So Sunday was my big 180 day. I wake up at about 4:30 AM CST to get ready to book the 2 reservations I have at the time. One is the last day in the parks for us at BOG PPO, the other is at Whispering Canyon Cafe at the resort the day we leave. I secure both of them with the same credit card. It is successfully booked. I am thinking to myself, “Yay! The time is finally here. Our trip is going to be here in no time!” Then later in the day, I checked my credit card. My wife had gone out to get a haircut and went shopping, so I wanted to see how much she had spent. I see 6 charges to something titled “WDP&R room internet”. So I call my wife and ask where did she go? She tells me where she went and I ask if she went anywhere else. She said no, so I called Wells Fargo to ask about it. They say they were internet charges made from Lake Buena Vista Florida. I tell them that while I wish I was there, I am not and they could check the charges my wife and I had both made in our home town. They cancelled the card and are sending me a new one in 5-7 business days.
I then called Disney to explain the situation. The dining line said they didn’t handle that but sent me to Guest Services, which is closed on the weekends.
My question is, what happens if you have a reservation and cancel the card? I don’t want my reservations taken away. When I tried calling, they told me they couldn’t take a new card to secure them.
It wasn’t though. It was 6 different charges for in room internet from a resort. When I called, the person from dining said it may be a charge or on e per reservation, but it shouldn’t be 6.
This is not accurate. Call again and speak to someone else. I had to do exactly this, because my card got physically stolen in the middle of ADR chaos (along with my wallet) and I had to get a new one.
When you talked to your bank, did you tell them which transactions were valid? If they sent all the FL charges to fraud, you might have trouble. But as long as they know there were valid transactions you should be okay. I would phone Disney and change my card number, just in case. That is, if you have another card.
And by the way, is this your primary card or just one you use as a secondary? Why is it taking them 5-7 days to get you a new card? My card company takes one look at my spending habits (as the primary purchaser in the household) and couriers the card either to the branch or my house by the next day. If this is a card you rely on, your bank is losing out on your transactions by keeping you from your card for a week. Oh, and if you’re paying a fee for that card, then that’s costing you more, too.
DH left our main CC behind at a restaurant en route to WDW last week. I never even thought about the ADRs. Chase overnighted us a new one to BWI at no charge, and that’s it. Nothing else happened.
I changed the card on my online profile and had BWI swap out whatever charges I had to the replacement card instead of the Cap One card I used when we checked in because I get more points from Chase. It was easy.
Also, she said that what card you have on your online profile doesn’t matter, the card you present at check-in is the one they use for all your onsite charges. I don’t know where the ADRS fall in all of that, but I do know the card I had on the online account had been canceled for about 36 hours before being replaced and nothing happened to the ADRs.
Realistically, there aren’t any charges that should be sent to your card for the ADRs, as they are reservations. So when the authorization went through, the system would be happy. If your card is canceled, it’s not like the system is checking for an auth every day. It won’t check again unless you’re a no-show for your ressie.
Exactly. They’d only try to run the card again if you didn’t show up for your ressies. SO they wouldn’t know it was canceled.
This actually happened to us when my daughter had her purse stolen while studying abroad in Europe. We canceled the card. As it turns out, the phone company she had hooked up with was quite shady, so when they went to run her $400 phone bill (!!!) it wouldn’t go through.
I told them to reduce that bill or they’d never see any money, and they did. Then we switched phone companies. So rarely, this can work to one’s advantage.
SO I just called Guest Services and told them I had done some research ( thanks to @jcgoblue 's post) and it seems these were legitimate charges. I said I would like to secure the reservations with another card. She told me that we would have to cancel the reservations and rebook them. She said really it’s on an “honor system” and then if I left it as is, the card will get charged, but since it’s not active anymore it won’t go through. No penalty would be paid by me. I said we would show up barring a death in the family, and she said even if I woke up really sick, we could call and cancel and it wouldn’t charge us even if the card was active. She said they do it to keep people from booking 500 reservations and then only using 1 or 2. She also said if something happens to one, to call her and she would get them rebooked for me. I feel much better.
I made my ADRs with a Visa gift card that only has $2 on it. I made at least 10 ADRs and had no problems. I just paid everything off with Disney gift cards. I don’t let them have my visa card and decline being able to make charges with my magic bands. I have the DDxDP so all our meals are paid for so all I need to do is leave tips and I use Disney gift cards for that. I leave my wallet in the room and only take my DL and GC in the parks. Yes wallet is locked in the safe.
With the new system there is a charge that is put through that then falls off. The thing is, it sends up all kinds of red flags with some banking institutions’ fraud departments as many card thieves use a similar scheme to make sure the card works or something
I recently helped my ILs to book theirs and ran into this. The reservations went through for the first 5-6 and then it wouldn’t work anymore. Fortunately I had prioritized and the remaining two were non-critical and easy to get. It worked fine a few days later.
I would think letting your bank know could stop this being an issue