Forms of Payment for Room Charges?

[eeyoreandtink]

They never charged to the credit card every time you hit $100, they only put a hold on your card, which is different. If you are using a credit card, then the holds usually wouldn't affect you, unless you exceeded your credit limit. The people who really had to worry about the holds were the ones using a debit card, since that would lock up your available cash balance.

No, at one point they were placing a $100 hold, and charging your card at the end of the night if you went over, then placing a new $100 hold for the next day, effectively holding double the money. Those hold can take anywhere from 3-5 days to 2 weeks to fall off. There were extensive threads here discussing it, with people reporting their experiences with it. People with low limit cards or debit cards were running into major headaches. If you only check your card when you get a statement you would never see any of this happening.

When we read this we made the decision to just carry Disney gift cards and not charge to the room at all. If it has changed we may consider setting up a room charge and paying it off with gift cards.

 

[Wood Nymph]

No, at one point they were placing a $100 hold, and charging your card at the end of the night if you went over, then placing a new $100 hold for the next day, effectively holding double the money. Those hold can take anywhere from 3-5 days to 2 weeks to fall off. There were extensive threads here discussing it, with people reporting their experiences with it. People with low limit cards or debit cards were running into major headaches. If you only check your card when you get a statement you would never see any of this happening.

When we read this we made the decision to just carry Disney gift cards and not charge to the room at all. If it has changed we may consider setting up a room charge and paying it off with gift cards.

I believe that Disney changed their policy after the uproar about the multiple holds.

 

[nursejackie]

Thanks for all your replies, it look's like I'll be sticking with cash and travellers cheques.

 

[Ddtao87]

I believe that Disney changed their policy after the uproar about the multiple holds.

Is this for certain? Would love if they found a good compromise. Seems like holding people‘s money that is tied to their debit cards makes life harder with a magic band when the entire point of a magic band is to make things easier for the guest.

 

[Wood Nymph]

Is this for certain? Would love if they found a good compromise. Seems like holding people‘s money that is tied to their debit cards makes life harder with a magic band when the entire point of a magic band is to make things easier for the guest.

They still put holds on the credit or debit card on file for the outstanding balance. So it does tie up the cash for people who use a debit card. But what has changed is that they issue a credit for the amount of the holds when you check out so they no longer tie up twice the amount due.

We now use gift cards for everything except charges at the pool. Once the gift cards are all spent then we charge to the MB or pull out the Disney Visa card. Lucky for us, we used the Disney Visa to pay for our dinner at Boatrights and the server applied the 10% discount for us. We had forgotten all about that discount and wouldn't have gotten it if we had used the MB.

 

[Ryoukoe]

I also do my Disney trips the same way. Everything is charged to the room and every couple of days I go down to the lobby and pay it off with gift cards I have purchased throughout the year. You can always get 5% off Disney GC's from Target and some places have some better deals as well, if getting a good price on GC's appeals to you, check out the budget board forums and there is one about GC's. I have had it where if the room charges get to be about $350 they put a hold on my account to make sure the money is there but no actual charge occurs to my credit card. I do understand about not wanting to have put too much $ on GC's and having some left over, but even if you put enough on a GC to cover your hotel room or snacks, every little bit of savings counts .