Victoria,
Thanks for asking your question!
I have used Disney Gift Cards on many a trip to Walt Disney World. It is a great way to save up for those incidental purchases that are sure to come (Translation: Mickey Ice Cream Bars!). It is also 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 kids some 'mad money' to use on vacation!
What you want to do after checking in is go to your hotel front desk and have the Gift Card credits applied to your resort account. When you charge food or other purchases to your
MagicBand 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 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 put down only those that I know I will spend, and every couple of days I will return 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!
I hope that this helps! Write us back if you have more questions!
Have a Magical Vacation!