As you may have read, the Disney Vacation Account is no more.  On July 25 2017, Disney announced that they would be shutting down the Disney Vacation Account program.  Future contributions were suspended and owners with existing funds were offered 4 options for their accounts.  We are going to focus on how to liquidate your account using Option 1, which offers owners the opportunity to buy a Disney Gift Card using funds in their account.  The gift card is distributed via email.  As an added loyalty bonus, Disney offered to increase the amount on the gift card by 5%.

In order to cash out your account and turn the funds into a Disney Gift Card with the additional 5% bonus, you will need to log into your account.  Select any accounts with funds in them.  On the left hand side of the screen, select “Purchase a Disney Gift Card”.

You will then be brought to another page that will allow you to choose the account you wish to liquidate.  As long as you do this by September 27, 2017, you will receive an additional 5% on the gift card.  They do warn you that if you have more than $10,000 in your account, it might take a few days to cash out via gift cards. 

Select the account you want to liquidate in the highlighted pull down.

Once you have selected the account, check the box that indicates that you agree that all funds in the account will be converted into a Disney gift card.  Then select “Review Your Request”.

You will then see a review of your transaction.  You will see the amount in your account and the amount that will be in the gift card you receive.  As you can see, we had $1852.13 in our account, but would receive $1944.74 on our gift card.  That was a bonus of $92.61!  Once you have reviewed the transaction, select “Buy Disney Gift Card”.

You will receive a confirmation screen once you have purchased the card.  Your account will now be empty.

We received our electronic gift card in our email within moments.  We then called our travel agent (Michelle McKnight – affiliated with Touring Plans Travel Agency) and had her apply the gift card to an upcoming cruise.  She applied it to our cruise and then mailed us an updated reservation confirmation indicating the new remaining amount to be paid on the cruise.

While we are really sad that the Disney Vacation Account is closing, we definitely appreciated the 5% bonus that Disney gave us.  Liquidating the account was very easy to do, just follow the steps shown above!

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