Charging to a Credit Card

[DisneyJunkie]

I've been told that upon check-in, we can have it set up so that anything we purchase in the World (souveniers, meals, etc...) can be charged to our room card which will, in turn, be charged to the credit card we give the folks at check-in. Is this correct? This would certainly help on having to carry around a lot of money or change. I'm assuming the meals part only includes sit-down, full-service restaurants, not the quickie places. But should this work at any gift shop?

[Jeff]

You are correct and it is very convenient.

Many of the little food stands actually take the "room charge". The only one we found that did not was the snow cone truck at BB. I'm sure that there must be others, but I was often surprised at those that would take the card.

[ToddAllen]

Boy, howdy, does it work in the gift shops. In addition to the aforementioned snow cone booth, pretty much the only other places I've found that don't take it are the ice cream carts in the parks. Basically, anywhere that has a registar that's plugged into the main computer system can take it. Heck, they even started wiring the temporary booths for the Food and Wine Festival at Epcot a couple of years ago!

[Munch]

Yes, it is really handy!! Another bit of info - if you don't like coming home to a hefty credit card bill, you can also put a cash deposit down to draw from when you use your room key.

[Wayne]

It is great and it is convenient. Be sure to ask what the limit is though. Once you hit the limit, you have to authorize them to charge your card before you can use the room charge feature again.

Wayne

[MikeCapsFan]

Do you actually have to ask them to repost your new limit? I thought they just went ahead and actually charged the first amount to the "real" card (i.e., your Visa, MC, etc.) and then restarted the new "tab" which is actually charged to your card at checkout or whenever you reach the limit. BTW, as convenient as this is (and I love using it), the use of your room card like this is a clever Disney ploy to keep you from thinking about how much real money your are spending. I find myself forgeting the money I am charging for overpriced food, drinks, and souveniers is the same as other money I spend. Ah--the wonders of vacations. graemlins/mickey.gif

[Beast_fanatic]

Originally posted by MikeCapsFan:
Do you actually have to ask them to repost your new limit?I don't think so. I think the limit is just the amount that you can rack up before they actually charge your card. Once they charge your card, your limit resets. At least, that was how I understood it when they explained it to me.

[ChesireLisa]

Can you have them take the credit card info...but then use cash to pay off all the charges, without actually putting them on plastic? We usually have the cash in hand to purchase everything we need but it would be convenient to not have to carry it all around.

[ July 25, 2003, 02:24 PM: Message edited by: ChesireLisa ]

[Munch]

Originally posted by ChesireLisa:
Can you have them take the credit card info...but then use cash to pay off all the charges, without actually putting them on plastic? We usually have the cash in hand to purchase everything we need but it would be convenient to not have to carry it all around. Yes. I've done this. I give them my credit card but I also put down a cash deposit. Your room key then works like a debit card until you run thru the cash amount, at which point charges will then go to your credit card. You can also check on your account periodically and add to the deposit if you wish. And in theory if you have cash left over you'll get it back - but it never seems to work that way for me! graemlins/blush.gif

As pointed out above, though, its really easy to lose track of what you are spending!

[ July 25, 2003, 02:59 PM: Message edited by: Munch ]

[Beast_fanatic]

You can ask for a summary of charges at any time if that would help you keep track of your spending. graemlins/thumbsup.gif

[spiceypj]

even the food courts take it -

the only places that don't are the seasonal carts that are in the parks, dd and bw. - everything else takes them. another words if they can move the thing it probably only takes cash. but ask before you buy - I think the ones in WS that sell wine and beer take the id as well as cash.

[Wayne]

Our last time at the world, we were happily charging everything to our room key (and staying well within our budget) when all of a sudden, with 3 days left (out of the 10 we were there) our charges would no longer go through...the CM at the shop where this first happened in MK thought that was unusual, but we had to use the credit card (the same one that we were using for the room). The next thing we tried to charge was at the food court in our resort...same story. I went to the desk to find out what was happening. The CM at the desk explained that we had hit the $1500 limit and they needed to settle (process) that ammount. I asked him to go ahead and we were able to room key charge again for the remainder of the trip.

In all of our times there, we'd never had this happen. Next time, I'll check at the desk every couple of days to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Wayne

[vizsla]

We use the room charge on every visit, and it really works out well. We only take a small amount of cash and travelers checks just in case some locations don't do the room charge. It is very convenient.

[TheRustyScupper]

Cash:
1) You leave a deposit with cash, check, money order or debit card.
2) You can room-charge up to that limit.
3) If you want to charge more, you need to deposit more cash.

Credit Card:
1) You leave the card imprint at the Front Desk.
2) Your credit card has a hold ("Authorization") placed for the resort limit.
3) You charge to the resort limit ($500 Value, $1000 Moderate, $1500 Deluxe resorts).
4) When you reach the limit, the credit card transaction is completed.
5) Your account is at zero again, a new authorization is made, and you can again charge.

NOTE: At any time you decide to add or halt charging privileges to all or some of the room keys, the key(s) must be taken to the Front Desk and they re-run the key trough the computer to re-code the magnetic strip.

[Roland]

Just an FYI. You used to be able to get 10% discounts if you used the American Express card. If you tie you AE card to the room key, you will not get the 10% discounts, they want to see the actual card.

Don't know about now that they've switched to their own card whether they honor the 10% discount on AE cards anymore.

[ConorsMom]

Does this work the same way for Debit visa cards? We had planned on using that, this way were "paying" cash, without actually "brining" cash!! graemlins/clappy.gif I had been a little concerned too, because I thought my bank would get suspicious with all these charges being made (I even called them and they said the best thing would be to notify them before we left so they would have a heads up that we were using the card a lot), but it doesn't sound like it works that way. I'm assuming we would tell them how much of a "hold" to put on, then the charges would come off that "hold" amount. Does that sound correct??

[Beast_fanatic]

Originally posted by Roland:
Just an FYI. You used to be able to get 10% discounts if you used the American Express card. If you tie you AE card to the room key, you will not get the 10% discounts, they want to see the actual card.

Don't know about now that they've switched to their own card whether they honor the 10% discount on AE cards anymore. The American Express discount is not longer honored since it is no longer the official card.


Originally posted by ConorsMom:
Does this work the same way for Debit visa cards? I'm assuming we would tell them how much of a "hold" to put on, then the charges would come off that "hold" amount. Does that sound correct?? The Visa Debit card can be used similar to cash. Visa Debit does normally have a per day spending limit, so you could run into an issue with that, but it's fairly high, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

[kariktn]

Does the Visa credit card have special benifits such as the 10% off like the AE card did? If not, what is the benifit of using the card? graemlins/mickey.gif

[ July 26, 2003, 11:44 AM: Message edited by: kariktn ]

[Beast_fanatic]

Originally posted by kariktn:
Does the Visa credit card have special benifits such as the 10% off like the AE card did? If not, what is the benifit of using the card? graemlins/mickey.gif The Disney Visa earns 1% on future Disney purchases. There is no 10% discount at WDW stores. There are discounts for things such as Alamo rental car.

[Disney-4-Me]

Using the room charge card was a rite of passage for our boys. They used to automatically put charging capabilities for anyone over 12 (I'm not sure if they still do this) and you could have the charge ability put on anyone under 12 if you asked. We always thought 12 sounded like a good age. Our younger son was so proud when he finally got that privilege.

They actually only used it at Captain Cook's but they thought they were very independent being able to go and charge a snack late at night! :D

[brownie]

On our last trip, we had a $1500 limit (set by the resort) on our room charges. If and when we had reached $1500, we would have had to have had it charged to the credit card (I believe you can pay cash too), and then we could have started over with a new $1500 limit. They only let you charge so much to the room before you need to settle the charges. You get a summary of the charges at check out. I like to do this because there are fewer charges on the credit card bill when it comes (too bad it doesn't lower the bill too!)

[Imalismom]

Just a little FYI for your DEBIT cards...

Check with your bank before you go. My debit card had a $1000.00 a dollar a day limit on it, and I did not know that until I tried to put a $1475.00 charge on it one day, I was getting a decline, even though a had that much money (and more) in my account. After talking with the back, my daily limit is now significantly higher... however, had I been at Disney, and they tried to charge $1500.00 at once to the card, it too would have been declined, no matter how much money I had in the account.