Newbie Planning Questions! Disney gift cards??

[UrbaneTurtle]

Hey, everyone! I've lurked a couple times here as I dreamt about planning a Disney trip with my girlfriend since...oh, two years ago. Now that we both have jobs, I pulled the trigger and made a room-only reservation for June! I'm going to surprise her on Christmas with custom park maps to announce we are going!

Now, I have a few questions because I'm a pretty obsessive planner. I've been looking over just about every website and forum I can find for tips and I feel well prepared to start! The one thing I didn't realize was that if you book a room-only reservation you only pay a deposit. My strategy was to pay off the vacation with the Disney credit card I opened recently, but I just realized after booking that you pay off your hotel stay at the time of check-in! Uh oh, that interferes with the way I wanted to maximize my reward points for the trip.

So, my question is about Disney gift cards. Are you able to use Disney gift cards to pay for a room reservation? I think the answer is yes,but I want to check with the multitude of experts here. Are there any restaurants in Disney that don't take them? I was thinking of using gift cards for at least some of them.

What is the best strategy here, to maximize my Disney credits? I'm sure some of you are pros at this!

My only other questions are unrelated, so I'll leave it here for now. Thanks, folks!

 

[siskaren]

You don't have to wait until check-in to pay off the balance, that's just when you have to have it paid off by. You can make payments as often as you want between now and then, but you would need to call to do it, whereas if you had a package, you could do it online.

 

[UrbaneTurtle]

You don't have to wait until check-in to pay off the balance, that's just when you have to have it paid off by. You can make payments as often as you want between now and then, but you would need to call to do it, whereas if you had a package, you could do it online.

Gotcha, thanks for the answer. Feel silly for even asking without even trying something so simple!

 

[agavegirl1]

There are a few restaurants on property that don't take the gift cards but they are the ones not owned by Disney, such as those at the Swan/Dolphin. I purchased Disney gift cards in $50 increments a few at a time spread over many months. If you are trying to maximize your reward points, you could use your reward card to purchase them. For my DBF and I, used about $1400 worth of gift cards and reward points for all food, beverages and incidentals for our 9 day stay. I have $22 left on my last gift card. We just used the cards themselves for purchases and kept track of the balances on the Disney Gift Card App (free) on my phone. The app keeps a running balance for each card entered. Easy.