Jamie,
This is a very common question, and something I just answered a question about a few days ago (see that reply
here too). The answer is yes, you can apply gift cards to your resort account at Walt Disney World.
What to do?
When you arrive, take your gift cards to your hotel front desk and have them applied to your resort account. When you charge a meal, or make a purchase with your
MagicBand, the charge is added to your resort hotel account. With that gift card balance already on your account they deduct those costs from your credit balance rather than bill the credit card you have on file for your room.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Disney cannot refund you any of the money you transfer over from a card to your account. As such, I don't put all of the balance over to my resort account at the start of the trip. Why not? Since they cannot refund remaining credit, if I put a $100 gift card onto my resort balance and only spent $90 of that, I would lose that $10 balance.
I put down just some of my gift card money onto the account (yes, they can take partial amounts off of a gift card, they don't have to take it all at once), and every couple of days I will return and add more as I get closer to spending that credit balance.
Also remember that to keep track you can check your balance from your
My Disney Experience account!
Have a Magical Vacation!