This is an incredible guest post from my reader Vikki.
“HOW many gift cards do you want to use to pay off your room??”
The Cast Member on the other end of the phone didn’t believe his ears when I said I planned to use SEVENTEEN gift cards to pay my room balance shortly before our family trip to Walt Disney World. Together, it took us 30 minutes to enter all of the numbers, but it was the best-paid half hour of my life!
One of my favorite “Couponing to Disney” strategies to save money for our trip is buying Disney gift cards in advance. Those 17 gift cards totaled $1350, enough to pay off my room balance. I calculate they saved me about $400. Maybe you’ll be able to use some of these ideas to save money buying Disney gift cards before your trip:
- Gas reward points – Kroger (and other) grocery stores offer fuel points for buying groceries and gift cards. Often the gift cards will give you twice the points. Right before school started, my Kroger was running a special deal that offered FOUR times the fuel points for buying gift cards. Under that promotion, I bought $250 in Disney gift cards and got 1000 points, enough for $1.00 off per gallon. That meant a savings of $20 for filling my van’s 20-gallon tank. Savings: Up to 8 percent.
- School promotions — My son’s high-school marching band requires hundreds of dollars in fees, but our Kroger-brand store offers 6 percent back to his account when I buy anything (including gift cards) at the store using a gift card linked to his account. I add money to the gift card (using my Disney VISA, of course), then use the card to buy groceries and Disney gift cards. I get the fuel points mentioned above AND 6 percent into his band account for trip and uniform fees. I made over $125 in the last year for his account between groceries and gift cards. Savings: 6 percent.
- Sales on gift cards — Twice now in the spring, I’ve seen packets of three $15 gift cards ($45) trigger a $5 Catalina coupon that you can use on your next transaction at the store. Watch the gift-card area of your grocery store for special promotions and read local money-saving blogs. Savings: 11 percent!
- Minimum-purchase deals — Sometimes stores have coupons for $10 off of a $50 purchase, or a soda deal that only works if you spend $25. If your total is going to fall short of that magic number, buying a Disney gift card can raise your store total so you can use a dollar-off coupon or discount. In the $10 off of $50 example, you’d save 20 percent!
- Gift card bonus packs — In the past (and hopefully again soon), Sam’s Club has offered a $100 gift card for $98.87 that included a bonus $10 Disney Store gift card. You can use the $10 bonus card to buy T-shirts, plush, or light-up toys at the Disney Store before your trip, also a money-saver itself. Savings: 10 percent.
- Disney VISA card – 1 percent Disney cash back, $200 offer for signing up. The Disney VISA runs special offers for certain categories in certain months – make sure you watch the mail for these offers. I had an offer for 3 percent back on groceries and gasoline over a three-month period. If you can shift your spending in those categories to your Disney VISA, you can earn extra points. That’s 2 percent extra savings (plus the whopping $200 sign-up bonus).
Each time I bought gift cards with a discount or rebate, I put the cards in a safe place and transferred my extra savings to my Disney fund. This way I slowly built my stash of gift cards and earned cash toward other trip expenses.
If you know you will be visiting a Disney park in the next year, you could park all of your savings in an account earning 1 percent or less. Or, when you find a deal on Disney gift cards, you could purchase them as you go, and save while doing it. With a $200 VISA bonus plus roughly $200 I earned buying gift cards, I saved around 30 percent!
(Thanks Vicki!)
If you are a shop your ways rewards member (Sears, K-Mart, etc,) you can also earn points. Once I log in, they offer rewards of varying %s for different companies. Right now, you get 20% back on Disney purchases. Not sure if this counts your vacation. Gotta check on that! But I can log in to shop your way rewards and click on the Disney link, purchases gift cards, and get 20% back in my rewards. Then I can go to my rewards and buy gift cards from Sears with the rewards, which earns more rewards. You can also get 4% back at Sam’s Club. If you shop frequently online, create an account and earn points through all the places you shop. Planning my first Disney trip and plan to buy my gift cards this way.
I’ve never used Disney gift cards before. It sounds like you can use them to pay for your WDW resort room, food at the theme parks and souvenirs. Can you use them to pay for park tickets, too? Thanks!
You can! I have and will do it again. Just make sure it’s a “Disney Gift card” and not a “Disney store gift card”
we just did the same thing with the gift cards from Sams Club.. Hubby went back yesterday and got the last 6 they had, now we need to find 10 more,, gonna check another Sams today.. so far that means we have $240.00 in Disney $$ for the store,, that will def. help with Grandaughter’s Christmas this year !!! we used the first 4 to pay for our Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas party, the next 14 for my son’s Dec. reservations, and the rest for our reservations.. Glad I saw this tip on your site months ago !! Thanks sooo much !!!
So funny that you posted this today because yesterday, I discovered I can buy them at Target and get my 5% off with my Target debit card!! I’m buying them this week to pay my trip balance!! It’s going to save me $80! That’s $80 more for tips or souvenEARS!
I’m on the lookout for the Sam’s Club Disney Gift Card promotion. I hope they do it again. I used the gift cards to pay for my Disney hotel and the bonus Disney Store gift cards to buy a Dooney & Bourke Mickey Mouse purse from disneystore.com
The Sam’s Club I frequent in Ohio has had the Disney gift card display up for at least a month now. I check to make sure it’s still there every time I go! So far so good…
My target started carrying Disney gift cards. To my dismay, the target check card that saves you 5% when you shop, let’s you use it on Disney gift cards!!! Paired that with my target employee discount I save 15% on my cards all together $50 Disney card for only $42.50. If its just a target check card $50 gift card only costs $47.50 same thing with restaurant gift cards they now carry.
Nice tip! Thanks.
Why are you dismayed by that? Shouldn’t you be happy about it?
GREAT ideas and I will for sure be on the lookout now for our next Disney trip. I just took my daughter who is 4 last mth and LOVED it. I know we will be having many more Disney trips in the yrs ahead:) Thanks so much to both of you for the post!!!
We did do the character signing in Epcot and you get a free 8 x 10 picture too. The line was short and the experience was awesome. We had goofy and minnie mouse to ourselves for like 5 minutes. The characters change I believe daily.
we also did this with our local Meijer’s store to save on gas…
As far as the DVR card, it is nice, but the EPCOT character signing has gotten waaaaay to crowded, it was 60 people deep the one day we went for most of the time….the CM told us to go across to the other character area, it had less wait time!
My recent Disney vacation was similar with the gift cards but on a smaller scale.
* I used the CVS $10.00 gas cards to pay for the gasoline on our drive to DisneyWorld (I got 8 cards at $10.00 a piece – $80.00 in gas cards).
* I let my almost 3 year old use the $5.00 Kelloggs CARS2 gift cards. I had 14 cards so he got to spend $70.00 on gifts at the park
My little scenario is just to show that every little bit does help when planning your Disney vacation :-)
I never thought to up my Disney 3% spending at grocery stores (when and if they offer that promo) by buying Disney gift cards – what a great idea…
Thanks for the advice…I took advantage of the quadruple gas points in the fall…while I didn’t reach your amount, the cards our purchased came in handy on our recent Disney Cruise! I will definitely use some of your other strategies!!! Congrats!
I did the same thing! Although I took it a step further, rather than having people buy me lovely but useless birthday/Christmas gifts my husband asked everyone to get my Disney gift cards!
I thought the CM was going to pass out! I had 21 gift cards!!!!
Our gift cards paid for over 85% of our trip!
Great minds think alike!!!
You know…you can combine the gift cards on the Disney Gift Card website and make the CM’s job a lot easier.
I just signed up for the Disney Visa with a $200 gift card! Have you used it for the Epcot character signing? That, and the gift card, was the main reason we signed up for it. I am not sure if we will actually use the card much.
What site did you go to for the Disney Visa with a $200 gift card? I looked at the Disney Rewards Visa but it didn’t say anything about the $200 gift card? That would be great to be able to get that!
I did the same thing. I kept getting Disney Visa card offers in the mail after we went to Disney. The first offers were for $100, then last couple were for $200. The third time, I finally opened up another card. The 1% back isn’t all that great compared to my Discover More card, but the $200 was certainly worth it.
I went to the Epcot character signing. They take you in one family in a time so it feels very private and usually have 2 characters. They day we went it was Minnie and Goofy. The background is similar to the Epcot Character Spot and the characters were dressed the same so it felt like a repeat to us since we went to the Character Spot first. I would recommend that you go to the Visa character signing first and avoid the lines at the Character Spot unless there is a characer there that you haven’t met elsewhere. It was nice to get a voucher for a free picture!
Gift cards are a great way to save for a Disney trip. I’ve been visiting Quick Rewards everyday and just doing the daily clicks and so far I’ve received two $25 Disney Gift Cards within the past year. You can get more points for shopping online and doing surveys, etc., but if you’re not in a hurry, daily clicks and quick and easy. I’m working towards my third gift card before my January trip. (http://www2.quickrewards.net/?r=!F94VXV35D2GAS) I plan on using them for food while at the World.
i signed up with your link, how many quick points do you need in order to get a disney giftcard? where do you go to get one on their website? Thank you
That is awesome!! My safeway is offering 4x rewards on gift cards right now! I think I’m going to do that when I go to the store Sunday!!
WOW! That is awesome!!!! How do you find the gift card deals to buy?