New Credit Card Authorization Holds

[Scar1199]

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.

We went with a decent amount of room on our credit card, I knew roughly what we'd spend but the holds threw me. Checking your card balance and only seeing around $100 knowing it should be close to $1000 was not fun.

 

[Dug720]

I will be starting with a credit of about $109 on my room (I had paid a good portion of my room when it was going to be at AKL, then I switched to Pop and my room was paid with some leftover which was left on the room as a credit). Any clue how the authorization will be affected by this?

 

[sponica]

I will be starting with a credit of about $109 on my room (I had paid a good portion of my room when it was going to be at AKL, then I switched to Pop and my room was paid with some leftover which was left on the room as a credit). Any clue how the authorization will be affected by this?

In the normal sane world, you shouldn't need one until you spend more than 100. But this is Disney IT, so they'll probably just do the preauth anyway...

 

[Patches Lee]

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"

I don't go until June so hopefully more info will come out before then. I may ask if they can put a larger initial hold on so I can track things easier, and not get bank notifications so much. I'm already going to have resort parking which from my understanding is billed at checkin.

 

[AngiTN]

I do think a whole lot of the idiosyncrasies in this process are driven by the differences in how the different credit card companies process and release holds. Not all do it the same way and not all are as quick to release them. That alone will make it very hard to compare how one person's experience goes to another.

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.

This is how our trips typically are too.
I'd say we never have a day without going over $100 total charges for a day. We don't eat QS, always eat TS, usually 2 a day. Charge everything back to the bands. Even when it's just DH and I it's more than $100 a day in charges to the room.
We are room only stays, which are paid in full prior to check-in.
So will be interesting that's for sure.
I compound the issues by paying on some of the room charges using a gift card partway through some of our trips. Depends on if I have any accumulated or not

 

[sponica]

@AngiTN add in charges/preauths done between close of business Friday and when the weekend's transactions actually get processed (note to self, do not check out on a saturday or sunday) and it could cause all sorts of accounting idiosyncracies.

 

[Turksmom]

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.

Good point. We have a larger family and don't generally use the dining plan, so we usually plan to spend at least that much. I was only looking at ways to avoid all of the intermittent authorizations.

 

[ninafeliz]

I do think a whole lot of the idiosyncrasies in this process are driven by the differences in how the different credit card companies process and release holds. Not all do it the same way and not all are as quick to release them. That alone will make it very hard to compare how one person's experience goes to another.

This is how our trips typically are too.
I'd say we never have a day without going over $100 total charges for a day. We don't eat QS, always eat TS, usually 2 a day. Charge everything back to the bands. Even when it's just DH and I it's more than $100 a day in charges to the room.
We are room only stays, which are paid in full prior to check-in.
So will be interesting that's for sure.
I compound the issues by paying on some of the room charges using a gift card partway through some of our trips. Depends on if I have any accumulated or not

We do the same thing - pay down the balance partway through most stays so it doesn't get high enough to trigger the charge before we get a chance to use the gift cards! Sometimes they fool us and charge early, and other times they let it get high enough that we get rejected when we try to pay because it pushed us over the set $2000 max. I can't figure them out sometimes.

 

[SL6827]

If they do happen to put a charge through that you intended to pay off with a gift card can they go in and retract the charge and let you pay it with your gift card?

 

[cmwade77]

If they do happen to put a charge through that you intended to pay off with a gift card can they go in and retract the charge and let you pay it with your gift card?

I would think so, but the refund may take up to a week to be processed, depending on your credit card company's handling of it.

I think if you are going to pay with gift card, it is probably best to take it with you and not charge back to the room any more and I wonder if this is a side effect or an intentional effect of the new system. If it is a side effect, then I would imagine Disney will go back to allowing everyone to put credit on their room using gift cards. It would be nice to even be able to do this up front with a credit card, say I plan on spending $500, let me put $500 on and if I only spend $300, refund the $200 to the card when i check out.

 

[SL6827]

I would think so, but the refund may take up to a week to be processed, depending on your credit card company's handling of it.

I think if you are going to pay with gift card, it is probably best to take it with you and not charge back to the room any more and I wonder if this is a side effect or an intentional effect of the new system. If it is a side effect, then I would imagine Disney will go back to allowing everyone to put credit on their room using gift cards. It would be nice to even be able to do this up front with a credit card, say I plan on spending $500, let me put $500 on and if I only spend $300, refund the $200 to the card when i check out.

We are not going to charge to our room at Port Orleans, and I will just go and pay down our balance at SSR on our second night there and then on our last night there. Shouldn't be any problems with doing this plan, right?

 

[hereforthechurros]

If they do happen to put a charge through that you intended to pay off with a gift card can they go in and retract the charge and let you pay it with your gift card?

Yes. We had to do this on a past trip when they charged us earlier than they said they would. They reversed the charge to the CC but it did take a few days for the refund to come through.

 

[PJofNB]

I do think a whole lot of the idiosyncrasies in this process are driven by the differences in how the different credit card companies process and release holds. Not all do it the same way and not all are as quick to release them. That alone will make it very hard to compare how one person's experience goes to another.

This is an excellent point. Even if Disney is entirely consistent in how they do this, variability in credit card company practice as well as how different guests vacation will likely result in quite a range of experiences.

 

[PolyRob]

I've updated my BC and GF online check-ins for my split stay to have different credit cards. I want to see how each of my banks handle this change. Both reservations are room only and already paid in full. I typically charge everything to my band and will use a gift card to pay them off completely before checking out and switching resorts. It should be an interesting test!

 

[Alicenwonderment]

After reading through this thread I think this will have a big effect on the debit cards. If I'm understanding things correctly I would have to have twice as much money in my bank account than my purchase costs. I almost didn't have a credit card because my credit union (Disney) threatened to take it away if I didn't start using it. (Never fear I had to have dental work done. ) Thing is there could be other people that only use a debit card and do not have credit cards. I like to pay everything off right away. I most likely wouldn't put my card down and charge back to the room knowing this policy but not all people will pay attention to this change.

I also wonder how the parking is charged. Is it charged nightly or all nights at the end of the stay? I know somewhere in this thread it was mentioned there was a hold placed for parking.

 

[ninafeliz]

I've updated my BC and GF online check-ins for my split stay to have different credit cards. I want to see how each of my banks handle this change. Both reservations are room only and already paid in full. I typically charge everything to my band and will use a gift card to pay them off completely before checking out and switching resorts. It should be an interesting test!

That’s exactly what we do, so I’ll be curious to see how it goes for you. the only thing is I don’t want to use 2 credit cards, I want to use the Disney one and get 2% since the charges are at Disney.

Do you just call ahead and pay your room before you go? We always pay our RO on check In since you don’t have to pay ahead, is there a reason to pay it off earlier?

 

[Wood Nymph]

Do you just call ahead and pay your room before you go? We always pay our RO on check In since you don’t have to pay ahead, is there a reason to pay it off earlier?

When I am paying off my balance with a credit card I don't pay it until check in. If I am paying it off with a gift card then I will pay it off a day or so ahead of time.

 

[Searc]

I've updated my BC and GF online check-ins for my split stay to have different credit cards. I want to see how each of my banks handle this change. Both reservations are room only and already paid in full. I typically charge everything to my band and will use a gift card to pay them off completely before checking out and switching resorts. It should be an interesting test!

You can only have one credit card saved to your MDE profile. So if you changed your payment method, the last card you entered is the only one that will be used.

 

[Samantha Morgan]

After reading through this thread I think this will have a big effect on the debit cards. If I'm understanding things correctly I would have to have twice as much money in my bank account than my purchase costs. I almost didn't have a credit card because my credit union (Disney) threatened to take it away if I didn't start using it. (Never fear I had to have dental work done. ) Thing is there could be other people that only use a debit card and do not have credit cards. I like to pay everything off right away. I most likely wouldn't put my card down and charge back to the room knowing this policy but not all people will pay attention to this change.

I also wonder how the parking is charged. Is it charged nightly or all nights at the end of the stay? I know somewhere in this thread it was mentioned there was a hold placed for parking.

You still have the option to pay with your debit card atcthe restaurants, stores, etc and never have to worry about holds accumulating on those things. If you are concerned.

 

[siren0119]

I would think so, but the refund may take up to a week to be processed, depending on your credit card company's handling of it.

I think if you are going to pay with gift card, it is probably best to take it with you and not charge back to the room any more and I wonder if this is a side effect or an intentional effect of the new system. If it is a side effect, then I would imagine Disney will go back to allowing everyone to put credit on their room using gift cards. It would be nice to even be able to do this up front with a credit card, say I plan on spending $500, let me put $500 on and if I only spend $300, refund the $200 to the card when i check out.

I've been reading through this thread as we're trying to figure out what to do on our August trip - We only have a debit card as we don't use credit cards at all, and from what i'm seeing we will probably just load up Disney gift cards and use those in the parks vs paying with MB's outside of our dining credits. It's too bad because it was REALLY convenient to just hop down to the front desk at night and pay off the day's charges (and TBH I probably spent more just swiping the MB than I would if I had to pull out a card at the register). But with the delay in clearing holds while charges are going through I just can't have that much actual $$ tied up at the same time.