New Credit Card Authorization Holds

[PrincessArlena'sDad]

Imagine someone comes with a brand new card with a $2000 limit.

Knowing this, they limit spending to $1500. They think they are ok. On day of checkout of 5 night stay they have about $1500 in holds.

Disney then charges balance due of $1500 but card is declined for being over the limit.

Guest is now left with no way to pay, and they may even have a fee from their credit card for going over the limit.

This is why the check in instructions for having a credit card need to clearly state that your available balance needs to be double what your plan on charging to room.

I agree with numerous pp's that allowing a cash account (prepaid with cash, debit card, or gift cards) would alleviate much potential problems.

 

[lcc2]

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The biggest thing I see repeated multiple times that I don’t get from official Disney statement: multiple incremental $100 holds. I have read policy as currently written multiple times and this entire thread. I take the incremental holds to read that as you spend, Disney will run the card for authorization and cut off magic band when card declined. So, with my package, Disney gets approval for $100. Then I pay tip for dinner (we usually ddp) for $50, and Disney runs card for $50. 2 holds total $150. Then I shop and spend $115, so a new authorization hold. I end the 1st night with $265 in holds and a spend of $165. I don’t see how the policy describes nor how the accounting would make sense for holds to be in $100 increments only. I take the increments to be per purchase, daily spend, etc. I think 2 or so other people described it somewhat similarly, but either a bunch of people or the same few posters have mentioned $100 additional holds a lot

I understand what you are saying and agree. I called Guest Relations two days ago to get clarification because I was confused and my trip is the week after Feb 27th. The CM explained it to me in detail (not saying issues won’t arise with financial institutions, just restating what I was told). I have a package and will be staying 9 nights.

On the day of arrival, Disney will do an authorization hold of $100 for incidentals because I have a card on file. Card can be removed. If I choose to charge back to the room, Disney will do new authorization holds for each purchase that will add up and is completely separate from the incidental hold. On the 5th day, they will send through the total amount of purchase holds, not touching the $100 incidental hold. Then, on check out day, they will do the same thing again and apply the $100 incidental hold to the balance due.

I won’t be charging anything back to the room but I will have to pay for parking. So on checkout day, I’ll have the $100 incidental hold to go towards the parking fee.

After reading policy again, it makes alot more sense.

 

[KNovacovschi]

I received this email the other day that outlines everything. Still a couple things that are a bit confusing but we will have to wait and see probably after the first week of March since it goes into effect on Feb 27th.

 

[LovePug]

Imagine someone comes with a brand new card with a $2000 limit.

Knowing this, they limit spending to $1500. They think they are ok. On day of checkout of 5 night stay they have about $1500 in holds.

Disney then charges balance due of $1500 but card is declined for being over the limit.

Guest is now left with no way to pay, and they may even have a fee from their credit card for going over the limit.

This is why the check in instructions for having a credit card need to clearly state that your available balance needs to be double what your plan on charging to room.

I agree with numerous pp's that allowing a cash account (prepaid with cash, debit card, or gift cards) would alleviate much potential problems.

I am so grateful to this board and this thread. I currently have a debit card on file, for a package, and had planned to use the Magic Bands to charge back to the room while there, but this is the fear that I have. I'm budgeted for this trip, not double this trip, so I will remove the debit card from the room and use the Apply Pay idea (or just pull out my card when I need it).

 

[MinnieMSue]

I hope people staying soon after this change goes into effect will post here how the holds work when it goes live. I am curious to see what happens. While we rarely charge back to the room we might not do it at all of a lot of $100 holds get stacked up. If it is just kept at $100 over purchases that would be OK. So I will be watching and waiting

 

[MainMom]

I understand what you are saying and agree. I called Guest Relations two days ago to get clarification because I was confused and my trip is the week after Feb 27th. The CM explained it to me in detail (not saying issues won’t arise with financial institutions, just restating what I was told). I have a package and will be staying 9 nights.

On the day of arrival, Disney will do an authorization hold of $100 for incidentals because I have a card on file. Card can be removed. If I choose to charge back to the room, Disney will do new authorization holds for each purchase that will add up and is completely separate from the incidental hold. On the 5th day, they will send through the total amount of purchase holds, not touching the $100 incidental hold. Then, on check out day, they will do the same thing again and apply the $100 incidental hold to the balance due.

I won’t be charging anything back to the room but I will have to pay for parking. So on checkout day, I’ll have the $100 incidental hold to go towards the parking fee.

After reading policy again, it makes alot more sense.

I really do hope this is how it works. It makes much more sense.

 

[lcc2]

I really do hope this is how it works. It makes much more sense.

Me too. I’ll definitely be watching.

 

[angelmav]

That still says there will be purchase holds though. None of that really makes me feel more at ease. It’s going to effect some people and others not at all. Really going to depend on how each persons bank/card handles it. I wouldn’t risk it if on a budget though.

 

[lcc2]

That still says there will be purchase holds though. None of that really makes me feel more at ease. It’s going to effect some people and others not at all. Really going to depend on how each persons bank/card handles it. I wouldn’t risk it if on a budget though.

Purchase holds = magic band spending. That’s not anything new. It’s a running total. It doesn’t make me feel at ease but I feel like I understand the new policy. I’m personally not going to use the magic band but I’m interested to see how it works for others. If only March could get here so we could see how this plays out!

 

[chocolateMinnie]

I have to admit I always assumed Disney took my card details to do exactly what they are now planning to do and I had no issues with that as most international hotels already do it.
The main problem I can see is for a longer stay if you were planning to use gift cards or cash to settle your account you would need to be organised to visit the front desk before every fifth day charge.
Could be a pain in a 14-21 day stay.
Hope it goes without any major glitches.

 

[Best_Vacation_EVER!]

It really shouldn't be this complicated..... I think we'll likely remove charging from our magic bands entirely in the future and pay by cc or cash at the time of purchase (I prefer cash as we can buy from a local currency exchange (which have way better rates than cc's) and I try to do it so we can dollar cost average our purchase of US dollars) rather than use magic bands. On the upside I can see us spending WAY, WAY less on impulse purchases in the future at WDW --- there really is zero upside for us to go and use magic bands/cc's with the way they plan to implement this.

As mentioned in a previous post Universal (HRH specifically) asked us how much we'd expected to spend --- and set the authorization based on that. Why can WDW do that?

 

[Nancyg56]

It really shouldn't be this complicated..... I think we'll likely remove charging from our magic bands entirely in the future and pay by cc or cash at the time of purchase (I prefer cash as we can buy from a local currency exchange (which have way better rates than cc's) and I try to do it so we can dollar cost average our purchase of US dollars) rather than use magic bands. On the upside I can see us spending WAY, WAY less on impulse purchases in the future at WDW --- there really is zero upside for us to go and use magic bands/cc's with the way they plan to implement this.

As mentioned in a previous post Universal (HRH specifically) asked us how much we'd expected to spend --- and set the authorization based on that. Why can WDW do that?

LOL! It is never a simple plan in WDW. Never. I agree that my family is just going to bypass charging to the room. We never spend more than we plan, Magic Band or no, so from that angle it is no harm no foul for Disney, but I imagine that the ease of MB purchases for some is a good deal of what landed Disney in this predicament. It is easy to lose track of what you actually are spending when you do not see the results immediately.

 

[sponica]

I have to admit I always assumed Disney took my card details to do exactly what they are now planning to do and I had no issues with that as most international hotels already do it.
The main problem I can see is for a longer stay if you were planning to use gift cards or cash to settle your account you would need to be organised to visit the front desk before every fifth day charge.
Could be a pain in a 14-21 day stay.
Hope it goes without any major glitches.

I paid with gift cards last trip, I just stopped by the front desk on a nightly basis or every other night. Granted I was also staying at POFQ, so it wasn't like the front desk was out of the way or anything.

 

[saskdw]

I have to admit I always assumed Disney took my card details to do exactly what they are now planning to do and I had no issues with that as most international hotels already do it.
The main problem I can see is for a longer stay if you were planning to use gift cards or cash to settle your account you would need to be organised to visit the front desk before every fifth day charge.
Could be a pain in a 14-21 day stay.
Hope it goes without any major glitches.

I always assumed they were putting a $1000 hold on my card at a Mod resort ($500 for value and $1500 for deluxe) for room charges before, so this really changes nothing for me.

Our last stay at royal Pacific at Universal they asked if $200 a day was enough for room charging. It was a 10 day stay so I assumed the put a $2000 hold on the card to cover that. I felt like they were asking permission to do that by asking how much room charging we wanted. the limit would never be reached on my card so I never really worried about it.

 

[Farro]

I always assumed they were putting a $1000 hold on my card at a Mod resort ($500 for value and $1500 for deluxe) for room charges before, so this really changes nothing for me.

Our last stay at royal Pacific at Universal they asked if $200 a day was enough for room charging. It was a 10 day stay so I assumed the put a $2000 hold on the card to cover that. I felt like they were asking permission to do that by asking how much room charging we wanted. the limit would never be reached on my card so I never really worried about it.

If you don't need to worry about your limit, I agree, you won't really worry about this new policy.

 

[I Love Pluto]

We will theme this trip as “The Year of the Gift Card”. All of this $100 charging is making me crazy!

 

[Kingdome8]

I still plan on putting my credit card on file for my trip. I love charging to magic bands and it’s fun for kids too.

Can we add Disney gift cards to apple digital wallet and pay with cards thru phone at eligible locations? Also does Disney allow apple wallet pay at most or all locations?

 

[Meglen]

This will not change much for my trip we buy discounted gift cards and stop at the front desk every night to say balance between GC and my Disney rewards they won't be charging my card much at all.

 

[Rowab]

I was planning on putting down my credit card but using a traveller currency card and gift cards to pay off the charges every few days (I'm from the uk.) Will I still be to do this? I have a big enough limit and use my credit card infrequently enough that I'm not concerned about the holds per se, but does this mean I have to pay on the card i put down to charge to the room?

 

[Wood Nymph]

I was planning on putting down my credit card but using a traveller currency card and gift cards to pay off the charges every few days (I'm from the uk.) Will I still be to do this? I have a big enough limit and use my credit card infrequently enough that I'm not concerned about the holds per se, but does this mean I have to pay on the card i put down to charge to the room?

You will still be able to use your currency card and gift card to pay off the room charges. As long as you make sure to pay off your room balance with the cards the night before you check out, they won't put a charge on your credit card. A credit card hold is different than a charge and only affects people who don't have a credit limit large enough to cover the hold amount.

We will be checking into the Beach Club on the day that the new policy takes effect and we received an email from Disney about this new policy. It won't change anything we do, since we usually use both gift cards and our Magic Bands for our trips. And we will probably never know that a hold was placed on our credit card, since we won't be going into the credit card website to look at the activity on the card during the trip. In fact, most people won't even see these holds, since they come off once the full charge is made.