Paying for trip with Disney Gift Cards from Target

[Tink&Belle's Mom]

This is a question for those who have actually paid for their vacation at WDW with the gift cards from Target. My husband is a little skeptical about this working, and is asking me to get clarification on a couple things.

1) Is any kind of hold placed on the gift card, to where only a partial payment is allowed to be taken of each one? We have paid in the past for our stay with a Visa gift card, and we got burned by this policy; something needed to be left on the card, since that was the only form of payment, until checkout as a "damage deposit" type of thing. So are we going to have a bunch of gift cards with, say, a $5 amount left on each one after our vacation is over? Or will they take it at face value, apply the full amount, and then the card is "dead"?

2) Can you take the card back into Target and reload a used one, or is each a one time only deal?

3) I have seen a few threads on which people stated they had trouble with a CM allowing them to use multiple cards to pay for tickets, etc. recently. Is Disney putting an end to this practice? Don't really want to spend all my $$ for the trip on the gift cards, only to be told we can no longer do our payment this way!

TIA for all your help!!

 

[t_daniels]

Curious on this too.

We always see the signs in the Disney Store saying you could pay for your trip with gift cards....

 

[chimilady]

I just got back from my vacation almost 4 weeks ago (sigh) completely paid for with GCs purchased at Target.

Over time, we bought about 2K worth of cards.

We would call after every Target trip and put money towards the room. We'd then write the date on the card with a sharpie to know we called it in.

Then when we ate at restaurants, we would charge the tip back to the room, so every few days, we would take a GC to the front desk and then pay down our charges.

Most of my payments were made over the phone prior to arrival.

Overall, I found this saved us $100. For me, $100 was worth it, because I already shop at Target. Every one of our character meals came out to be about $100 give or take the time of day. So it was like getting one of those character meals for free, so that's worth it for me.

 

[mom2cse]

I got my gift cards at our grocery store to get a deal on gas, but I imagine I could still answer your questions from my experience.

I called yesterday to have all 6 cards applied to my reservation. It took a bit of time, but the agent had no problems applying each one to our account in full and my balance has gone down exactally as I expected it to. She did say that we need to be certain to keep the cards because if we would cancel, the refund wold go directly back to those cards.

I suspect that Target would have trouble reloading the cards, but I can't say that for sure. As far as needing a credit card, I believe they ask to have you put one file when you check in, if you do not have one linked to your account. That would be used to take care of any damages or charges you make while at the hotel.

We still have a bit of a balance left on our trip, and if the grocery store we use runs their deal again, I would have no problem buying a few more gift cards to eat up what we owe.

Hope this helps!

 

[Marionnette]

This is a question for those who have actually paid for their vacation at WDW with the gift cards from Target. My husband is a little skeptical about this working, and is asking me to get clarification on a couple things.

1) Is any kind of hold placed on the gift card, to where only a partial payment is allowed to be taken of each one? We have paid in the past for our stay with a Visa gift card, and we got burned by this policy; something needed to be left on the card, since that was the only form of payment, until checkout as a "damage deposit" type of thing. So are we going to have a bunch of gift cards with, say, a $5 amount left on each one after our vacation is over? Or will they take it at face value, apply the full amount, and then the card is "dead"?

2) Can you take the card back into Target and reload a used one, or is each a one time only deal?

3) I have seen a few threads on which people stated they had trouble with a CM allowing them to use multiple cards to pay for tickets, etc. recently. Is Disney putting an end to this practice? Don't really want to spend all my $$ for the trip on the gift cards, only to be told we can no longer do our payment this way!

TIA for all your help!!

1. I have used Disney Gift cards that I've purchased directly from Disney by using my rewards card. The ones that Target sells are no different than the ones you can buy from disneystore.com. You can spend every last penny from the card with no "$1 hold" being placed on the card prior to charging the balance.
   
2. You cannot take the card back to Target to be refilled but you can get it refilled at a Disney Store even if you bought the card elsewhere.
   
3. Cheshire Figment has posted many times that the ticketing windows can apply as many gift cards as you have in your possession to pay for a park pass. I have also used more than one GC to pay for food in the restaurants, merchandise in the stores and online to pay on my reservation.

Just a couple of words of caution:
You cannot "return" a Disney GC purchased at Target to a Disney Store for a refund but you can get a full refund from Disney IF you purchased it from Disney AND IF it has not been used AND IF you have your original receipt.

If you have to cancel your trip, the money goes back on the original form of payment. So that means that you need to hang on to those zero-balance GCs until after your trip is complete.

 

[Putz]

We just put a deposit down on our trip using a $500 Disney gift card purchased at Kroger. Got 500 fuel points good for .50 off a gallon of gas.

When paying online, just selected pay with gift card, punched in the numbers, and it worked fine.

We will be paying the entire trip this way to get the fuel points as well.

 

[Tink&Belle's Mom]

Thanks everyone for setting my DH mind at ease! Thanks too for the tip to keep the gift cards in case we cancel the trip! I might not have thought to do that!

 

[judomom2]

I am using my target debit card to buy the gift cards which saves me 5% and in the mail this weekend target sent a coupon for 5% off which can be combined with target card discount. We are buying 900 worth of cards for just about 800. We also have 2 5 dollar target cards from shopkick and 1 2 target card from shopkick.

 

[nefritz]

I am using my target debit card to buy the gift cards which saves me 5% and in the mail this weekend target sent a coupon for 5% off which can be combined with target card discount. We are buying 900 worth of cards for just about 800. We also have 2 5 dollar target cards from shopkick and 1 2 target card from shopkick.

Hey how did you get your extra 5%?? Curious if this something I should look for or you were just special or pharmacy reward?

 

[MadiWI]

We paid for our whole package - about $2500 - with Target $50 gift cards that I purchased with the pharmacy rewards/target credit card discounts. It worked great! The only "inconvenience" was that it took me about 30 minutes on the phone with a CM to apply all of the cards to my final payment, but that was totally worth saving almost 10%!

 

[nefritz]

We paid for our whole package - about $2500 - with Target $50 gift cards that I purchased with the pharmacy rewards/target credit card discounts. It worked great! The only "inconvenience" was that it took me about 30 minutes on the phone with a CM to apply all of the cards to my final payment, but that was totally worth saving almost 10%!

I have reached my five prescription quota, can you tell me how long it takes to receive the reward?
We have to buy about 79 of the cards, very nervous about that! Did you do all yours in one transaction? I'm thinking it will stop me at a certain limit?

 

[Dink37]

I have reached my five prescription quota, can you tell me how long it takes to receive the reward?
We have to buy about 79 of the cards, very nervous about that! Did you do all yours in one transaction? I'm thinking it will stop me at a certain limit?

I've bought $500 at once with no problem. The problem you will most likely encounter is finding 79 cards. You should plan on hitting every Target in town that day. The most I've ever seen around one store is about 12 of them, and was told that what was on the floor was all that they had.

 

[nefritz]

I've bought $500 at once with no problem. The problem you will most likely encounter is finding 79 cards. You should plan on hitting every Target in town that day. The most I've ever seen around one store is about 12 of them, and was told that what was on the floor was all that they had.

Thanks for that I thought the same thing and went to local tag yesterday they currently had 38 on floor and at least a hundred in the back. But I'm sure that can change from now till 27th

 

[judomom2]

I have no idea why they sent it to me but it was good timing

 

[christianweecare]

I have been purchasing Disney GC from Target for months to pay down our 2013 DCL cruise. I just call them into our travel agent once a month. Unfortunately, the past two months our local Target has had no DGC! The last time I went into the store I ask an associate to check their system. No DGC in the system.

 

[sydneysmom]

We haven't had any trouble at all using the gift cards. I booked our trip last week ( YAY!!) and I had been saving up Disney gift cards that I got at Kroger (for the fuel points).

I used our Disney Visa to make the initial $200 deposit, (and I only did that in case a Disney visa discount comes along later) but then I went out to the website and entered each of my cards in to pay down the balance. It took a while, because I had to add one at a time, but the total cards I had came to $ 3150. But I did one card, then checked out. And repeated over and over. Each time they went through no problem and it was for the amount I entered in. (if the gift card was $ 500, I entered $ 500) The next day I got an itemized email w/ all of the payments listed.

They didn't leave anything on the gift cards at all... but I'm holding onto all of them "just in case". I'll probably continue to buy more as we go to pay the remaining balance, but they really made it VERY easy online to use them.

 

[IBelieveInTheMagic]

I am using my target debit card to buy the gift cards which saves me 5% and in the mail this weekend target sent a coupon for 5% off which can be combined with target card discount. We are buying 900 worth of cards for just about 800. We also have 2 5 dollar target cards from shopkick and 1 2 target card from shopkick.

Just curious if you have already done this? I'm taking my Mom on a DCL cruise in December and she has the Target Red card. We also got this 5% off coupon card in the mail Saturday and she tried to do this Sat night to get the full $50 in savings and it only took off $23 at the register. She was then directed to the customer service desk and they gave her the spiel about it not being valid on gift cards. She knows how they work as she often buys the Disney cards for me and I pay her back. She ended up writing a letter to HQ and is awaiting a response.

I wanted to mention too the most you can save with this mailer 5% coupon card is $50.

It would appear their registers took off the 5% from the Red card but it would not on the coupon card on the Disney cards.

Heather

 

[nefritz]

Sure wish I would get that mailer! Hopefully all works out for your mom I'm anxious to get mine done, I keep hearing stories that makes me think they're going to be putting a stop to this

 

[judomom2]

i used mine today I bought 900.00 worth of disney cards for 800.25 without any problems at all. I hope your mom gets hers taken care of.

 

[littlesparkler]

I just bought a few and got my 5% off. I also have some on my baby registry and have been told that after the shower date passes, Target will send me a 10% off coupon for anything on the registry. So, apparently I will be getting 15% off.