Gift cards and MagicBands

[sarcasticblonde]

We will be traveling with our children for their first trip to Disney. I thought it would be a great idea for their family to get them Disney gift cards as birthday and/or Christmas presents so they would have their own spending money for souvenirs at WDW.

I know credit cards can be linked to the magic bands, but can I link my kids gift cards to their magic bands?

 

[hiroMYhero]

We will be traveling with our children for their first trip to Disney. I thought it would be a great idea for their family to get them Disney gift cards as birthday and/or Christmas presents so they would have their own spending money for souvenirs at WDW.

I know credit cards can be linked to the magic bands, but can I link my kids gift cards to their magic bands?

Credit cards are actually attached to your onsite room reservation and all purchases made via your MBs are charged directly to your room account.

You can charge purchases to your room account and then reduce the balance owed by stopping by the front desk and having them apply the gift card totals to your room account. You need to do this every couple of days so that the charges don’t get applied to the credit card on file.

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

No you can't.
What you could do is give them charging privileges and then go to the front desk with the gift card and pay off the charge before its put on your credit card.
Or you could just make it easier on yourself and have them simply use the gift card when purchasing items.

 

[Jadyreen1282]

Just let them use their cards! Teaches them responsibility and value.

 

[rdaky]

Our kids have gift cards for every trip. We just charge it to the room with magic bands and we keep track of how much they've spent and tell them. When they've spent their limit, no more charges. We don't allow them to charge with their bands, either. So it probably does take out some of the fun of paying for it themselves. But that way we don't have to keep track of gift cards until we pay off the balance at the hotel.

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

Our kids have gift cards for every trip. We just charge it to the room with magic bands and we keep track of how much they've spent and tell them. When they've spent their limit, no more charges. We don't allow them to charge with their bands, either. So it probably does take out some of the fun of paying for it themselves. But that way we don't have to keep track of gift cards until we pay off the balance at the hotel.

So basically you're just telling them a spending limit. Doesn't seem like much of a learning experience if they are not making a transaction themselves.

 

[rdaky]

So basically you're just telling them a spending limit. Doesn't seem like much of a learning experience if they are not making a transaction themselves.

My goal is not to teach them about money, but to have a spending limit with their own money. My oldest is 12 and she doesn't need a learning experience about how money works. The system that we use is what works easiest for us.

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

My goal is not to teach them about money, but to have a spending limit with their own money. My oldest is 12 and she doesn't need a learning experience about how money works. The system that we use is what works easiest for us.

Ok it's just that the OP seemed to want their children to make the physical transaction so your post wasn't providing them with a suggestion of how to accomplish that when they cannot link a gift card directly to the magic bands.
I'm glad you found something that works for you.

 

[Mickey's Best Girl]

I’m also in the “just use the gift card” camp since GCs cannot be linked to your MDE account.

Stopping by the front desk to pay the balance with the cards seems like an unnecessary extra step. That’s Park (or nap) time you’re wasting!

 

[Tink3rbell86]

I agree with the Just use the gift cards. You can use the Disney Gift card website( disney Gift cards . com ) to merge cards. So if you get 3 gift cards as a gift you can merge the 3 into one and then get rid of the other two. It also saves your cards in your account. So if you were to loose one you could sign on as soon as you realized and transfer the balance to a card you have on your person. It also is a quick way to check balances!

 

[clutter]

I'm not entirely sure. Last month, my friend and I were able to link separate credit cards to our individual bands. That said, I think we could because we weren't on the DDP. Whoever used their band paid. (And servers were wonderful about splitting bills.) What I don't know (and doubt) is whether you can link a gift card.

 

[sarcasticblonde]

That’s helpful. Didn’t know you could merge gift cards.

Thanks everyone. I don’t want to have to deal with keeping track of their purchases to pay later at the desk because they charged it on our credit card. Guess we will just be carrying around their gift cards.

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

I'm not entirely sure. Last month, my friend and I were able to link separate credit cards to our individual bands. That said, I think we could because we weren't on the DDP. Whoever used their band paid. (And servers were wonderful about splitting bills.) What I don't know (and doubt) is whether you can link a gift card.

You have always been able to link more than one credit card to a room reservation and have guests in the same room pay with different cards.
This has nothing to do with whether a GC can be used or the DDP.

 

[clutter]

You have always been able to link more than one credit card to a room reservation and have guests in the same room pay with different cards.
This has nothing to do with whether a GC can be used or the DDP.

Thanks, you just saved me a call to Member Services. I thought they said it was possible because we didn't do the DDP, but my memory isn't that great. We've got a bunch of people and the DDP coming up. As I said, I didn't know if they could do gift cards or not.