Gift cards for trip?

[minniemickeyfan]

Hi, we are not planning on doing the dining plan this coming trip in December, but I like having things prepaid so I thought about buying gift cards to pay for most everything while we are there.
Anyone know if the gift cards are accepted most everywhere? I'm thinking maybe not the snack carts but don't usually get much there anyway.
Also, I looked at buying them at the disney store website and the disney world site, but notice the disney store doesn't look like they charge for any shipping. These are basically the same right?

Sorry if this is a silly question, but wanted to be sure and thought I'd ask all of you kind disney fans. :wave:

 

[MDinMD]

If you have hte grocery store, Giant Eagle in your area, they are great for Fuel Perks. I paid my entire last trip in gift cards, plus got my fuel perks and credit card bonus points.

fuel Perks is a program where you get .20 cents off every gallon of gas for each $50 you spend on gift cards. The savigns added up quickly on a 12 day trip.

 

[Blueskyze]

I have also seen the Disney Gift cards being sold at Kroger, and they also offer extra fuel points when you buy gift cards. I'm planning to start stocking up for our January trip!

 

[minniemickeyfan]

We bought the ones at Sams Club that come in $100 denominations, but only cost you $98 for some reason. :shrug: Plus, you get a $10 Disney Store card with each one. So we bought close to $1000 worth before we headed down, used the $100 worth of Disney Store cards to buy some cool towels and that for our trip at a nearby Disney Store, and even ended up buying $500-$600 more at a Sams Club just off property once we discovered that they were accepted pretty much everywhere on Disney property (even the food carts). Ended up giving these to the kids to use instead of actual money, which was really nice! They could check them to see what their balance was each time, so we didn't have to mess around with them losing their money or trying to say they had more than they actually had. :ROFLOL:

Highly recommend them and heck, next trip, might buy the cards at Sams to pay off the whole trip too!!! Yes, you can actually do this. Plus, imagine all the Disney Store money I will have to spend!! :wave:

Thanks for the tip! I did this and bought them Sunday at Sam's Club. However I called around Kansas City, MO stores and found only 1 store had them near me. They have a Christmas Tree/Winter Theme on theme so I'm wondering if they just got them in again and that's why some stores don't have any at the moment? Hoping they still have more, I would like to buy more to buy an annual pass when I get there, but happy I got some to buy our food for the trip.

 

[boufa]

Sams club is how I got mine, and it worked great! Sure the bonus cards are not good on property, but if your a Disney fan then then Disney store is a great option.

Here is how it broke down for us.. $1800 trip, plus $200 extra for spending on property. 20 Gift Cards + $200 in bonus cards. With fuel perks you would have to buy them in batches over time. You cannot use more fuel perks than the price of gas. So it would be $8 off each gallon of gas?!?!?!? And you have to use all your fuelperks at 1 time. So you would have to buy a 1/3rd and then fill your tank, then the next time you would buy another 1/3rd and fill your tank, etc.

With the Sams Cards, it was like we paid to go to Disney and our trip included, free dining, a Lion King DVD, Dumbo DVD, Cars 2 DVD, 4 T-Shirts, 2 stuffed animals and 2 princess dress up dresses.

Who can argue with that deal! (oh and a big discount on sunscreen and water that we bought with out Sams membership!)

 

[heartodisney]

I have also seen the Disney Gift cards being sold at Kroger, and they also offer extra fuel points when you buy gift cards. I'm planning to start stocking up for our January trip!

We have also been doing this for months at Kroger for fuel points, it helps out quite a bit! We will use ours here and there on our trip and pay into anything that would be charged at the end of the trip on our room key card. Also nice to know others have posted that you can use them at most cart vendors.

 

[wagnerdanp]

We got $3,000 worth of gift cards at Giant Eagle! We have free fuel for a month! They are accepted everywhere at WDW, I have never had a problem using them.

 

[heartodisney]

We got $3,000 worth of gift cards at Giant Eagle! We have free fuel for a month! They are accepted everywhere at WDW, I have never had a problem using them.

3000! :lookaroun Great going, we are 1000 behind ya! Kroger is a little odd, your "points" expire on a time frame, so, we really will not be using this on our trip, just been using it BEFORE our trip! Kinda a bummer.

 

[bow0303]

This is a great idea. Wish we would have come across this when we were there last month. Will be doing this on our next vacation.

 

[minniemickeyfan]

Another question:

Does anyone know if you can pay your room deposit with a Disney gift card? I just thought if I could I would go get some more Disney gift cards with the bonus $10 DSTore GC from Sam's.
Getting ready to book and wondered. Thanks for any help.

 

[mrs. gracey]

We used gift cards for our trip in May, we got one for each of our kids as their spending money. It worked out well, and kept them from asking for everything they saw since they knew their limit. We got our gifts cards at our grocery store.

 

[RobnRachal]

This might be a super strange question.....but.....Can you use the bonus GC to buy GC on Disney's website??

 

[jessfriends]

Like some of you mentioned I would like to purchase gift cards at Giant Eagle to get the fuelperks. I just want to check though before I buy a lot of them if you can use them to pay for your annual pass. I would think you can but if anyone can confirm this I would appreciate it. This is my first time doing this and getting an annual pass.

 

[minniemickeyfan]

This might be a super strange question.....but.....Can you use the bonus GC to buy GC on Disney's website??

I don't think so. The back of my bonus GC to the Disney Store say you cannot buy gift cards or disney dollars with them.

Like some of you mentioned I would like to purchase gift cards at Giant Eagle to get the fuelperks. I just want to check though before I buy a lot of them if you can use them to pay for your annual pass. I would think you can but if anyone can confirm this I would appreciate it. This is my first time doing this and getting an annual pass.

I bought enough to buy another annual pass when I get there in Dec. I'm pretty sure you can. I recently could use them to book a new reservation and make a deposit, and use them to pay off my current reservation all over the phone. I wonder if a call to Disney's ticket dept could confirm this.

 

[jessfriends]

I bought enough to buy another annual pass when I get there in Dec. I'm pretty sure you can. I recently could use them to book a new reservation and make a deposit, and use them to pay off my current reservation all over the phone. I wonder if a call to Disney's ticket dept could confirm this.

I did call Disney before I left and used 4 gift cards to buy 2 annual passes at guest relations at Epcot.

Thanks!