So, don't ever do what I just did.

[larryz]

This is what I was going to recommend. We used the Disney Vacation Account for our last family trip. It was so much easier than managing multiple cards and we earned gift cards as well.

Great minds think alike!

 

[soniam]

I hope they get all of your refund to you soon without any hassles. I am in a bad refund situation with my flights. Last week they cancelled our flight to Europe for right before xmas. The airline then booked us on a flight 2 days earlier That won't work, because DS will still be in school. So we called the travel company that we booked through, and they finally agreed to give us our full refund. They told us today that it would take 6-8 weeks, and it's for a few thousand dollars We already booked new flights at worse times at an extra cost of $1500 dollars, because it's so close to the travel date now So there's alot of money going out, but the refund isn't coming in soon. Talk about criminal.

 

[ajjoplin1]

No, you absolutely cannot do that. I see that rumor floating around all the time, and it's completely inaccurate. The Disney Store will not be able to consolidate your gift cards. You cannot buy a gift card with a gift card at the Disney store.

However, you can now combine cards at www.disneygiftcard.com. So, that really solves the problem.

This is what I was thinking as well. I will be using the GC method this time around, and absolutely plan on using disneygiftcard.com! Someone on the DIS told me about it, and I am so glad they did. Will be a lot easier to use one card instead of 40-50....easier for me and the CM!

 

[Halloweenqueen]

You can absolutely consolidate cards. Disney just started this a couple of weeks ago. Go to disneygiftcard.com. I think you can merge cards to one card of up to $1000. You can do as many as four or five $1000 on one account.

 

[slbgnb]

So happy to know about the gift card web site. Will be so much easier. One question. I buy all my gift cards at the grocery store (we earn free gas that way), but they only have 1 design. If I use that web site and combine them, can I put the balance on 1 of their cute designs or do they just combine onto a card that I already have? Thanks!

 

[hiroMYhero]

So happy to know about the gift card web site. Will be so much easier. One question. I buy all my gift cards at the grocery store (we earn free gas that way), but they only have 1 design. If I use that web site and combine them, can I put the balance on 1 of their cute designs or do they just combine onto a card that I already have? Thanks!

They combine onto one of the cards that you already have.

 

[Jadyreen1282]

This is good to know. Great information.

 

[DarkatSpock]

Oh geez, I better not cancel.......I used 41 gift cards!!!

Yikes!! I used over 45 cards for our dream Disney vacation last summer.... We spent nearly 2 1/2 weeks in DW. It would have been horrible to go through each one if there was a refund or problem.

 

[DarkatSpock]

I had a similar situation this summer. Luckily, I had another trip planned, so I just decided to hold onto them to use toward that trip. They were refunded for me all at once, about three weeks later. I did have to call to go through cards/values individually, as I had all the cards in a bag, and only the ones from the deposit were refunded. (We had a split stay, so many were used for the first resort). Lesson learned... Label gift cards and keep them organized by what payment they went towards. That would have saved me time! To be honest, I am leaning towards not bothering with the 5% savings this time around by using large batches of gc. Not sure it is worth my time, and the risk of a single lost or mischarged card tends to outweigh the savings.

The 5% savings might not seem like a big deal with the effort or potential problems with gift cards, but..... Our local grocery store (Giant Eagle) has a gift card fuel perks plan. It's .10 per $50 spent in gift cards and often they double it to .20 ... that's 10 or 20 cents off per gallon of gas. It accrues so I had over $40 off PER GALLON of gas! That made for many free tanks of gas. I drive a gas guzzler, sadly, so it really helped!

I don't like to juggle gift cards, either, but sometimes, they are worth using for reservations/vacations.

 

[slickpoetry]

All's well that ends well. The cards have all been refunded and I paid off my trip yesterday with them. Luckily I had plenty of time to wait--our final payment on this trip wasn't due until December 18.

 

[FlightlessDuck]

This is also another good reason not to use gift cards, even if you save money. Besides the amount of time it takes to buy gift cards over and over, if you have to cancel, you get back... gift cards.

 

[slickpoetry]

This is also another good reason not to use gift cards, even if you save money. Besides the amount of time it takes to buy gift cards over and over, if you have to cancel, you get back... gift cards.

I saved $400 off my Disney costs and $200 off my airfare by buying reduced price gift cards. $600 isn't anything to sneeze at. And if I had to cancel this trip, I know those gift cards will still be good for my next trip in 2017.

 

[disneypanda11]

Thanks for sharing this OP! You'd think Disney would have a better way to handle this.

I'll second (third?) the recommendation to use the Disney Vacation Account. We've put our gift cards on that site for the last two trips and it's been very convenient!