Related to the credit card thread..

[HHSTigerFan]

For those that do long WDW vacations and take no CC's, how do you pay for your trip and what do you take... cash, debit cards, giftcards??

 

[emh1129]

We have our debit card with us, but just as a back up. We save up disney gift cards for our spending.. we place them on the room and then just carry the room key with us for charging.

 

[pezheadmeg]

Easy, the trip is paid for before I go.

I take the debit card for back-up--last time I only used it because I forgot my cash envelope one day. Granted I'm mall based for work, so it's easy to get a Disney gift card for about half the budget. Then I usually take cash and break it up day by day. If I'm doing the DP, it's even less cash. Just enough to cover the tips.

 

[Colleen27]

I have a debit card linked to an account that only has money it in when we're using it, so we transfer the funds there to book/pay off trips and to use for spending money. We sometimes get gift cards for spending money, especially for the kids, but I don't like to do too much that way because it isn't convertible back to cash if we don't spend it all.

 

[deerhart]

I use my debit card, though I do have my visa card in my purse just in case of emergency (like need to change flights, get stuck etc..)

 

[HHSTigerFan]

We have our debit card with us, but just as a back up. We save up disney gift cards for our spending.. we place them on the room and then just carry the room key with us for charging.

When you do this, wait and get a few big ones??? Or buy them in smaller $100 increments??? And then do you copy the back of the cards and take that with you as well???

Right now, we have rented DVC points (paid for) and one park hopper for our 4 year old paid for... But thats about all I can pay for ahead of time, the other 3 park tickets must be bought at the park because we are using GAD vouchers and the DDP can't be paid for until we get there as well.. I do have $300 in Shell giftcards bought for the triip..

I was just going to use our debit card, but I am nervous taking only that as a few months ago I had my card cancelled because of a fraud alert..

 

[emh1129]

When you do this, wait and get a few big ones??? Or buy them in smaller $100 increments??? And then do you copy the back of the cards and take that with you as well???

Right now, we have rented DVC points (paid for) and one park hopper for our 4 year old paid for... But thats about all I can pay for ahead of time, the other 3 park tickets must be bought at the park because we are using GAD vouchers and the DDP can't be paid for until we get there as well.. I do have $300 in Shell giftcards bought for the triip..

I was just going to use our debit card, but I am nervous taking only that as a few months ago I had my card cancelled because of a fraud alert..

We do it mostly for saving purposes.. so that the budget is established and kept separate.
I usually buy the $100 cards from the website and a few $50 cards from our grocery store (I keep the activation slips & receipts).
I just sold some things on Craig's List (I'm determined to fund our trip through this and consignment) so I took the cash and bought gift cards there.
I like having the money 'ear-marked' (no pun intended ) for Disney. Plus the website has such cute designs! It makes it really fun for us to save for our highly-anticipated trip. Because what we have saved up is all that we allow ourselves to spend- every Mickey Bar must be accounted for

When we are checking in, I just hand them over and then get the itemized receipt that shows the value of each card that we gave them and the total credit on our room. I always look at it carefully, but I've never had a problem. Last time we actually had quite a few of them of various amounts..They didn't mind, just swiped each one quickly and we were on our way.
I haven't photocopied them in the past, but that might be a good idea in case they were lost somehow. But it's just a short flight for us and then we are at the check-in desk ready to hand them off, so I don't really carry them for that long.

And, on the one time that we did have a negative balance at check-out, we were refunded in cash.

I do bring my debit just in case, but I prefer not to use it if I don't *have* to.