Nikki!
Thanks for your great question!
So I can speak from personal experience on this, as I save up any gift cards I get throughout the year for my Disney vacations!
What you want to do with those gift cards is take them to your hotel front desk and have them applied to your resort account. When you charge to your
MagicBand a meal at a Disney restaurant or the purchase of a souvenir at one of their stores the charge is added to your resort hotel account. If you have had the 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 add more cards as I get closer to spending that credit balance. Oh, and remember that you can check your balance from your
My Disney Experience!
I hope that this helps!
Have a Magical Vacation!