Have you paid for a meal with a credit card? What category is it considered?

[Richard M Nixon]

This April-June, the Discover cashback program is giving 5% back on dining, and as my trip is coming up soon I was considering trying to get some free money. My problem is that I don't know if Disney restaurants have their merchant category code set to dining or if it all falls under the Disney resort 'tourism' code. I've tried to look up the codes on Florida's registry and the only Disney entry I can find is for the resort, so I'm thinking the latter is the case.

Could anyone who has dined at a restaurant and paid with a credit card directly (not through a magicband or charged to your room) look at their statement and see what category the charge is reporting?

I know it's an odd question, but 5$ on $2k+ is a hundred dollars, so everyone out there may want to check this out, if it will work.

 

[perditax]

Barclay arrival+ travel rewards card considered anything I charged to my MagicBand to be travel, I think because it came in as a unified Disney Resort bill. But I believe I paid one night at Jiko directly and it didn't count. But this card doesn't do straight up restaurants, just transportation/cruise/lodging/resort.

Edit: sorry for useless response.

 

[brianj320]

this is a great question as Chase Freedom is doing the same promotion for this quarter. i'd like to know what the deal is too because i was planning to charge everything to get the bonus points!

 

[scard192]

This April-June, the Discover cashback program is giving 5% back on dining, and as my trip is coming up soon I was considering trying to get some free money. My problem is that I don't know if Disney restaurants have their merchant category code set to dining or if it all falls under the Disney resort 'tourism' code. I've tried to look up the codes on Florida's registry and the only Disney entry I can find is for the resort, so I'm thinking the latter is the case.

Could anyone who has dined at a restaurant and paid with a credit card directly (not through a magicband or charged to your room) look at their statement and see what category the charge is reporting?

I know it's an odd question, but 5$ on $2k+ is a hundred dollars, so everyone out there may want to check this out, if it will work.

Discover (and Chase Freedom) maximum for the quarterly bonuses is usually $1500 ($75). at least mine is and I have both cards. You should check the details on your Discover Card bonus if you are expecting to get 5% on $2,000 in restaurant changes, at WDW or anywhere else.

 

[x5x5x5x5x5]

I looked at some charges from a month ago and the restaurants were coded as Travel / Entertainment. One was BlueZoo and one was Territory Lounge. Maybe other restaurants are different - I'd love to hear about this as well because we have Discover too.

 

[cigar95]

I have found that direct charges to credit cards vary between restaurants at WDW as to which get credited as restaurants. I have also found that contacting Discover directly and inquiring about the eligibility for bonuses almost always resulted in getting the credit for those locations that were initially classified in a different category. I don't recall if I've tried this with Chase.

I have found that when charging meals back to the room, it's all been credited during those quarters when the bonus was for "theme parks".

 

[Richard M Nixon]

Barclay arrival+ travel rewards card considered anything I charged to my MagicBand to be travel, I think because it came in as a unified Disney Resort bill. But I believe I paid one night at Jiko directly and it didn't count. But this card doesn't do straight up restaurants, just transportation/cruise/lodging/resort.

Edit: sorry for useless response.

The Arrival+ card is my favorite for anything that isn't gas/groceries (amex blue preferred does 6%/3%) or revolving categories covered by Discover. Before I heard about the 5% on dining I was going to push everything to the Barclaycard to redeem my travel credits.

Discover (and Chase Freedom) maximum for the quarterly bonuses is usually $1500 ($75). at least mine is and I have both cards. You should check the details on your Discover Card bonus if you are expecting to get 5% on $2,000 in restaurant changes, at WDW or anywhere else.

This is true and I didn't think about it before posting. Still, $75 back is something.


From the one report above it's looking like the restaurants may all be classed as travel, though of the two reported, one was a non-Disney and the other was a lounge in a resort, so maybe...

I wish they didn't take forever to appear online or I'd try it my first day and see what happens.

 

[Richard M Nixon]

I have found that direct charges to credit cards vary between restaurants at WDW as to which get credited as restaurants. I have also found that contacting Discover directly and inquiring about the eligibility for bonuses almost always resulted in getting the credit for those locations that were initially classified in a different category. I don't recall if I've tried this with Chase.

I have found that when charging meals back to the room, it's all been credited during those quarters when the bonus was for "theme parks".

For theme parks I'd believe it, as charging to the room would have it show as the resort. Not sure about dining, though. I'm actually surprised that the companies would be flexible with the bonuses as it's supposed to be rigidly based on the MCC of the processing business, but if it worked for you then it may be worth a try for me.

 

[brianj320]

I have found that direct charges to credit cards vary between restaurants at WDW as to which get credited as restaurants. I have also found that contacting Discover directly and inquiring about the eligibility for bonuses almost always resulted in getting the credit for those locations that were initially classified in a different category. I don't recall if I've tried this with Chase.

I have found that when charging meals back to the room, it's all been credited during those quarters when the bonus was for "theme parks".

when you contacted Discover, did you do that before or after you went? i may try that with Chase since i have to call them anyway to up my limit some.

 

[tzolkin]

Our Chase card categorized the restaurants we ate at last trip (mostly CS) as "restaurants" and they applied the 5% bonus.

In the past I usually used the rewards from my Disney Visa to pay for food, but with the 5% offered on restaurants I paid for food with my Chase freedom and applied the Disney visa rewards to the cost of the room instead.

 

[x5x5x5x5x5]

Out of curiosity, I just pulled our two year history of restaurants using Discover. Despite being somewhat horrified at how much was spent dining out during this period, I was able to find a few Disney restaurants that were coded as restaurants. Caveat - these charges were all in 2013 so I suppose this could have changed, but Marrakesh, San Angel, Chefs, Big River, and possibly the counter service in Japan are all listed as restaurants. After that trip, we started using gift cards / bands almost exclusively so I don't have much recent data (other than what I posted above).

 

[cigar95]

when you contacted Discover, did you do that before or after you went? i may try that with Chase since i have to call them anyway to up my limit some.

Definitely afterward - that gave me specific transactions to ask about. The last one I can remember, a couple of the meals got credited on a later statement, but at least one didn't. I didn't push it any further - I was satisfied to get *some* additional credit.

 

[limpy]

All of the Disney restaurants were coded as dining on my Capital One and Chase cards, even restaurants at the resorts. I had hoped for the opposite, that they would be coded as travel/tourism, because I wanted to use my travel miles.

 

[brianj320]

Definitely afterward - that gave me specific transactions to ask about. The last one I can remember, a couple of the meals got credited on a later statement, but at least one didn't. I didn't push it any further - I was satisfied to get *some* additional credit.

thanks so much for the info. i will keep all this in mind just in case.

All of the Disney restaurants were coded as dining on my Capital One and Chase cards, even restaurants at the resorts. I had hoped for the opposite, that they would be coded as travel/tourism, because I wanted to use my travel miles.

that's good news! hopefully, there wont be any issues in with the Freedom card being charged to the right category then.

 

[Mikie]

We charged everything to our room on magic bands last Oct and everything was categorized as "travel/resort". Prior trip, there was some sort of bonus category going on and it was pre magic bands. We paid at the restaurants with our Discover and they were categorized as restaurants. Room charges came through as travel/resort. I didn't check every individual restaurant, so it's possible some may have been lumped as resort category, but most were not.

 

[Richard M Nixon]

Great reports, thanks everyone. I'll test it out when I arrive in 9 days (woo!) and see what happens.

 

[perditax]

Dupe

 

[perditax]

The Arrival+ card is my favorite for anything that isn't gas/groceries (amex blue preferred does 6%/3%) or revolving categories covered by Discover. Before I heard about the 5% on dining I was going to push everything to the Barclaycard to redeem my travel credits.

This is true and I didn't think about it before posting. Still, $75 back is something.


From the one report above it's looking like the restaurants may all be classed as travel, though of the two reported, one was a non-Disney and the other was a lounge in a resort, so maybe...

I wish they didn't take forever to appear online or I'd try it my first day and see what happens.

Completely as an aside, but I'm really enjoying gaming the Barclay+ system by running my DCL cruise payoff through it over time in very small chunks. (So lots of individually redeemable transactions every time I hit 2500 points, rather than one big chunk that is only redeemable once and expires sooner.)