Disney Gift Card?

[Epcotgal8]

I'm not sure this is even in the right place to ask, so I apologize if it isn't. Trying to decide whether to purchase a gift card for our upcoming trip for a couple of reasons. One, to reduce the amount of cash we are carrying. And two, so I can get one now and get the bulk of our spending money taken care of and put aside for piece of mind. Can we use just a regular Disney gift card at booths at Food & Wine Festival or would it be easier to just scan our magic bands and after say 2 days go to resort desk and have them apply gift card to whatever we've charged to our room?

 

[ScrampShopper]

For the last 2 trips I have taken enough on gift cards to pay for almost everything (room and all expenses). Then at checkin, I payed the balance of the room with gift cards, and this involved them crediting my credit card first because they charged the balance on the morning of checkin. Then every few days I would go and pay the accruing balance from using our magic bands to pay for everything. I have decided that this year I will call the day before and pay off the room with gift cards. The whole process of crediting my account and applying gift cards seems to waste time. If we stay Deluxe, we will continue to use the magic bands and apply gift cards half way through, and night before checkout. If staying value, we will directly use gift cards because it wasted a lot of time to wait in line to pay off balance. Deluxe resorts have much shorter waits to do this stuff then the value resorts in my experience.

I forgot to add that I buy my gift cards at Sams Club so I get a little bit of a discount on the whole trip. If I wasn't getting them at a discount, I would not bother with gift cards anymore.