room key with no charging privelages, the meal has to be deducted from the credits. If you charge tips, appetizers, or adult beverages, of course, you would have to use a room key with charging privelages.

In short, we used the kid cards for counter service and snacks, and only used the adult cards for table service meals. It helps prevent erroneous meal charges to the room.

 

[aka-mad4themouse]

This is helpful during free dining. There have been reports on the board of horror stories during FD in which a meal had been charged to the room, instead of deducting from the dining credits. By using a room key with no charging privelages, the meal has to be deducted from the credits. If you charge tips, appetizers, or adult beverages, of course, you would have to use a room key with charging privelages.

It's also a good idea when you're on the dining plan and you pay your tip with cash. There have been reports of a gratuity also being added to the room charge on top of the cash tip. If you have use card without charging privileges to pay with your dining credits, this error cannot happen.

 

[3darlings]

Yes. You can specify which room keys have privelages. We set only the adults for charges.

This is helpful during free dining. There have been reports on the board of horror stories during FD in which a meal had been charged to the room, instead of deducting from the dining credits. By using a room key with no charging privelages, the meal has to be deducted from the credits. If you charge tips, appetizers, or adult beverages, of course, you would have to use a room key with charging privelages.

In short, we used the kid cards for counter service and snacks, and only used the adult cards for table service meals. It helps prevent erroneous meal charges to the room.

After reading many DIS posts about erroneous dining charges when on the dining plan, we put charging privileges only on the adult keys and then only used one of our childrens' card when we charged dining credits. That way, no erroneous dining charges could be charged to our room bill. We used cash for tips last time but this time I think we will use a Disney gift card. The tip above about when the room bill is charged to your credit card is a good one. Last time I waited too late (the morning of checkout day) to go and pay off my balance with a gift card. The credit card charge had already gone through. It was ultimately refunded but it took awhile. So if you want to make any payments other than the credit card, make sure you do it the day before.

 

[LauralF22]

Great idea about using the kids cards for the dining plan. I'm going to steal that one to avoid any duplicate charges.

We are taking two pre-paid visa gift cards with fixed $$ on them. Those will be used for all OOP expenses - which will also control our spending. I cashed in the points from one of my other credit cards and used that money to buy the gift cards. We can use these cards outside of Disney as well (airport, etc.) so that there are no restrictions.

 

[kristinw3girls]

We avoided the problem by paying on our room key with cash at check in. I put $800 in cash on the card, and checked later in the week at the balance. I went to the front desk and put more$ on our 5th day. It was a great way to keep any errors from playing havoc on out debit card, and not use credit cards!

 

[phnguyk]

Thanks for all the great tips! Last year when we went we decided no room charging which worked out fine except for one night we went out to dinner with the dining plan and we forgot to bring cash for tip. I kinda felt silly having to give a credit card just for the tip, so i want to try having the room charge available this time.

I like the tip about using kids cards for other meals not needing tips will definitly do that.

 

[sharonW]

Thank Goodness for Debit cards...in this house its bye bye to
credit cards!!!

 

[Justsyd2]

DH and I took $500.00 in traveler's check and used that for room charging privileges so that no one would have access to our CC #. We checked the printout every couple of days, and had no extra charges. We'll continue to do this for future trips.

 

[Carlissa's Mommy]

Okay, so the tip about tips, etc... being added erroneously to your bill has me a little worried. We have the dining plan, but plan on leaving tips with cash in specified envelopes that will be given to the waitstaff at each meal. Our little girl is 2, so she doesn't need a ticket, so I'm assuming we won't have a card for her. We want to charge everything to the room key. Since mine and my husbands card will have charging privileges, how can I be sure tips won't be added? Can we get an extra card for our 2 year old even though she doesn't need a ticket? I hope this makes sense!

 

[aka-mad4themouse]

Okay, so the tip about tips, etc... being added erroneously to your bill has me a little worried. We have the dining plan, but plan on leaving tips with cash in specified envelopes that will be given to the waitstaff at each meal. Our little girl is 2, so she doesn't need a ticket, so I'm assuming we won't have a card for her. We want to charge everything to the room key. Since mine and my husbands card will have charging privileges, how can I be sure tips won't be added? Can we get an extra card for our 2 year old even though she doesn't need a ticket? I hope this makes sense!

Do both the adult cards need to have charging privileges? If not, you can request Disney to put it on only one card. I don't think that they will issue a KTTW card for a 2yo.

If you really want charging privileges on both cards, then you will just have to be vigilant about checking your charges when your card & check are returned to you at the TS restaurants. Sometimes you can help to avoid the confusion by crossing out the tip on the check and writing "cash" in the space before handing it to your server to pay for the meal. It's not a widespread problem but with so many tables and so many people on the DDP, servers make mistakes sometimes.