Question Regarding Free Gift Card Offer??

[Belster]

Ok this may be a dumb question...I have seen a few postings that are talking about switching their trips from later in 2010 to earlier to take advantage of the gift card promo.

Do you really save that much more money? What are you using the gift card for? Are you paying OOP for food rather than the DDP and using the card for food?

I do not need $500 in treats, and souviners.

Any thoughts????

[Strmchsr]

It's purely a marketing gimmick. Since you pay full rack rate for rooms, food, etc. the gift card turns out to be about the same as the "normal" discounts WDW gives. The catch this time is that they make sure you spend all of that discount in the parks instead of saving the money you "saved." So, to me, no, it's not that great of a deal.

[ibelieveindisneymagic]

We are still trying to decide our Disney plans for 2010, but if we went during the gift card time, we would use for the "extra" food, DH's drinks and the TS meals we end up doing, any souvenirs. We usually end up spending about $500 on a trip, so although I would rather just save the $$, it is better than nothing!

[Genie1953]

We will use ours to pay for appetizers, tips, a couple of character breakfasts that we were going to pay out of pocket for...a couple of tours we want to take.....and spending money for souveniers....if warm enough we will buy one day tickets to a waterpark. We figure it won't take long to spend it...that is for sure. We have about $400 in Disney VISA Reward dollars saved up that were going to be used for spending money but instead we will apply that to the cost of our trip.

[Lily]

A day at the waterparks is a fantastic suggestion! Keep the spending ideas coming. We will have $750 to spend! :-D

[jwildflower1981]

We will TRY to hold on to abou $200 of it for Christmas time for our 2 year old DD. We will either order some things online or ride our to our Disney store.
At the parks we will keep the dining plan and use the GC for adult drinks, tips and appitzers.

[VioletIncredible]

We are going to go on the Pirate Fireworks cruise, buy adult beverages, tip, buy souvenirs.

The best thing is we are being joined for a few days by my mom who is retired and my cousin who has been laid off. This way I can pay for their meals without making them feel indebted, "Oh well, we have to use this gift card up so put your money away..."

We switched from buy 5 get 2 because this "saved" us a little more, and we thought it would be great to feel free to spend money rather than be frugal while on vacation.