New way to pay using Disney gift cards and Disney Rewards Redemption Cards

[Matravelfamily]

Hello! I was just browsing my My Disney Experience account today because I have a trip coming up in April. My hotel reservation was on there, and it gave the amount I had put down as a deposit and the remaining balance. (All was correct.) Next to the remaining balance there was an option to pay part of the balance off. You could use your credit card or use your Disney Gift Cards or your Disney Rewards Redemption Cards. You could do partial payments or full payment. Seeing as I have 5 different gift and reward cards I decided to try it out and it worked like a charm. You just fill in how much you are going to pay, then click on the gift or redemption section and type in the number of the card. It subtracts it from your total. That way you don't have to worry about carrying all those cards down there with you. You could also just use your regular credit card and make a full or partial payment as well, if you want to pay the trip off. But, I have seen many questions on the boards about how best to deal with all the gift cards - so I hope this information is helpful. You do have to have a My Disney Experience account and have your hotel reservation linked. Cheers!

 

[IndyRnRfan]

Are these the reward points you build up if you have a Disney Visa card?

 

[buzznina]

Yep, they added the payment link late last year, used my 13 GCs from target to payoff our ressie for our trip last month only took about 15 minutes.

 

[buzznina]

Are these the reward points you build up if you have a Disney Visa card?

Yes, you just need to enter in your Disney Rewards Redemption Card number and the amount.

 

[Matravelfamily]

And if you can't remember how much money you put on your Rewards Redemption Card - just call the number on the back of the card and you can find out!

 

[halssister]

Hello! I was just browsing my My Disney Experience account today because I have a trip coming up in April. My hotel reservation was on there, and it gave the amount I had put down as a deposit and the remaining balance. (All was correct.) Next to the remaining balance there was an option to pay part of the balance off. You could use your credit card or use your Disney Gift Cards or your Disney Rewards Redemption Cards. You could do partial payments or full payment. Seeing as I have 5 different gift and reward cards I decided to try it out and it worked like a charm. You just fill in how much you are going to pay, then click on the gift or redemption section and type in the number of the card. It subtracts it from your total. That way you don't have to worry about carrying all those cards down there with you. You could also just use your regular credit card and make a full or partial payment as well, if you want to pay the trip off. But, I have seen many questions on the boards about how best to deal with all the gift cards - so I hope this information is helpful. You do have to have a My Disney Experience account and have your hotel reservation linked. Cheers!

So this is an old thread.....but I wanted to do exactly THIS (pay our room off with our Disney Rewards card). But I can't seem to find the place that the OP is talking about on the MDE account. Nowhere do I see anything showing how much our deposit was on our room or anything. Does anyone know, has the website changed in four months and this isn't an option now? I can call Disney on Monday and ask about how to pay this off now (I want to do it before we do online check in, to make sure they don't charge the room to our card instead and leave us sitting on $700 in Disney dollars!), but if I can do it online, it would be SO much easier .

If I do need to call, anyone know what number I should call?

 

[DisBuckMan]

So this is an old thread.....but I wanted to do exactly THIS (pay our room off with our Disney Rewards card). But I can't seem to find the place that the OP is talking about on the MDE account. Nowhere do I see anything showing how much our deposit was on our room or anything. Does anyone know, has the website changed in four months and this isn't an option now? I can call Disney on Monday and ask about how to pay this off now (I want to do it before we do online check in, to make sure they don't charge the room to our card instead and leave us sitting on $700 in Disney dollars!), but if I can do it online, it would be SO much easier .

If I do need to call, anyone know what number I should call?

If you go to the "My Reservations and Tickets" page of MDE, it's right in the same block as your hotel reservation. Click on your "Remaining Balance" amount, and it'll pull up (or it may have a "make a payment" button or link there...can't remember, ours is alrady paid off).

 

[halssister]

If you go to the "My Reservations and Tickets" page of MDE, it's right in the same block as your hotel reservation. Click on your "Remaining Balance" amount, and it'll pull up (or it may have a "make a payment" button or link there...can't remember, ours is alrady paid off).

I have tried that, but there is no option on my screen to pay my balance....it doesn't even show how much my room costs, what the deposit was, etc. The only thing I can click on is "online check in", which I don't want to do until I figure out this payment issue

 

[halssister]

Wo

I have tried that, but there is no option on my screen to pay my balance....it doesn't even show how much my room costs, what the deposit was, etc. The only thing I can click on is "online check in", which I don't want to do until I figure out this payment issue

Just thinking.....would it make a difference that we booked over the phone and are doing a room only reservation (we had already purchased our tickets ahead of time)? Don't see why it would matter, but my screen looks nothing like people are describing!

 

[DisBuckMan]

Have you actually linked your reservation to MDE?

 

[georgina]

Wo

Just thinking.....would it make a difference that we booked over the phone and are doing a room only reservation (we had already purchased our tickets ahead of time)? Don't see why it would matter, but my screen looks nothing like people are describing!

My room only reservation does not show anything about remaining balance or making a payment. Probably because we don't owe anything until we check in. Package payments are due before you go, but not room-only. I usually call Disney a few days before I go and prepay my room charges using gift cards. Call them, you may be able to use your rewards card over the phone to pay it off.

 

[buzznina]

My room only reservation does not show anything about remaining balance or making a payment. Probably because we don't owe anything until we check in. Package payments are due before you go, but not room-only. I usually call Disney a few days before I go and prepay my room charges using gift cards. Call them, you may be able to use your rewards card over the phone to pay it off.

georgina is correct, for some reason they took the payment option off the RO reservations. When I posted back in January, that was what I used. Then I noticed it was no longer there when we did our March trip and it has not been seen since

 

[halssister]

My room only reservation does not show anything about remaining balance or making a payment. Probably because we don't owe anything until we check in. Package payments are due before you go, but not room-only. I usually call Disney a few days before I go and prepay my room charges using gift cards. Call them, you may be able to use your rewards card over the phone to pay it off.

Thank you for clearing that up for me......I kept thinking I must have been missing something very obvious!! I will just call them and try to use the rewards points to pay it off that way
Thanks again everyone

 

[Dean Marino]

Another way to use those Disney VISA Reward points....

We keep an active "Rewards Card" & renew it every time we need to. Once we get to a decent amount of "Reward Dollars", we stuff this on the card....

When we check in for our vacation - I ask the CM to "drain that card" - and put it on our tab as a positive account balance. We then proceed to use our Magic Bands for most minor meals, like breakfast, eating up our "positive balance". This has worked well for about the last four years .

 

[halssister]

Another way to use those Disney VISA Reward points....

We keep an active "Rewards Card" & renew it every time we need to. Once we get to a decent amount of "Reward Dollars", we stuff this on the card....

When we check in for our vacation - I ask the CM to "drain that card" - and put it on our tab as a positive account balance. We then proceed to use our Magic Bands for most minor meals, like breakfast, eating up our "positive balance". This has worked well for about the last four years .

Can they do that, give you a positive balance? That's what we were hoping to do with the balance of our rewards dollars. I want to pay off our room now (our trip isn't until the end of July, but with close to $800 on the card, I'd rather get that paid for, KWIM?), then we when check in, have them put the remainder of our rewards dollars on the account to spend, if it's possible. If not, we can just pay with the rewards card for the first couple of meals, but it would be easier to just use the magic band

 

[Dean Marino]

Can they do that, give you a positive balance? That's what we were hoping to do with the balance of our rewards dollars. I want to pay off our room now (our trip isn't until the end of July, but with close to $800 on the card, I'd rather get that paid for, KWIM?), then we when check in, have them put the remainder of our rewards dollars on the account to spend, if it's possible. If not, we can just pay with the rewards card for the first couple of meals, but it would be easier to just use the magic band

We have only done this (for about 5 years) at CHECK IN. We've never had a CM say no... consider: you have money, and Disney doesn't WANT it? .

Now, having said that - if the WDW prepayment options allow you to use a VISA card - well, the "Rewards card" IS a VISA Card. One question: have you asked Chase to issue you a (free) Rewards Card, and transferred your "Reward Dollars" to it?

 

[georgina]

I think it depends on who you get on the phone. I did have the balance of one GC on my room account after prepaying the room once. (I used a $200 GC for the remaining $100 and had a $100 credit.) Not very CM will do this however.

 

[halssister]

Now, having said that - if the WDW prepayment options allow you to use a VISA card - well, the "Rewards card" IS a VISA Card. One question: have you asked Chase to issue you a (free) Rewards Card, and transferred your "Reward Dollars" to it?

Yes, we already have our rewards card, and just transferred all our rewards dollars to it earlier today, so we are ready to go there . We paid for our previous trip four years ago the exact same way......but back then, there was no online check in, and no magic bands, so we just used our rewards card instead of our visa until we ran out of money on it. We are trying to streamline this trip and charge everything to the magic bands so we don't have to mess with a bunch of cards (tickets, gift cards, credit cards etc)!

 

[Dean Marino]

Yes, we already have our rewards card, and just transferred all our rewards dollars to it earlier today, so we are ready to go there . We paid for our previous trip four years ago the exact same way......but back then, there was no online check in, and no magic bands, so we just used our rewards card instead of our visa until we ran out of money on it. We are trying to streamline this trip and charge everything to the magic bands so we don't have to mess with a bunch of cards (tickets, gift cards, credit cards etc)!

Ahhhhh - got you . OK, even with online check in.... you can STILL go to the Desk at check-in. Just tell the nice person with a smile and an IPAD that you intend to do so . Once there? work with the CM to stuff the cash on your card onto your account as a positive balance . BINGO - use those Magic Bands, knowing you have a positive balance .

Disney TRIES with all of this "Internet stuff".... poor souls, for the most part they are just confused . Many (or most) things still need to be done via human to human interaction.

 

[buzznina]

The Rewards card is totally different then GCs, they will have no issue taking the rewards card and holding it towards expenses.