charging to room...

[1911]

I have never charged to my room when at Disney,is there a way to access your room charges to see the running total without visiting the front desk
I don't feel like taking a pocket full of cash this trip and charging to the room via the magic band is appealing.The down side to charging is I don't feel the pain of forking over the cash and can't watch my reserves dwindle.

 

[tobikaye]

I did charging to the room for the first time this past January/February. The only ways to check your balance is to go to the front desk or to keep your own tally. If you do not want to carry cash, put some on a gift card and then you can use that to pay. The receipt, after you pay, will have the remaining balance of the gift card so you know how much is left.

I used gift cards to pay my balance at the resort since my cousin and I would sometimes pay for the other. I did the gift card route mainly for my budgeting purposes. If I am using my credit card or cash, I am too thrifty sometimes. This way I was more likely to use my budget and enjoy.

 

[1911]

can gift cards be used at places other than Disney? I would hate to have a balance that I cant use or be forced to spend.

 

[Lain]

can gift cards be used at places other than Disney? I would hate to have a balance that I cant use or be forced to spend.

Disney Gift Cards can be used at Disney theme parks for most charges, including tickets, annual passes, merchandise, and at Disney-owned restaurants and hotels; to pay DVC dues; on the Disney Cruise Line; Aulani; Disney Stores and disneystore .com, and on the Shop Disney Parks app.

 

[KarenAylwood]

I also believe you can only see your tally at the front desk. It'd be nice if that was linked to MDE too and you could just see it on your phone with your reservation. Maybe we'll get there someday soon.

I brought a few hundred in gift cards I'd been saving and just put them all towards the final bill the night before we checked out. Charged everything at the parks on my band so there was only one bill from the hotel to deal with.

 

[OrangeBirdGirl]

It'd be nice if that was linked to MDE too and you could just see it on your phone with your reservation. Maybe we'll get there someday soon.

LOL Disney probably will not do that as people will check to see what they've spend and realize "oh crap I'd better throttle back a bit!!!!".

I've called up from my room to the front desk to ask what the balance was on my account. If you're just wanting a total cost, so much easier then standing in line and having them print off the folio. But the folio will show the dates and the location of the charge. Also a note with using the gift cards to pay at the end of your stay. I don't remember how much is the trigger but they will charge your card on file when the amount hits, which could be mid trip. You'd hate to have all the gift cards sitting there and you didn't apply and now you have the charge on your credit card. I think it's pretty high at $1500 for deluxe but for the value I think it might be lower maybe $750 and I believe moderate is lower too (at least they had different tiers in the past).

The one time I used my Disney gift cards to put onto my room charges, I made sure to go down to the front desk every few days and apply the cards. This was before I knew about combining cards and it was such a pain. I wanted to just put down all my gift cards at once and they would not take them as they said they couldn't refund the money if I didn't spend enough. Even though I insisted that was fine as I knew with all our food we'd be at the limit I wanted to put down, they still wouldn't.

 

[Branflakes]

We always charge to our room. And most recently while staying at AKL, there was a gentleman with an iPad near the queue for the front desk. He pulled up the charges in a flash for us and sent them to the printer off to the side. It took no more than two minutes.

 

[LovesTimone]

We always charge to the room, DH just keeps the receipts and goes over them the next morning, or we might stop by the front desk to check, as long as its not busy. Normally takes a couple of minutes.

 

[1911]

It'd be nice if that was linked to MDE too and you could just see it on your phone with your reservation. Maybe we'll get there someday soon.

That would be a really helpful feature in the app.This will be my first using the MDE app with my phone as in the past it wasn't compatible with my old phone.

LOL Disney probably will not do that as people will check to see what they've spend and realize "oh crap I'd better throttle back a bit!!!!".

This is exactly why I would like to keep tabs on my spending.I tend to get lost in the moment and over do it, Disney makes it much too tempting.

 

[KarenAylwood]

LOL Disney probably will not do that as people will check to see what they've spend and realize "oh crap I'd better throttle back a bit!!!!".

I've called up from my room to the front desk to ask what the balance was on my account. If you're just wanting a total cost, so much easier then standing in line and having them print off the folio. But the folio will show the dates and the location of the charge. Also a note with using the gift cards to pay at the end of your stay. I don't remember how much is the trigger but they will charge your card on file when the amount hits, which could be mid trip. You'd hate to have all the gift cards sitting there and you didn't apply and now you have the charge on your credit card. I think it's pretty high at $1500 for deluxe but for the value I think it might be lower maybe $750 and I believe moderate is lower too (at least they had different tiers in the past).

The one time I used my Disney gift cards to put onto my room charges, I made sure to go down to the front desk every few days and apply the cards. This was before I knew about combining cards and it was such a pain. I wanted to just put down all my gift cards at once and they would not take them as they said they couldn't refund the money if I didn't spend enough. Even though I insisted that was fine as I knew with all our food we'd be at the limit I wanted to put down, they still wouldn't.

That's interesting about charging the CC on file. We stayed in May of 2016 at BLT through Disney (we booked too late to go through a DVC person/rent points). The total amount ended up being something like $6,000 over the course of 5 days and they didn't charge anything until the morning of our day of checkout. I don't remember if I had them put the gift cards towards the balance the day before or two days before checkout.

 

[MaryLovesPoohBear]

can gift cards be used at places other than Disney? I would hate to have a balance that I cant use or be forced to spend.

We had the same thought.

We simply didn't purchase enough cards to cover the entire trip. By the end of the trip, we left the remaining amount on the card on file at the resort.

We ended up about $100 short, which is what we planned.

 

[Mickeypooh99]

That's interesting about charging the CC on file. We stayed in May of 2016 at BLT through Disney (we booked too late to go through a DVC person/rent points). The total amount ended up being something like $6,000 over the course of 5 days and they didn't charge anything until the morning of our day of checkout. I don't remember if I had them put the gift cards towards the balance the day before or two days before checkout.

We had it happen that they charged our credit card. I think it was our 2014 trip. We hit the limit while staying at Boardwalk Villas. I thought it was $2,000. It must have been around that. We weren't paying attention, but they do mention it at check in. I had a stack of gift cards and kind of panicked. They did reverse the charge and let us pay with the gift cards. Since then we always pay down our balance every couple of days.

 

[tobikaye]

We had the same thought.

We simply didn't purchase enough cards to cover the entire trip. By the end of the trip, we left the remaining amount on the card on file at the resort.

We ended up about $100 short, which is what we planned.

This is basically how my trip was as well with about $100 to my credit card. I guessed at about how much I would spend on meals since we did not do too many ADRs ahead of time and then added a bit for gifts. I figure I will take the same amount in gift cards for my June trip, but I might have a bit more in spending this time.

 

[elfof2moons]

LOL Disney probably will not do that as people will check to see what they've spend and realize "oh crap I'd better throttle back a bit!!!!".

Also a note with using the gift cards to pay at the end of your stay. I don't remember how much is the trigger but they will charge your card on file when the amount hits, which could be mid trip. You'd hate to have all the gift cards sitting there and you didn't apply and now you have the charge on your credit card. I think it's pretty high at $1500 for deluxe but for the value I think it might be lower maybe $750 and I believe moderate is lower too (at least they had different tiers in the past).

We just got back from CBR and they told us it was $1000.

I will also note that they charge whatever your balance is at midnight before you check out so you can't pay the balance off with gift cards at check-out. We just stopped by the front desk a couple of times during the trip and paid the balance off so that the cc didn't get hit with a lot at check-out. We would have went the night before and paid it off but it was EMH at MK and we didn't get back until after midnight.

 

[cassie58]

can gift cards be used at places other than Disney? I would hate to have a balance that I cant use or be forced to spend.

You can always use a Visa or Amex gift card if you don't want to worry about having money left over on a Disney card. That way if you have any left, you can spend it anywhere. Our bank does the Visa cards with no fee, and we just take it out of our savings account.