Spending Money - Travellers Cheques, Credit Card, Cash???

[cammie1229]

Just wondering the best way to take spending money. I've always used travellers cheques in the past.

Are American Express cheques accepted all over Disney with no problem? Any minimum purchase you have to make to cash one?

I know you can charge things to your room but I'm concerned that makes it way too easy to spend way too much money!

Ta!

 

[Fionasmommy]

I just use my debit card at the resort ATM if I need cash. My bank refunds the service fees, so it's really convenient.

 

[Steve_WDW_TRIP]

I use my debit/atm card. It is the easiest way. I charge somethings to my room too like meals. makes it easyer to track my spending.

 

[c&m]

We usually do all three. DH and I each carry:

- About $100 (in denominations of $20) in travellers cheques. I've never had a problem cashing out my travellers cheques at Disney, but that's because I never go higher than $20 denominations.

- About $50 (mostly $1/$5 bills) for tips, cab fares, Starbucks, kid snacks, etc.

- A credit card for everything else.

There's always backup should a credit card goes missing, cash gets stolen, or whatever. We almost never spend all our travellers cheques (always come home with some $20s), but we do like the fact that we're not relying on just one cash source.

If you worry about overspending, just give yourself a spending limit at the beginning of the day and evaluate every expenditure based on that figure for the rest of your day. It works for me!!!

 

[Disney_Mama]

I know it's bad but we always do cash. Only if we want a big ticket item do we use our credit card and pay it when we get home. One day when we loose our cash or it gets stollen I will go to travelers cheques.

 

[mickeywho?]

We do a combo too.
Bring some cash ($100 - mix of small bills for tips and snacks at the airport etc.)
Bring amex travellers cheques (large & small denominations)
The tc's are our spending budget for the trip. We do the dining plan so it really is only for souvies and breakfast.
We bring 1 credit card only so the hotel will allow us to charge our spending to the room but we've never charged anything to the card. We put all our daily spending on the room and go to the front desk every other night to pay it off with the travellers cheques. We don't bring anything to the parks with us - only our room key! (It's our park ticket and charge card all in one!)
Last year, after checking out, I had no cash left and our room key had been handed in, my kids wanted snacks to take with them to the airport. All I had left at the end of the trip was a $100 amex tc and no cash. The snack counter at the hotel let us use it no problem for a <$10 transaction.

Of course, if we went over our planned budget, I would charge to the credit card we have with us and pay it off when we got back. So far, we've not seen anything we really had to buy that was expensive enough to blow our budget - but you never say never! This year I'm going with my mom and sister and they're all set to go to the premium outlets...

 

[peigirl]

We used all three.

Travellers cheques were in $100, 50, and 20. I used my credit card for the hotel rooms on the drive down and back. I had some cash too.

When we went to the parks, I took some cash but did charge a couple of meals to the room.

The only place we could not get a travellers cheque cashed was on the way back in Maryland and Conn.

Paula

 

[jtdl]

We used all three as well. A small bit of cash. Credit card for big expenses - hotel rooms enroute, in Daytona, etc. The rest was all Travellers cheques. I had demoninations in $20, $50 and $100. I had no problem cashing any of them anywhere. Even cashed $100 ones for small purchases in WDW in order to have cash for the rest of the day. That was how I regulated our money. We were allowed X number of dollars per day and I had separated the travellers cheques into envelopes - one envelope for each day. It worked out great.

 

[Disneyof3]

We do cash and credit card. We bring enough cash to feed us on the way down (we drive straight through) so supper the night we leave and breakfast in the am and maybe lunch depending on when we get to Kissimee. Everything else is put on the credit card and then when we get home my pay will head right to it. I feel safer having just little cash on us and then the cards. My husband is a officier, so if anyone tries to pick pocket him, he has training and knows all the tricks they can and will try to do.

 

[drag n' fly]

We are bringing cash for tipping and housekeeping only. We are using our credit card for everything else. The reason is we can collect points and the purchase warranty is nice also. We will bring our bank card but probably won't use it. We will pay any purchases off at the end of the month so interest is not an issue. A trip to WDW is so much easier in terms of planning because your trip is paid for before you arrive which makes it really nice. All you need to bring is play money and make sure you have enough in case of an emergency.(plane tickets home early etc!)

 

[son3disfan]

We do all three as well , but remember for Canadians there is a hidden 2.5% (or 3% for some credit cards) exchange rate fee. My sister and I had a big arguement over this. She said " ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!" Because it's a hidden fee. If the exchange rate is at 1.26 on the dolar , you might see 1.29 or even 1.30. Not a big deal for small purchases , but it hurts on the big ones. We used our card to pay off the balance of our trip to Disney . It was $1405.00. My credit card was charged and in Canadian it was $1709.89. Almost $44.53 more then expected by my calculations of the daily exchange rate.Just something to watch....

 

[laura001]

Just wondering the best way to take spending money. I've always used travellers cheques in the past.

Are American Express cheques accepted all over Disney with no problem? Any minimum purchase you have to make to cash one?

I know you can charge things to your room but I'm concerned that makes it way too easy to spend way too much money!

Ta!

We always take a little bit of cash (for water etc.), then we put charging priveleges on our room card and we use that for anything that is not small.

We don't like to have any money owing after our vacation, so.........before we go, we put money on our CC so that it has a Credit Balance, then we use our room card to charge whatever we want, then when we check out we pay our charges with our credit card and then don't have to worry because the money was sitting safely there.

 

[mickeywho?]

We do all three as well , but remember for Canadians there is a hidden 2.5% (or 3% for some credit cards) exchange rate fee. My sister and I had a big arguement over this. She said " ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!" Because it's a hidden fee. If the exchange rate is at 1.26 on the dolar , you might see 1.29 or even 1.30. Not a big deal for small purchases , but it hurts on the big ones. We used our card to pay off the balance of our trip to Disney . It was $1405.00. My credit card was charged and in Canadian it was $1709.89. Almost $44.53 more then expected by my calculations of the daily exchange rate.Just something to watch....

Yup! I actually called amex and bmo mastercard to ask before putting on a large purchase (our dvc) and amex both told us 2.5% although bmo's initial rate was slightly better so it worked out better for us to charge through them. The banks selling rate for us$ is not necessarily the same as what you see posted daily on the news so call around before you go.