To charge to the room or not? PrePay or not?

[DisneyGal358]

i remember seeing on here someone paying an additional ammount at the front desk and requesting it be placed on their room card at the start of the vacation (ie giving the hotel $500 cash to be credited to your room and it coming off little by little while you use the card in the parks). does anybody do this? i'm a college student and would rather not put more than i have to on my credit card - books already max me out and i hate carrying a high balance on my cards. i had thought about bringing travelers checks and handing them over at the hotel rather than dealing with them in the parks. anybody ever done this or had good/bad luck with this method??

 

[jann1033]

we used a debit card to do this...they gave us a $500 limit on the room card which we used ( way to fast! ) then went in, they charged it through and gave us another..some had posted they had prepaid by over paying their room and it worked the same way but disney had messed up so much of my ressies I was afraid to do it . they may have straightened out the new computer sysytem by now.(??????)

the debit card way worked great for us, minimal cash/cards to carry so we left everything else in the safe each day and entailed only one additional visit to the front desk plus they gave us a print out so we could match it up with what we had spent to check for errors before we left and no bill when we got home!

 

[AirForceRocks]

DisneyGal, we've done that before - hand over some of our traveler's checks, and have it applied to any room charges we make.

Now we just charge to the room, and when I take my evening walk, I stop by the desk and pay that day's charges. Gives us the ease of room charge, but we don't lose track and get out of hand with the credit card.

 

[Doodlebug939]

I prepay a little money when we check in and then every evening I take my refillable mug and get some hot tea. (I can taste it now) And then go to the desk and pay for our charges of the day. That way I am not overboard in my spending and I am not chargin either. It is convenient to have the room charge key but it is really easy for me to get out of hand with it.

 

[got2lovedisney]

My understanding is you don't have to prepay. This is strictly if you want to charge purchases/meals etc to your room on your key card. If you're going to pay cash for everything, you should have no need to do this.

I, personally, do it for 2 reasons...

1-I don't like to carry large amounts of cash on me
2-At the end of the trip, I'll charge everything to my DisneyVISA, get the rewards and pay it off from my vacation fund$.

 

[mudnuri]

well, I'm doing it a bit different.

My total room reservation was 554.00 so i sent a check for 600 to pay for the room...the extra will be sitting there waiting for me...I know I could have left it here in my account and earned the .0000000001 interest but I figured to send it.

I have been purchasing disney dollars like they're going out of stock LOL....I have enough now to cover our park costs, meals, shopping etc.. I will put a % if these on my card when I get there. I do NOT like to even have the option of going over what I've got. I prefer to pay cash for everything, unlike DH, and hardly ever use my CC...another reason I sent a check for my rooms.

I do have some DD's left out for the DD's...I dont want them to know I can just hand the lady the plastic card LOL...

I plan to get a print out nightly and make sure we're where we need to be budget wise...

I also will be using travelers checks for my other off-site hotel. We will only be using our credit card for the hotels on the way down and fuel for the truck.

I can always find something to spend the money on instead of paying off a balance in-full, again UNLIKE DH!....so this way when I get back to Vermont after 16 days on vacation, the only bill outstanding will be the one credit card used for our travel days.

Brandy

 

[dmure]

Last year when we went I put down approx 1300.00 in travelers checks rather than a credit card. Then each day keep receipt of purchases made that was charged to our room. Just called front desk each night to verify charges for day to make sure they matched my totals. On the last night of our stay I had a balance of approx 800.00 left. I went to the front desk and asked to collect my money back and then gave them a credit card they could use if any thing else was charged to room after that time. Of course I knew there would not be as my total charges matched theirs exactly and I would pay cash from there on out. Was told by one CM that they did not like to operate on cash basis because they often had to refund large amts if not spent in park. But later another CM told me that is never a problem and even complimented me for keeping such accurate tabs on our charges. This will work for you and I plan to do the same in June when we visit again.

 

[TZMOM]

When we went last year I handed over about $500.00 cash to use against our room & then my credit card imprint for anything over the $500. Unfortunately, we plowed through the cash in about 3 days and added another $400.00 to our room charge - I just have no willpower.