Paying for room with gift cards

[thinkerbell]

Is there any way to check in on line and pay for your room with gift cards? We don’t want to pay ahead of time because we have heard horror stories when having to cancel. I read where you can use gift cards to pay for meals on the app. Just wondering if you can do the same with your room now.
Thanks!

 

[TISHLOVESDISNEY]

I paid for my room only rooms in March, 2 nights before we left. It's automated now, too, so it was easy peasy.

 

[Dug720]

You can call ahead and use your gift cards. Do yourself and the CM a favor though - condense the cards to as few as possible (you can have $1000 per card) on disneygiftcard.com though.

Actually, combine them to as few as possible even if you are going to use them in person for your credit card to be refunded too.

 

[DizneyFamof4]

You can call ahead and use your gift cards. Do yourself and the CM a favor though - condense the cards to as few as possible (you can have $1000 per card) on disneygiftcard.com though.

Actually, combine them to as few as possible even if you are going to use them in person for your credit card to be refunded too.

This We always use disneygiftcard site to combine our GCs and then we will payoff the room with them before we leave. Then during our trip, every 2-3 days I would go to the lobby and payoff our room charges using the GC so nothing hits our CC

 

[JFDIS]

Disney typically makes it very easy when it comes to taking your money lol. You can take your gift card/s to the lobby and a cm will apply them to your bill as a negative charge. I have done this at Poly.

 

[Dug720]

Disney typically makes it very easy when it comes to taking your money lol. You can take your gift card/s to the lobby and a cm will apply them to your bill as a negative charge. I have done this at Poly.

When was this that you were allowed to pre-apply them? I was told in 2017, 2018, and 2019 that they could not apply gift cards or additional money until there was a charge on the room - and then only for that amount charged.

 

[JFDIS]

Maybe I’m confusing this. In my case I was paying room/magic band charges not actually the room. Aug 2020 (I always pay my room off far in advance) I went to the lobby on the third day of my trip and applied the gc. Do you mean you can’t apply the gc upon arrival or does the room have to be paid for before your stay begins? I’m truly curious..

 

[dmband]

There is no “do yourself a favor” by combining gift cards.
It is a complete pain if you have a lot, mostly because you can only have five loaded in the site so you are always adding/deleting.

the best part of doing it though is if you lose a card because you can just get any card somewhere, log in and transfer the funds to the new card.

in 2018 we applied GC to our account at the front desk without issue, prior to actual charges. At the end we had actually gone slightly over and they refunded the difference back to my credit card.
I don’t think they would have done that had we not paid for part of the room via cc though

 

[kylenne]

Maybe I’m confusing this. In my case I was paying room/magic band charges not actually the room. Aug 2020 (I always pay my room off far in advance) I went to the lobby on the third day of my trip and applied the gc. Do you mean you can’t apply the gc upon arrival or does the room have to be paid for before your stay begins? I’m truly curious..

I always pay for my room with discounted gift cards well ahead of time so I have no balance due at check in and I was told 2 times at 2 different resorts (Poly and POFQ in 2018 and 2019 respectively) that I couldn’t apply a gift card in advance to cover future magic band charges when I tried. So I just pay down the charges a couple of times through the trip so nothing hits my CC.

 

[Dug720]

Maybe I’m confusing this. In my case I was paying room/magic band charges not actually the room. Aug 2020 (I always pay my room off far in advance) I went to the lobby on the third day of my trip and applied the gc. Do you mean you can’t apply the gc upon arrival or does the room have to be paid for before your stay begins? I’m truly curious..

My room and tickets are always paid off before my stay.

On the cruiseline, you can take a gift card to guest services and have them put any amount up to the amount of the gift card on your account. They tell you to hang onto the card as anything remaining will go back onto it at the end of the cruise.

At the resort, I have asked multiple stays to put money on my room using a gift card that I could then charge against and multiple times I've been told no. That I can come daily (or as frequently as I like) to pay off any charges, but they cannot put money onto the room for me to charge against as I can on the cruise line. Most CMs have said that "because we wouldn't have a way to refund it" is the reason - I assume at some point too many people "lost" their gift cards and it caused problems. (Though they could just as easily be "lost" on the ship. So really that makes no sense to me.)

 

[Dug720]

There is no “do yourself a favor” by combining gift cards.
It is a complete pain if you have a lot, mostly because you can only have five loaded in the site so you are always adding/deleting.

You can make different accounts with different email addresses to have them.

Better than spending over an hour on the phone reading off multiple small amount gift cards.

 

[JFDIS]

Thank you for explaining.

 

[starry_solo]

Is there any way to check in on line and pay for your room with gift cards? We don’t want to pay ahead of time because we have heard horror stories when having to cancel. I read where you can use gift cards to pay for meals on the app. Just wondering if you can do the same with your room now.
Thanks!

No. Checking in online requires a credit card.
Combine your gift cards to the $1000 max per card.
When you check in at the front desk, pay off your room with your gift cards and get a receipt.

Pay for your food, drinks, souvenirs with your other gift cards

 

[DizneyFamof4]

I personally would not wait til check-in day to pay for my room if you are wanting to pay it with GCs. Because once the WDW computers roll over for the day (4 or 5 AM) and the first thing they do is charge all unpaid rooms to the CC's on file. Yes, you can have them reverse the charges but sometimes it may take a few days to get off your CC.

 

[thinkerbell]

Ok. Thanks all. I should have said that we always pay at the desk with gift cards so I did know that was an option. We also do like others have said and we go every other day to pay off what we have charged so it won’t go on our card. I have read on here that they really like for you to check in on-line now so I was just wondering if that was an option...to use the gift cards on-line at check in. I guess we will just do it the old fashioned way. We really don’t want to pay before we go for fear that we would have to cancel and we would spend forever trying to get our money back. I will combine our cards and pay at check in.

 

[starry_solo]

I personally would not wait til check-in day to pay for my room if you are wanting to pay it with GCs. Because once the WDW computers roll over for the day (4 or 5 AM) and the first thing they do is charge all unpaid rooms to the CC's on file. Yes, you can have them reverse the charges but sometimes it may take a few days to get off your CC.

No, you don't get charged for your room when you check in. You are only charged the first night's deposit. Day of check-out is when you get charged the cost of the room (early in the morning). But the other charges you make (using your magic band), yes, you will get charged once the charges hit a certain amount + a hold.

 

[Bjkandma]

With gift cards you want to pay your balance on a vacation package 30 days prior to arrival. If only room booked, you want to pay before 3 am on date of arrival. Otherwise, Disney has been charging credit card on file (you will have credit card on file if doing online check in - also you need a credit card to book any dining reservations.

 

[DizneyFamof4]

No, you don't get charged for your room when you check in. You are only charged the first night's deposit. Day of check-out is when you get charged the cost of the room (early in the morning). But the other charges you make (using your magic band), yes, you will get charged once the charges hit a certain amount + a hold.

When did this start? I know a few years ago, they were still charging at check-in. The last few years our reservations are through a TA so I have to pay it off before check-in.

 

[starry_solo]

When did this start? I know a few years ago, they were still charging at check-in. The last few years our reservations are through a TA so I have to pay it off before check-in.

Maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe we've just been lucky. The times I've gone with friends (not DVC) where the room is booked with them as the lead guest, their room charge (cost of room) didn't hit until the end of the trip.