Most effective way to apply Disney GCs to trip?

[NokOnHarts]

For those who use Disney GCs often, what is the best/safest way to apply them towards your trip? I plan on having about $500 in GCs by the time I go next year from surveys and gifts - is it smart to apply this to a package? I guess my concern is if we had to cancel how it might complicate things. Dining makes sense except if FD happens for next fall that would be in the package too. This trip would be a land / sea combo, so we'd have the cruise and then the WDW packages I could apply it to.

I'm also curious, if you have many gift cards, does Disney (or the disney stores) let you combine them onto one large one? I am really hoping so!

 

[Marionnette]

For those who use Disney GCs often, what is the best/safest way to apply them towards your trip? I plan on having about $500 in GCs by the time I go next year from surveys and gifts - is it smart to apply this to a package? I guess my concern is if we had to cancel how it might complicate things. Dining makes sense except if FD happens for next fall that would be in the package too. This trip would be a land / sea combo, so we'd have the cruise and then the WDW packages I could apply it to.

I'm also curious, if you have many gift cards, does Disney (or the disney stores) let you combine them onto one large one? I am really hoping so!

Disney will accept any number of GCs that you have in order to pay for their products. You can use them to pay for a package or a room-only reservation. I won't matter to them as long as they get their money. You might need a savvy CM to accept them over the phone when you have multiple GCs but it can be done. You can even use them online to pay on your reservation but there may be a limit as to how many you can enter at one time.

I know that you cannot use them to purchase tickets online. They only accept credit cards on the ticketing webpage. If you go to a ticket window at Disney, they will have no problem applying multiple GCs to your purchase.

Hang on to those GCs after you have paid for your trip. If you cancel, the money goes back onto the GC that it came from.

I have not had success combining GCs at my local Disney Store. Theoretically, you cannot buy a GC with a GC, which is basically what you would be doing. Some people say that they have been successful calling the phone number on the back of the GCs and having a CM combine them all. But again, this would be a case of YMMV.

 

[dpswift]

For some reason it was quicker on the ship to put giftcards on our account than at AoA. The CMs never gave me any trouble but it seemed like it took forever for each one. I would try to use smaller ones on the ship and save any larger one for the hotel.

 

[NokOnHarts]

Thank you for the tips! Carrying multiple cards around isn't ideal. I'll be waiting to "cash them out" until they are in higher denominations now.

 

[Smrtcooky]

Please note that when making reservations you can only use 1 gc at a time.

I'm cooky for MICKEY!

 

[chrystalc77]

I didn't use gift cards to pay for my trip but I did have $500 in Disney gift cards saved up for souvenirs, tips, adult beverages and such. I had a few $50 ones but most were $25. The CM at Pop added these cards to our KTTW card at check-in creating a negative balance of $500. So each time we used our KTTW it pulled from the gift cards until it was all used up. Best thing ever!!! Not sure i would like using them for paying on my trip because if I had to cancel, I would want that money instead of a bunch of gift cards. But using them the way we did, I loved! I've already started buying a $25 GC every 2 weeks for our 2014 trip. I don't miss $25 every 2 weeks and if something happens and we are unable to go I can either put them away until we go or use them for Disney store online for Christmas/birthday gifts. Great thing about them is they never expire!!!

 

[justustoo]

What I did this trip is prepay my package online with the many small increment GCs I had. ( had to do one at a time, and had to go to old WdW website to do it). I dd keep all the GC in case I had to cancel. I had 2$250 GC I ad bought at Kroger with 4x fuel points that I brought to WDW and applied to my room charge account.