Saving Money on Your Disney Vacation Part 1: Gift Cards

I know what you might have thought when you read we went to Disneyland four times in twelve months with a trip to Disney World and a Disney Cruise smack in the middle of those twelve months: who can afford to do that?  No, we didn't win the lottery. And no, a rich relative didn't pass away suddenly leaving us a small fortune.

However, we did do some little and not so little things to pay for our Year of Magic and some of those things might help you pay for your next grand adventure, Disney or not. Today, I'm sharing a just one way you can save money on your next Disney vacation.

I learned this trick on the DisBoards.  (If you are a Disney lover like me, or just planning a once-in-a-lifetime Disney trip, that website should be your new best friend.)  And just a disclosure here: a lot of people think this trick is too much work.  But when you can get $252.37 in Disney Gift Cards for $207.50, that's a savings of more than 17%.  And to me, that is worth it.

First, a very simple way to save 5% on Disney Gift Cards: buy them at Target with a Target Red Card (either Debit or Credit).  But wait! It says right in the fine print that gift cards are excluded from the 5%!  Target does not code Disney Gift Cards as "gift cards" in their system.  They are actually coded as "entertainment cards" so they qualify for the 5% savings with your Red Card.  This is the sole reason I signed up for a Target Red Card.  Entertainment Cards are usually excluded from other discounts including the bonus 5% pharmacy coupons and the occasional 20% coupon that they have around Black Friday.  The major drawback: most Target stores only carry the $50 Disney Gift Cards so you could potentially be carrying around a very large stack of gift cards.  The good news is, Target's online store started carrying the $100 cards so that's half as many cards to carry around.  

Another way to save up to 16% is to buy your Disney Gift Cards at a grocery store that gives you fuel points back. It's marginally more work than the Target way, but still not too complicated.  I personally wait until our local Smith's Food and Drug (a Kroger affiliate) is having one of its 4X fuel point promotions.  If you buy $250 worth of Disney Gift cards during that promotion, you get $1 off up to 35 gallons of gas.  Now in the real world, we can only get about 30 gallons between our Pilot and our Camry when both cars are about as empty as we dare drive them and fill them back to back. (I have heard some stations will only let you fill one car in a transaction so that will make a difference if your station won't let you fill up two cars back to back.) Since I would have had to buy gas anyway, I count that as saving $30 on that $250 gift card.  The drawback here is that your fuel points will expire at the end of the month after you buy the card.  So you lose the savings if you can't use up all the fuel points before they expire.

Now here is where it starts to get a little more tricky: there is away to combine these two savings.  I'm going to stay with my $250 example, just to for simplification purposes, but you could change it up depending on how many fuel points you can use in a month.

• During a 4x Fuel Point Promotion, purchase a Target Gift Card for $237.  (Bonus if you use a cash back credit card but more on that in a bit).  I generally have purchased enough groceries to make up the difference to get to the full $1 off during the month anyway.  
• Use your fuel points to save up to $35. 
• Log on to Target.com and be sure your Red Card is tied to your Target account. 
• Place $250 in Disney Gift cards in your shopping cart.  In this case, you'll have to do 2-$100s and 1-$50. After you get to your cart, click "proceed to check out."
• On the right side of your screen, you should see your total of $237.50 ($250 minus the 5%).  Just underneath that is a list of options including "Pay with a Target GiftCard."  When you click on that, you can enter in your Target Gift Card information and click save.  The remaining $.50 will be charged to your Red Card.

This trick does not work in stores.  You do not save 5% on anything in store if you use a Target Gift Card, only on the portion of your total that goes on the Red Card. So this only works online.  I have heard others say that you must charge some portion of your total to a Red Card in order to keep the 5% savings, thus the $.50.  I don't believe I've ever tried to put the entire cost of the Disney Gift Cards on a Target Gift Card before.

I have also heard others complain that the cards they received from Target online were not activated when they arrived.  I have purchased over $1500 in Disney Gift Cards this way and I have never received one that has not been activated.  I do always check them with the Disney Gift Card website when they arrive.  Be sure when you do that you have revealed all the numbers behind the silver scratch off part.  The last four digits of the card number are on the left side of that silver section and sometimes get missed.

And wait, I said $252.37 for $207.50.  Where does the extra 2.37 come from?  For us it's in the form of Disney Visa Rewards since I use that card to purchase the Target Gift Cards at Smiths. If you have a different card that gives you more money back at Grocery stores, you might end up even better off than that.

I start doing this as soon as I know I have a Disney trip coming up to spread the cost out over several months.  Sure, there are people who walk into Target and buy all the Disney Cards in stock at that store.  I don't do that.  Target.com does occasionally sell out of Disney Gift Cards so don't wait until right before your trip to do this.  Allow plenty of time for those cards to get to you and for you to check that they have been activated.

So now that you have a stack of Disney Gift Cards, what can you do with them?  If you are booking a Disney vacation directly with Disney or through a travel agent that books directly with Disney, you can apply the gift cards towards your package.  It can take some time to apply all those gift cards to your account but there is no limit on the number of cards you can apply.  However, if you need to cancel your vacation and get a refund, they will go back to each individual card so it's a good idea to keep them until you have completed your vacation.

You can also apply them to a Disney Vacation Account.  I've been meaning to try this, but it gets mixed reviews so I haven't just yet.  In this method, you just enter the gift cards into the website for your account and then have your travel agent apply the funds to your package.  I have read that excess can be put back onto a gift card for you to spend on extras on your vacation.

If you are staying off site and have booked your vacation on your own, you can use gift cards to pay for nearly everything onsite: park tickets, parking, restaurants in the park or at one of the Disney Hotels (and restaurants at Disney Springs at Walt Disney World too), any food vendor with a card swipe machine, trinkets, PhotoPass, etc, etc.  If you are cruising with Disney, you can apply them to your on board account to pay for anything you can charge to that account (excursions, drinks and snacks, photos, tips, etc, etc).

Truth be told, I don't use this trick to pay for packages or cruise fare.  Frankly, I could not use all those fuel point in the amount of time I have to use them and the thought of giving 50 gift card numbers to a travel agent makes me crazy!  But we do use the cards for almost everything else when we are at the parks or on board.

So are you going to try this method?  Do you think it's too crazy?  It's OK if you do.  I have other ways of saving money that I will post in the coming weeks that you might not find to be quite so crazy. I'll be sharing them soon so watch for it.

In case you are wondering, I am not affiliated with the Disboards (other than being a regular plain old member), Target, Smiths, or Disney in any way, shape or form.  I am getting nothing from the post, other than the satisfaction of helping someone else enjoy the magic as much as I do.