Amy,
Thanks for asking your question to planDisney!
Yes, you absolutely can use Disney gift cards to pay off your charges on your Disney Resort account. While Disney still requires you have a traditional credit card on file for your hotel room, you can have the value of the gift cards put on your account so that any charges you make back to your room come off that gift card credit before they would charge your credit card account.
What I like to do, and what I think will help you with your money management planning, is this.
Sometime after checking in to your hotel, visit the front desk and have the gift card credits applied to your Disney resort hotel account. When you charge food or other purchases to your MagicBand the bills 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.
Do be sure when you charge food or merchandise that you select the option to apply the charge to your room bill. Sometimes the
My Disney Experience App will initially opt to a different payment type, like Apple Pay. You just have to select your room as your primary charge, or toggle to it when paying.
BONUS TIP #1One very important note to be sure of. If you have several cards, I do not recommend that you put all their balances over to your resort hotel account at the start of the trip. Why? Well, Disney cannot refund any of those transfers 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.
When I go, I put down only that amount that I know I will spend, and every couple of days I will return to the front desk and use more cards as I get closer to spending that credit balance. Oh, and remember that you can always check your balance from your My Disney Experience App!
BONUS TIP #2Gift cards are a great item for kids to list on birthday or Christmas wish lists. My teenagers have a hard time finding gift idea suggestions for relatives that are reasonably priced, so this gives them a lot of flexibility. It also gives the gift giver a lot of room to give what they deem appropriate.
BONUS TIP #3When you check in, ask what the account threshold amount is so that you know when they would charge your credit card. This will tell you when their system automatically charges your credit card on file for a specific amount. With this information you can get an idea of when you may want to go put more gift card money onto your hotel room account.
Please feel free to
write me back if you have any follow-up questions.
Have a Magical Vacation!Doug