Disney GC for spending money

[toyotaae86lg]

Do you guys buy your "spending/souvenir" money on giftcards. I have little over a month and have about $500 budgeted for spending and was going to go down to Target and buy $100 giftcards and get an extra $25 dollars with the Redcard. And now I just saw a post for disneygiftcard.com where you can combine all of them so that makes it easier. What you guys think?

 

[Majesty1919]

If you are allocating funds for others i.e. your children it might be more convenient to have at least a couple of them separate. If you want to have tight reigns on the money, then you could do that.

 

[tikkipoo]

This is what I am thinking of doing too. Thinking of using it for food, snacks and souvenirs.

 

[CruisingKate]

This is what we have done the past few trips and will do again in December. We don't do the dining plan and don't spend much at all on souvenirs. We give our (young adult) kids gift cards to cover any snacks/CS meals they want, then have a card with a large balance for a few TS meals for the family and our own CS meals. We bring cash for tips. Works great! Almost everything is then pre-paid, plus using Raise.com and Target GC to purchase the Disney GC online, we save about 10-12%.

 

[toyotaae86lg]

I'm 99% sure I will be doing this but will also include money for our CS meals also now, pretty much ensuring the trip is prepaid. My only concern is that all this money is on a GC and what happens if it gets lost. Do you guys have some advice or tips on ways to keep that card as safe as possible?

 

[MrPTato]

We usually go down with the gift card and leave it in the room safe. We use the magic bands for everything and every couple days go to the desk and have them bring the balance to 0 with the gift card. There is no way I would walk around with a large gift card in my pocket. Other thing is to not combine and just use smaller gift cards so you are carrying around less by leaving the others in the safe.

 

[Marionnette]

I'm 99% sure I will be doing this but will also include money for our CS meals also now, pretty much ensuring the trip is prepaid. My only concern is that all this money is on a GC and what happens if it gets lost. Do you guys have some advice or tips on ways to keep that card as safe as possible?

Here's my plan to keep the GCs safe.

• Once I'm done doing all of the combining that I want on the disneygiftcards website, I'll delete the larger GCs from the account (they're for paying my DVC dues).
  
• Prior to my trip, I'll load the account with 5 GCs with smaller values.
• I'll leave all but one of those GCs at home. The one that I take with me will be my "main" card.
• Once my main card gets low, I will go to the website on my smartphone and combine one of the saved GCs onto the main GC.
• I'll repeat this until there are no more GCs with a value on them in the account to add.
• As a back up, I intend to photograph the backs of several GCs using my smartphone. If I find that I'm spending $ faster than anticipated, I'll add those cards one by one to my account and then combine them on my main GC.

This would also work if you want to travel without having to carry a large GC on your person. You could have the large-value GC saved in your account but leave it at home and then carry a physical GC with a low value on your person. When it comes time to pay your room charges, just use the website to combine that large-value card on the physical GC.

I plan to test this once the $50 GCs that I ordered from Target arrive next week.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

Here's my plan to keep the GCs safe.

• Once I'm done doing all of the combining that I want on the disneygiftcards website, I'll delete the larger GCs from the account (they're for paying my DVC dues).
  
• Prior to my trip, I'll load the account with 5 GCs with smaller values.
• I'll leave all but one of those GCs at home. The one that I take with me will be my "main" card.
• Once my main card gets low, I will go to the website on my smartphone and combine one of the saved GCs onto the main GC.
• I'll repeat this until there are no more GCs with a value on them in the account to add.
• As a back up, I intend to photograph the backs of several GCs using my smartphone. If I find that I'm spending $ faster than anticipated, I'll add those cards one by one to my account and then combine them on my main GC.

This would also work if you want to travel without having to carry a large GC on your person. You could have the large-value GC saved in your account but leave it at home and then carry a physical GC with a low value on your person. When it comes time to pay your room charges, just use the website to combine that large-value card on the physical GC.

I plan to test this once the $50 GCs that I ordered from Target arrive next week.

This is a great idea.

I buy my giftcards directly from the Disney Store so I have a giftcard with $800 and one with $950. I have one for $45 from CVS that I can't get to transfer.

They are all on the disneygiftcards website. I still have to buy one for $100.

I could just take the $100 card with us (and the $45 one since I can't get it to transfer) and then transfer money from the other two larger valued cards onto the $100 card when needed. Instead of carrying almost 2K in giftcards.

 

[peg110]

Do you guys buy your "spending/souvenir" money on giftcards. I have little over a month and have about $500 budgeted for spending and was going to go down to Target and buy $100 giftcards and get an extra $25 dollars with the Redcard. And now I just saw a post for disneygiftcard.com where you can combine all of them so that makes it easier. What you guys think?

So you can take smaller Disney Gift Cards (i.e. $50.00 each) and combine them on ONE Gift Card? (10 cards at $50.00 = 1 card @ $500.00)

 

[Marionnette]

So you can take smaller Disney Gift Cards (i.e. $50.00 each) and combine them on ONE Gift Card? (10 cards at $50.00 = 1 card @ $500.00)

Yes. on the disneygiftcard .com website. You have to create an account (having an account on disneyworld .com isn't enough). Once you've done that, you can enter up to 5 GCs to manage. The website allows you to combine the values from your registered GCs for a maximum amount of $1K on a single GC. Then you can delete the zero'd out GCs and add more to the account if you need to.

There are a few drawbacks. For instance, GCs purchased from different sources (CVS, Target, Staples, Disney Store, etc) cannot be combine with GCs that were not purchased at the same location. IOW, if you bought a GC at Target and also got a GC from Disney Movie Rewards, you won't be able to combine them together.

You also cannot transfer partial amounts.

 

[toyotaae86lg]

We usually go down with the gift card and leave it in the room safe. We use the magic bands for everything and every couple days go to the desk and have them bring the balance to 0 with the gift card. There is no way I would walk around with a large gift card in my pocket. Other thing is to not combine and just use smaller gift cards so you are carrying around less by leaving the others in the safe.

So I really like this idea. So even though I have my debit card linked to my magicband the purchases just build up to one lump sum and you just intercept that with the GC to make balance to 0?

 

[mi*vida*loca]

We usually go down with the gift card and leave it in the room safe. We use the magic bands for everything and every couple days go to the desk and have them bring the balance to 0 with the gift card. There is no way I would walk around with a large gift card in my pocket. Other thing is to not combine and just use smaller gift cards so you are carrying around less by leaving the others in the safe.

That's my plan too.

The only issue that popped into my head is that we land at 11 am. What if my room isn't ready? I don't want to carry around those big gift cards or leave them with bell services in my carry on.

 

[Marionnette]

So I really like this idea. So even though I have my debit card linked to my magicband the purchases just build up to one lump sum and you just intercept that with the GC to make balance to 0?

Be careful about letting those charges build up. There are threshold limits for each resort level and when your spending approaches that threshold, the resort charges the card on file. Even if you don't reach that spending threshold, you will want to settle your account the night before check out. Disney resorts process your charges during the night prior to your check out. The whole thing can be reversed, but it can take a while for that money to show up in your bank account when you're using a debit card. You really don't want to have to wait for that money to be returned.

 

[Livelovedance]

This might be a silly question but I'm a little confused and looking for clarification. If I have a credit card linked to my magic band and use the band to pay for food, souvenirs, etc in the park, the band will charge to my room and not my credit card? I purchased a number of Disney gift cards as well for my next trip to use instead of cash, but does that mean I can just keep them in the room and then have the resort put them on my room charge to cover those purchases? Thank you!

 

[CalDisneyMomof2]

This might be a silly question but I'm a little confused and looking for clarification. If I have a credit card linked to my magic band and use the band to pay for food, souvenirs, etc in the park, the band will charge to my room and not my credit card? I purchased a number of Disney gift cards as well for my next trip to use instead of cash, but does that mean I can just keep them in the room and then have the resort put them on my room charge to cover those purchases? Thank you!

See Marionette's reply right above yours.