Bounce Backs and Gift Cards – 05/21/26

Hello all, Anthony here. Long story short, life happens. Ash and I have been talking about kicking off the Blog, the podcast, itineraries, and a bunch of other stuff, since the beginning of the year, and we’re finally getting EOE stood up. We close on a house tomorrow, and hope to have the podcast running by mid-July.

Now all that being said, we have our next Disney trip coming really soon. We leave on May 31^st for our stay at Animal Kingdom Lodge, which is home to me. I can’t wait to get to Jambo House, go across the seal, and step into massive entryway.

We started planning this trip at the very end of our February trip, and Ash is deep into the Itinerary making, but there’s a few pointers I wanted to make which I think will be helpful to the rest of you. 

Bounce Back Offers –

First thing is to remember to consider using your Bounce Back. If you’re staying on Disney property you will receive an offer to book another stay with a discounted rate. This next stay must be booked within seven days of your check-out date, so you have to preplan what you’re doing. On top of that, not all calendar days are eligible. 

What’s great is that if you’re planning on another trip, you can upgrade, which is exactly what we did. We stayed at Coronado in February, which is a Moderate Resort, and are using the thirty-five percent discount to stay at Animal Kingdom Lodge, which is a Deluxe Resort. We keep within our budget while staying at one of my favorite resorts!

Disney Gift Cards

Ash and I had our days for the trip, but we weren’t sure how many of those days we wanted to spend in the parks. Once we got home we outlined our next trip, and by we, I mean her. She told me two park days. So I started going online and figuring out what park tickets would cost, and understanding dynamic pricing, kids being out of school, families starting vacations early, the prices were a little higher than I wanted. 

Okay, I’m a Sam’s Club member, maybe the gift cards are the right route. Sam's sells gift cards at a discount, so I bought $750 worth. I did not realize my frustrations were just beginning.

When purchasing tickets through Disney, you can only submit ONE gift card. But the max you can buy from Sam’s Club (or any other vendor) is $500.00 per individual gift card. I did some online research and found that you can consolidate up to six gift cards with a max of $1000.00. (Use this website if looking to consolidate https://www.disneygiftcard.com/ )

Okay, so I pulled up the e-gift cards, started assigning all the amount onto one of them, so I could go back onto Disney’s website and buy the tickets via the gift cards, all of which saved me five percent. I had roughly twenty-seven dollars left over after I bought the tickets, which is fine, because I used it to buy my sister the Official 2026 Nurses Day Disney Pin (respect the nurses!). 

In the end, it was frustrating. I went through a few hoops to save five percent, which when you’re spending hundreds of dollars that five percent does make a difference, but I also really don’t understand why Disney’s website doesn’t allow you to put multiple gift cards toward a resort or ticket purchase. They make you go through extra steps, and maybe it is to dismay you from using the gift cards, to forget you have them and to use your credit or debit cards (tin foil hat mode engage), but considering the age we live in and most purchases are a simple phone tap, there should be some functionality to allow us to put in multiple gift cards.

Alright, that’s my rant and my warning. EOE is a slow go right now, but there’s a lot on the way. Gonna setup a subscribers part so that you can be notified of new posts and new content, and no, there will not be a charge for it.

Look for our next post, which should be up on Sunday or Monday, all of it detailing the new Disney Store at Ross Park Mall in Pittsburgh! We’re boots on the ground for this one!