Staying onsite- Hotels.com GC or Target GC?

[TabbyShabby]

My husband and I will be headed to WDW in October this year. We don't have solid dates now as we'll be traveling with my best friend whose husband attends a work conference at WDW every year in October but the exact dates haven't been released yet. We're thinking mid October. I'm a long time user of Swagbucks, Mypoints, MPlus and all their apps, Shopify, Perks TV, Receipt Hog, and a whole slew of others. We paid for our Disneyland trip last year with my earnings, so I'm eager to repeat with WDW! My husband has never been, but I've been 5 times, but not in the last 7 years. I've always stayed onsite and want to keep it that way.

Enough with the background, now with my question, eh?
I currently have $800 in Southwest gift cards via Amazon, which should be about what we need for flights from Seattle to Orlando, and will now be focusing on saving for our room. I've set up a Disney Vacation Account, but currently only have $100 in it. My plan was to focus on redeeming Target gift cards then buying Disney GC and adding them to the vacation account. Now I see that I can buy hotels.com gift cards on Amazon and also with Swagbucks. I was thinking of perhaps redeeming my Swagbucks for their virtual Master Card/Visa cards then buying Hotels.com gift cards using Swagbucks' My Gift Card Plus, earning max Swagbucks on my purchase. A couple of things that worry me. First, both Amazon and Target have been iffy with allowing their gift cards to purchase other gift cards. I haven't had a problem with Amazon as long as I'm buying non Amazon gift cards, but after Ebay's crack down, I still worry I'll be left with a few hundred bucks in Amazon gift cards I can't use. Same with Target. And yes, I realize I could always resell them or use them then put the money into my savings account, but for me and my OCD mind, it's just easier to keep this all separate from our bank account. My final worry is that I'll redeem $1000+ worth of Hotels.com gift certificates, only to find out A. They no longer have onsite properties and B. They'll be significantly more than what I could get through Disney.

Just a few other factors. My son is in the Navy so we'll be purchasing our tickets through him at a discount. We have no interest in having the dining plan.

That's a lot of info for a "simple" question. If you've made it this far, congrats! And thank you for any help.

 

[starry_solo]

Will your son be going with you on the trip? If so, maybe he can look to see what military discounts they have for on-site resorts and/or Shades of Green?

 

[TabbyShabby]

Sadly, no, he will be under the sea somewhere as a nuke engineer on a sub. It's going to be the first time at a Disney park without him. Kind of blocking that part out, Thinking about it makes me too sad. But since he's as big a Dis fan as I am, we already have plans for a quick trip to Disneyland when he's back. He's based out of San Diego, which will make it much easier to plan on the fly. Thank you for thinking of that option. It's one I hope we can use before he's finished with the Navy.

 

[ellie05]

You should check if the is a max amount of GC you can use for hotels. Com I know Orbitz and cheap tickets offer the same discounts Disney offers but not sure about hotels.com. Also you won't be able to use salute tickets since your son won't be with you and you can find better discount on tickets than what bases offer if they are not the salute tickets.

 

[TabbyShabby]

Good to know! Thank you. I did check with hotels.com and there's no limit to how many gift cards you can use, unlike Southwest who will only let you use four cards per transaction. Hotels.com will only allow you a certain number (can't recall the exact number), but they will allow you to combine cards for an unlimited amount. I also didn't notice anywhere noting that they limit the amount that can be paid with a gift card, but I'll call tomorrow just to make sure. Didn't know about the limitations on the Salute tickets. Very nice to know. Now back to the budget to account for it. Thanks again!