Disney Hotel Room Cards

Hi All, :wave:

Please can anyone confirm if you can use your Disney Hotel Room Cards to pay for everything everywhere within WDW?

Is there anywhere within Disney where you can not use your room keys?

I am actually wondering if you actually need to take money out with us or is it just not needed?

Thank you in advance!

If you ask for charging priveleges on your room key, you can charge anything at WDW to your room. There are different credit limits for different resort levels: Values pre-authorise $500, Moderates $1,000 and Deluxe $1,500. When you reach the limit, they'll bill your card and re-authorise the same again [I think, having never reached the limit].

MontyMon said:

There are different credit limits for different resort levels: Values pre-authorise $500, Moderates $1,000 and Deluxe $1,500. When you reach the limit, they'll bill your card and re-authorise the same again [I think, having never reached the limit].

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You are correct

BTW, when they authorize a credit limit, they also do a pre-authorization on your credit card and that amount from your credit card is held until you pay off your Disney bill.

The only place where you might not be able to charge to your room card would be some small, isolated snack cart.

The only money we ever take into the parks are some pennies and quarters for the 'press a penney' machines.
You should be fine.

"If you can't charge it, you don't need it."


Note: This all assumes that you are not staying at the Swan or Dolphin. Since Disney does not own those hotels, then they don't have charge privileges. (I think that's true.)

:king:

RiversideBunny said:

The only place where you might not be able to charge to your room card would be some small, isolated snack cart.

The only money we ever take into the parks are some pennies and quarters for the 'press a penney' machines.
You should be fine.

"If you can't charge it, you don't need it."


Note: This all assumes that you are not staying at the Swan or Dolphin. Since Disney does not own those hotels, then they don't have charge privileges. (I think that's true.)

:king:

Click to expand...

Same goes for Shades of Green. You can only use your SOG card to charge within the hotel, not in any of the parks or any other Disney owned hotel.

I know some places in Downtown Disney don't like McDonalds, but not sure where else.

some of the smaller trinket carts too

I know that some of the toy carts, like the balzac at Epcot, do not take it and most of the stores at downtown Disney (outside of PI) do not seem to take it.

Disney4648 said:

BTW, when they authorize a credit limit, they also do a pre-authorization on your credit card and that amount from your credit card is held until you pay off your Disney bill.

Click to expand...

Absolutely incorrect. If this was done with you, the CM made a horrible mistake.

The procedure is to "run" the card ONLY to see if it is linked to an active account. They specifically place NO HOLD on accounts, whether credit or debit.

You can set up a room charge with a credit card, debit card (with VISA/MC logo), travelers checks, cash, even Disney Dollars.

The aforementioned limits by level of resort are UPPER limits. If you are staying at a Moderate, you don't have to set up a room charge with a $1,000 limit ... you can set it up for $752.09 if you really want to.

If you backed up the room charge with credit or debit card, when you reach/exceed your limit your credit/debit card will be charged IMMEDIATELY and AUTOMATICALLY. At that point, if you want further room charge privileges you have to contact your resort's front desk. You can do this by phone.

Let's say you set up a $500 room charge and had a $495 balance on it. You are in Magic Kingdom and go to charge a $12 souvenir and your room charge will be declined because it's over the limit. The resort just charged your credit/debit card for the $495. You can stand there right there and call your resort's front desk from your cellphone. You can then give verbal authorization to set up another room charge using the same credit/debit card. It can be for any amount (within the pre-set limit), it doesn't have to be for the identical amount you set the first one up for.

Before you reach your limit, you are free to go to the front desk and pay off the account using any OTHER means. For example, let's say you brought a bunch of travelers checks with you and you want to use them before you go back home. Rather than having the room charge balance be charged to your credit card, you can pay it off with the travelers checks instead, if you want. But again, this must be before you reach your limit, before the amount actually does get charged to your card.

I researched this before my last trip. It worked exactly as described -- it took me about 90 seconds to set up the next room charge by cellphone. The only problem was that I had to convince the front desk CM that she could set up a room charge for LESS than POFQ's pre-set maximum limit of $1,000. She said she wasn't allowed to, I told her I'd done it many times, including the room charge for $800 that just got charged to my debit card because it had just reached its $800 limit! I think she needed to ask a manager, but obviously she learned something new that day.

But I repeat ... if you present plastic at the front desk to set up a room charge, THEY DO NOT PLACE A HOLD ON THAT ACCOUNT. But you don't have to trust me ... call your resort and ask them yourself!

One other place that you cannot charge to is the carts selling light up stuff during the evening parades, i.e. light sabers, glow necklaces, etc.

You may want to have cash for Valet Parking (if driving there) and bell services. :shrug:

Even though we usually charge back to our room, we all always carry some cash to pay for an ice cream or pretzel, etc.

I generally carry about $20 on me in the parks and use the room card for everything. 99% of the time I still have that $20 on me for the next day. Only in the parks though. If I'm going to DTD, gotta carry cash or CC.

One thing I found out the last time I stayed that I didn't know before was that after you check out you can still us the card for the rest of the day. If you do not go back to the hotel for an itemized receipt then one will be mailed to your home after a few weeks.

I thought that was a nice touch.