Perfect thanks!They will still put a $100 hold if you reach a certain amount I think. But for incidentals like some wine at the hotel bar, or snacks from the gift shops, etc., we use our magic bands. Otherwise we use G-Pay.
You can buy a virtual card online here, helpful if you want to limit how much your son is spending (you can download it to your apple wallet), and you can link it to MDE for in park purchases as shown here. You should be able to purchase the gift cards pretty much anywhere! The only thing you wouldn't be able to do is link it to a Magic Band. Hopefully this helps!
We put ours on our CC so we get points and pay the entire balance off. You still have to link your G-pay to something though.
The only times my Debit Card has been hacked and fraud committed is in Orlando after my visits. I no longer use my debit card at Disney, having to cancel, deal with the charges and get a new card is not worth it. Last time it took a year to get charges reversed. And I no longer charge to the room at Disney either. It is easy enough to just use my credit card or cash. I then just get on my CC app each night and pay it off immediately.
Yeah the Credit card charge mistake of $10,000 was pretty upsetting. As it took days to give us credit and it show up. I would not have been happy for that to have come out of my checking account.
Disney’s processing systems are so glitchy. Had this happen in Nov with fam at RIV and CSR. At RIV the front desk even swiped the cc and then said it wouldn’t go through, we had to use another cc. We each have a variety of cards for different purposes so selecting another wasn’t an issue but by the time we got to CSR it was blatant this is a Disney processing error. I switched to an Amex on file at that point with Disney and didn’t see the error on my spring trip. No idea if that made a difference.
We had this issue when we drove down in December. MDE never showed a room number and we never got a room alert. I called some number that was shown in MDE (it was different from the regular number). The person even told me my room number but said we'd have to stop by the front desk. Fast forward to when we finally arrived at 4:30 a.m. we had to stop by the front desk. We were told we didn't have a card on file, which was funny since we already had the $100 pending charge on it. She looked in a "different" part of the system and saw it was there so pushed through the room to us. Not really what we wanted to do at 4:30 a.m. Point of my story is that their system is glitchy.We are driving down- won’t arrive until 11 PM. Room not showing in app. Chatted and was told “there is a problem wit the card on file you will have to go to front desk”??
The trip is paid for- the debit card on file is an account that has PLENTY of cash. The chat said there is literally no way to call the front desk or anyone and that she doesn’t have a supervisor she can transfer me to. So I have to start my trip standing in line at front desk with my family at 11:00 when I’ve done EVERYTHING in advance to make this easy. And spend the rest of the drive stressing. Do they not allow debit cards?! We do not have a credit card (personal choice) Anyone have advice? Not a very magical way to start
OP - you may have already found this out, but in case anyone reads in the future...
There is a large amount of the population who has gone through debt hell because they couldn’t control their spending on cc’s. Those rewards you get are literally because people can’t control their spending/had crappy life circumstances hit and are now paying 20%+ APRs. A few people are able to recover and then go back to using cc’s and never have another problem- but many others aren’t. I love the cc sign up game, play it to the max lol. BUT I absolutely respect anyone who says they don’t do cc’s. I don’t know their past, I don’t know their partner’s past & I don’t know their current situation.
