New Credit Card Authorization Holds

[Samantha Morgan]

We just got back and this is what we experienced. After 5 days a charge of $900 was put on our card, but we still had the previous 4 days of holds still showing. So our credit limit was showing the $900 plus the holds for 4 days, which gave me a scare.

So the $900 was the actual amount you spent? How much were the holds then on top of that?

 

[Scar1199]

So the $900 was the actual amount you spent? How much were the holds then on top of that?

So our first day was March 4, on the morning of March 5 there was an authorization for what we spent the day before. This continued until our 5th day when there was a payment submitted for the total of the 5 days, $900. But the holds still didn't come off, holds seem to take 4-5 days to clear off my card. So I had a $900 payment go through but also still had holds showing. I knew they'd clear off each day, but we were staying for 5 more days, so more holds were being added. Everything in the end was fine, but it seems you need to make sure you have plenty of room on your card to cover the holds along with the payments.

 

[Scar1199]

I'll also add that if you do mobile ordering, it goes directly to your card as a payment, it doesn't get added to your room total. You have to set up a credit card for that, so it can be the same as the one you use your MB for or a different one.

 

[Samantha Morgan]

So our first day was March 4, on the morning of March 5 there was an authorization for what we spent the day before. This continued until our 5th day when there was a payment submitted for the total of the 5 days, $900. But the holds still didn't come off, holds seem to take 4-5 days to clear off my card. So I had a $900 payment go through but also still had holds showing. I knew they'd clear off each day, but we were staying for 5 more days, so more holds were being added. Everything in the end was fine, but it seems you need to make sure you have plenty of room on your card to cover the holds along with the payments.

I understand the process, but what was the total dollar amount of the holds.

 

[Scar1199]

I understand the process, but what was the total dollar amount of the holds.

I think it was around $650-$700, whatever we spent on days 2-5 as day 1 cleared by that time.

 

[ninafeliz]

I'm not completely understanding this, and I had figured I would just wait for our trip in June and figure it out then. I don't usually keep an eye on my cc charges or room charges closely, so I'm wondering/hoping I won't even notice a difference. But we seem to charge differently from most people here. We are a family of 6, don't do the dining plan, and use our MB for everything while at WDW. TS meals, QS, meals, lots of souvenirs, even if we want to grab a bottle of water from a cart. With 6 people many of our charges for character/TS meals are in the $250-$300 range with tip, so adding that to any snacks, $70 QS meals, and additional spending we can have over $500 a day on our room charge easily (not every day,but many). We will be doing a 3 way split stay this trip, 4/4/5 (deluxe resorts if it matters, I thought the only difference was the threshold for charging your card). So at each resort I would expect to have a room charge in the $1200-$2000 range. So how will this affect us? Will we have $100 added on top of each of those large charges, or just $100 in addition each day? Or something else all together that I'm just not getting? Will it look like we charged $400 more than our total (for the 4 days), but when the charge goes through it will be for the actual total minus the $400? I'm hoping this sounds more confusing to write and to read about than it will actually be when we experience it.

 

[DavidL]

Just returned from a Disney vacation. I am not sure of the process that Disney is using with their system to do the pre-auths and then clearing them. It almost appears that their system isn't recalling the pre-auths to clear, but is charging a new charge instead. Our card has plenty of "elbow room" for available credit, so it hasn't caused us any grief. There are still $845 worth of outstanding pre-auths on our card that I guess will drop off over the next 5 to 7 days.

 

[jbethel77]

Since we use a debit card, i’ve Pretty much decided that charging back to our room like we have in the past isn’t really an option anymore...

But I am curious... what time of day do they add the additional holds? Is it immediately after you go over the $100? Or is it an over night thing?
Just wondering if we can still charge with MBs, but pay off our balance each afternoon/evening when we come back from the parks?

 

[sponica]

I'm not completely understanding this, and I had figured I would just wait for our trip in June and figure it out then. I don't usually keep an eye on my cc charges or room charges closely, so I'm wondering/hoping I won't even notice a difference. But we seem to charge differently from most people here. We are a family of 6, don't do the dining plan, and use our MB for everything while at WDW. TS meals, QS, meals, lots of souvenirs, even if we want to grab a bottle of water from a cart. With 6 people many of our charges for character/TS meals are in the $250-$300 range with tip, so adding that to any snacks, $70 QS meals, and additional spending we can have over $500 a day on our room charge easily (not every day,but many). We will be doing a 3 way split stay this trip, 4/4/5 (deluxe resorts if it matters, I thought the only difference was the threshold for charging your card). So at each resort I would expect to have a room charge in the $1200-$2000 range. So how will this affect us? Will we have $100 added on top of each of those large charges, or just $100 in addition each day? Or something else all together that I'm just not getting? Will it look like we charged $400 more than our total (for the 4 days), but when the charge goes through it will be for the actual total minus the $400? I'm hoping this sounds more confusing to write and to read about than it will actually be when we experience it.

Assuming all stays are packages. Upon check in, you'll get a 100 hold placed on the account, once you cross that 100 dollar threshold another 100 dollar hold will be applied and so on and so forth. Upon checkout, or day 5 whichever is first, the accrued charges will be processed. If at the end of your first stay you charged 1170, you'll have the holds of 1200 and the actual charge of 1170 will be processed. Based on some reports, the holds/pre auths might linger on the card.

If stays are room only (with a balance), 100 plus whatever the balance of the room only stay is will be applied at check in. Then the 100 dollar holds as needed.

 

[PJofNB]

I'm not completely understanding this, and I had figured I would just wait for our trip in June and figure it out then. I don't usually keep an eye on my cc charges or room charges closely, so I'm wondering/hoping I won't even notice a difference.

My response is based upon our experience the last week of February/early March. If you proceed as you have in past and don't watch cc charges and holds day-to-day (I don't normally do this, either!), but instead just wait until a few days (up to about five, seems to vary with credit card company) after your trip to have a look, you shouldn't notice a difference. By that point, all the holds should have fallen away and you will only see the actual charges to your credit card for the amounts charged to your room. I think those charges should appear at checkout from each resort, since none of your resort stays are greater than five days.

So how will this affect us? Will we have $100 added on top of each of those large charges, or just $100 in addition each day? Or something else all together that I'm just not getting? Will it look like we charged $400 more than our total (for the 4 days), but when the charge goes through it will be for the actual total minus the $400?

If you look at your credit card activity during your stay, you should see holds (my bank lists these as pending charges in my account activity) that will sum to no more than the total of the charges to your room plus $100. As you charge things to your room, Disney will place new holds on your card whenever individual charges exceed $100 or when you make a series of smaller charges that sum to more than $100. The new holds should simply equal the new charges (i.e., those not already covered by previous holds). At checkout (or every five days, for longer stays), Disney will actually charge your card for the amount owing (i.e., total room charges) to that point. When this happened during our stay, they at the same time applied essentially a negative hold to our card equal to the existing holds, so that the net in holds was zero but the actual charge was now applied.

The positive and negative holds persisted in my credit card account for about five days following checkout (which included a weekend), and then all disappeared. Because the positive and negative holds balanced each other, my available credit was not affected by this.

I found it a bit confusing to figure out the transactions when I looked at my credit card activity during and at the end of my stay, but was happy in the end with how these were done as they never tied up more than $100 of my credit beyond the actual amount of my room charges. I don't normally monitor transactions on my card day-to-day, but did so in this case because of the uncertainty around this new policy. If I look at my credit card statement now (a couple of weeks after our trip), I only see the charges at check-in (for the balance owing on our room-only reservation) and check-out (for the accumulated charges to our room over the length of our stay).

I recognize that our trip was during the first week following implementation of this new policy, so it is possible that there will be (or have already been) tweaks to the implementation.

 

[PJofNB]

Since we use a debit card, i’ve Pretty much decided that charging back to our room like we have in the past isn’t really an option anymore...

But I am curious... what time of day do they add the additional holds? Is it immediately after you go over the $100? Or is it an over night thing?
Just wondering if we can still charge with MBs, but pay off our balance each afternoon/evening when we come back from the parks?

It appeared to be immediate in our case. My bank only shows a date stamp on transactions, not time, but on days when we had multiple room charges each greater than $100, we saw multiple new holds. For example, breakfast at resort ($35) followed by snacks in park ($20) and lunch ($60), a new hold for $115 appeared. Later in the day, character dinner ($225), a new hold for $225 appeared.

 

[Wood Nymph]

Since we use a debit card, i’ve Pretty much decided that charging back to our room like we have in the past isn’t really an option anymore...

But I am curious... what time of day do they add the additional holds? Is it immediately after you go over the $100? Or is it an over night thing?
Just wondering if we can still charge with MBs, but pay off our balance each afternoon/evening when we come back from the parks?

They put a $100 hold on our account when we checked in that morning.

 

[Samantha Morgan]

Since we use a debit card, i’ve Pretty much decided that charging back to our room like we have in the past isn’t really an option anymore...

But I am curious... what time of day do they add the additional holds? Is it immediately after you go over the $100? Or is it an over night thing?
Just wondering if we can still charge with MBs, but pay off our balance each afternoon/evening when we come back from the parks?

Someone in a group I belong to said they did online check in, she gets phone notifications when there’s activity on her credit card and at 4am the morning of her check in, $100 authorization hold hit her card.

 

[ninafeliz]

If stays are room only (with a balance), 100 plus whatever the balance of the room only stay is will be applied at check in. Then the 100 dollar holds as needed.

My response is based upon our experience the last week of February/early March. If you proceed as you have in past and don't watch cc charges and holds day-to-day (I don't normally do this, either!), but instead just wait until a few days (up to about five, seems to vary with credit card company) after your trip to have a look, you shouldn't notice a difference. By that point, all the holds should have fallen away and you will only see the actual charges to your credit card for the amounts charged to your room. I think those charges should appear at checkout from each resort, since none of your resort stays are greater than five days.


If you look at your credit card activity during your stay, you should see holds (my bank lists these as pending charges in my account activity) that will sum to no more than the total of the charges to your room plus $100. As you charge things to your room, Disney will place new holds on your card whenever individual charges exceed $100 or when you make a series of smaller charges that sum to more than $100. The new holds should simply equal the new charges (i.e., those not already covered by previous holds). At checkout (or every five days, for longer stays), Disney will actually charge your card for the amount owing (i.e., total room charges) to that point. When this happened during our stay, they at the same time applied essentially a negative hold to our card equal to the existing holds, so that the net in holds was zero but the actual charge was now applied.

The positive and negative holds persisted in my credit card account for about five days following checkout (which included a weekend), and then all disappeared. Because the positive and negative holds balanced each other, my available credit was not affected by this.

I found it a bit confusing to figure out the transactions when I looked at my credit card activity during and at the end of my stay, but was happy in the end with how these were done as they never tied up more than $100 of my credit beyond the actual amount of my room charges. I don't normally monitor transactions on my card day-to-day, but did so in this case because of the uncertainty around this new policy. If I look at my credit card statement now (a couple of weeks after our trip), I only see the charges at check-in (for the balance owing on our room-only reservation) and check-out (for the accumulated charges to our room over the length of our stay).

I recognize that our trip was during the first week following implementation of this new policy, so it is possible that there will be (or have already been) tweaks to the implementation.

Thanks! I still don't completely get it, but I'm assuming I'll have to actually do it to understand. I'll give it one more go-round, and then just figure I'll wait until our trip and see how it works and if it makes a difference.

Our stays are all room only.

If in one day we charge a character meal to our band for $250, a QS meal for $100, and have miscellaneous for a total of $130 from multiple charges (I just made numbers up to make sure they were all over $100), would I see charges on the cc for $480 + $100, or $480 + $300, since there were 2 charge greater than $100 and then miscellaneous that added together also went over $100. Or $480 + $400, since the total spent was over 4 multiples of $100. Or do I just have it all wrong??

I am thinking I am going to have to just watch the room folio if I want to make sure the charges are correct, and then check the cc statement once it is all finished to make sure the final total is what we would expect. I admit to having been too lax over the years on watching to make sure the charges are all correct, this has brought it back up to the forefront.

 

[sponica]

@ninafeliz if my understanding is correct if you checked out with a balance of 480, the 480 would be processed but you'd have $500 in preauthorizations. Basically round every charge up to the next closest 100.

Honestly they would have made life a lot easier just doing a per night hold of say 100 dollars at check in, like other hotels where they hold money per night at check in.

 

[Patches Lee]

@ninafeliz if my understanding is correct if you checked out with a balance of 480, the 480 would be processed but you'd have $500 in preauthorizations. Basically round every charge up to the next closest 100.

Honestly they would have made life a lot easier just doing a per night hold of say 100 dollars at check in, like other hotels where they hold money per night at check in.

This would make things so much easier when looking at accounts. I'd rather tell them to put $1000 hold right away and not have to track multiple holds waiting for them to be canceled after vacation.

 

[Turksmom]

This would make things so much easier when looking at accounts. I'd rather tell them to put $1000 hold right away and not have to track multiple holds waiting for them to be canceled after vacation.

Agreed. I don't know why they didn't just authorize the same amount as the previous resort charging limits and process when you hit the limit or check out.

 

[sponica]

This would make things so much easier when looking at accounts. I'd rather tell them to put $1000 hold right away and not have to track multiple holds waiting for them to be canceled after vacation.

My next trip is hopefully in the 8 to 10 day range. I'd much rather have a 100 dollar per night hold at the beginning...while I pay down the balance every night with gift cards, it would be less of a hassle and easier to build into the "budget"

 

[PJofNB]

If in one day we charge a character meal to our band for $250, a QS meal for $100, and have miscellaneous for a total of $130 from multiple charges (I just made numbers up to make sure they were all over $100), would I see charges on the cc for $480 + $100, or $480 + $300, since there were 2 charge greater than $100 and then miscellaneous that added together also went over $100. Or $480 + $400, since the total spent was over 4 multiples of $100. Or do I just have it all wrong??

You are getting this. Your first answer is what I would expect you to see (except these would be holds, not charges).

If this was your check-in day, you should see total holds placed that day on your credit card of $480+$100 (or less, depending upon the order in which you made the charges, e.g., with some of the smaller miscellaneous charges in between some of the larger meal charges; the total should be no more than $100 greater than the sum of your charges). If you checked in, say, the day before, the original $100 hold would have been placed on check-in day and the new holds would appear on the day of the charges. A new "extra" hold of $100 is NOT placed each day.

Your resort folio is a record of the amounts charged to your room and the payments made to cover those charges (cash, gift cards, credit card charges at checkout or every fifth day of your stay). The resort folio will not show the holds placed on your credit card.

 

[PJofNB]

Agreed. I don't know why they didn't just authorize the same amount as the previous resort charging limits and process when you hit the limit or check out.

This would be problematic for those who don't have a high enough credit limit on their card to handle the $1000+ hold. With the approach they have adopted, people with modest amounts of available credit on their card are still ok, as long as they only charge small amounts to their room or pay off room balances every day or two with gift cards, cash or debit card.