Patricia,
Thanks for asking your question to planDisney! The answer is yes, you can use Disney Gift Cards to pay for your hotel room bill.
I use gift cards, both those from Disney and others I receive throughout the year, on most of my trips to Walt Disney World. It is a great way to save up for the cost of food, souvenirs, and other purchases that I am sure to get on my trips. It is also something my kids will put on their Christmas and birthday wish lists. They have a hard time finding gift idea suggestions for relatives that are reasonably priced, so this gives them a lot of flexibility.
Here is what you can do. After checking in you can go to your hotel front desk and have the gift card credits applied to your resort account. When you charge food or other purchases as your vacation moves forward the purchase will go on your resort room account. With that balance of your gift cards already put onto your hotel account, they deduct those costs from your credit balance rather than bill the credit card you have on file for your room.
One very important note to be sure of. If you have several cards, I would not recommend that you put all of their balances over to your resort account at the start of the trip. Why? Well, Disney cannot refund any of those transfers back to you, so if you put $100 of a gift card onto your resort balance and only spend $90 of that, you lose the $10 balance. So, pace yourself.
When I go, I transfer those gift card credits that I know I will spend, like to cover the room bill and some of what I think I will spend on dining and incidentals in the first few days. Then every couple of days I will return and put more cards down as I get closer to spending that credit balance. This way I can pay for as much of my trip as the cards will cover, and I won't lose any of that credit value.
BONUS TIPRemember that you can always check your balance from your
My Disney Experience app!
I hope that this helps! Write us back if you have more questions!
Have a Magical Vacation!Doug