Okay. So, one positive change in all the changes Disney has bestowed upon us is that you can now use Gift Cards and Disney Visa Rewards cards to pay for Mobile Order. It is about time!
However, I was struggling to figure out how you add a Gift Card to your account. From what I can tell, you can only do it when you attempt to place a Mobile Order itself from within the MDE app. When you review your order, you are given the option to add a gift card.
My plan was, then, to go in and add all our gift cards. But here’s the kicker…you can only use one gift card at a time. Which means if you have an order for $75, but you have two $50 gift cards, only $50 from the first gift card may be used, and the remaining $25 will have to be paid using your credit card.
So, while I haven’t done it yet, I think the solution to this is going to be to combine all your gift cards (that you plan to use for mobile order) into a single gift card FIRST using the Disney Gift card website. So, if you’re like us, where we have about 10 different Disney Gift Cards, I’ll combine them all into a single Gift card with a balance of the total (say, $700, or whatever). Then, when you add that card to Mobile order, you will be able to pay for everything from the gift card balance.
I do know that there is a maximum amount you can have on a single gift card (I think it is $1000?), so you still might need to wait until you spend through some of one before you add any remaining gift card balances.
At this point, I have no direct experience in any of this…just trying to figure it all out before our trip. So if you have any corrections or additions to the thoughts I have above, feel free to comment!
Yes, i’ll be very curious about how to best apply gift cards to Mobile Order. It seems really odd to me that you can’t seem to add them to your account in advance. But I guess, if we just have one $500 or $1000 gift card that we have to add for our first transaction, then that’s not too bad.
Food has been the one thing that we have trouble calculating. We don’t use the dining plans, because it seems a better price for us to pay out of pocket. But then we end up paying more than we expected So having a gift card would be a great way to budget better for food. It would already be a paid expense rather than a bill we have to pay at the end of our stay.
I went in and pretended to place an order. I got to the order summary page, where I can enter the gift card. So, my plan is to, after I get all my ducks in a row, to actually add a gift card with the large balance to the mobile order page using this technique, but NOT actually place the order. I’ll cancel the order itself…but the gift card should now be in the list ready to use. (At least, from the looks of it.)
I use the disney gift card website to combine all of our gift cards all the time. It is super easy to use. I also keep one gift card with no balance on there. Reason is it makes me nervous having a gift card with such a high balance. On the the event the card gets lost or god forbid stolen I can log in quickly and transfer the balance from one card to the next before somone has the chance to use it. There is a max but you can keep up to 5 different cards on gift card account and quickly transfer balances to your one main card hooked to your dining whenever you get low.
@ryan1 do you have an update on how this worked? When you added the GC did it stay in you MDE for the next use, or did you have to type in the GC numbers each time?
I was thinking the same thing. Or maybe google wallet or whatever will save it. I always have my most used credit cards available to enter on my phone without getting the card out.
So having a gift card would be a great way to budget better for food. It would already be a paid expense rather than a bill we have to pay at the end of our stay.