When going to the Parks grab a Disney Gift Card and load all your money you plan on spending in the parks on food, drink and merchandise. This will help you spend only what you have allotted to the Disney portion of the vacation. You can inquire at most cash registers ( that take the gift card ) at the balance or on your receipt after your purchase. Disney Gift Card has also created an iPhone App that can handle multiple gift cards and tell you your balance which is really great.
Thanks to my friend Holly over at http://allthatisholly.blogspot.com/ for telling me about this idea. After trying it out successfully and thinking about other ways to utilize the Disney Gift Card I came up with these thoughts.
Eating or Drink Around the World Showcase in Epcot
This is a favourite event with my friends and I, we start at a country around World Showcase in Epcot, have a snack or drink at that country then move onto the next country and repeat. As you can imagine this can be loads of fun when you are at Epcot in the afternoon evening. Load up your eating / drinking around the world money so you don’t have one of those “I spent how much money last night!?” moments as you go over the receipts in your pockets trying to piece together the events of your big night around World Show Case. Instead you can just look back at the photos on your phone to recreate the evening.
( Always be responsible when enjoying the different spirits from around the world in Epcot )
Trip spending money savings plan
For those that live near a Disney Store you can periodically add money on your gift card so every pay day you can put X dollars on the card as a method to save up for the upcoming trip. Since you can carry a balance on the card and it never expires you can carry over money from this trip to the next.
Teach kids about spending and budgeting
You could give children a gift card with some money on it and let them learn about the value of things and then let them learn about budgeting with out giving them actual cash to experiment with.
Helping foreigners with deal with different currency
For people from outside the US dealing with the US Currency can be a bit of a challenge since most of the bills look so similar. I have a friend form an unnamed country down under that I won’t mention by name ( is that anonymous enough for you AJ ) that almost tipped with a $100 bill because it kind of looked enough like a 10 or a Single in the dimly lit area. with a gift card this would not have happened. As a Canadian I run into this all the time I return home from a vacation to Disneyland with heaps of change, if I use the gift card I never have to try and use up the change in my pocket. When I go to Florida I can thank the toll roads for riding me of the left over change in my pocket.
In full disclosure Disney Gift Card is an advertiser on my website thanks to Maingate Ads.
