Woman's Parents Accidentally Bought $10,000 Worth of Disney Plus Streaming Gift Cards

Gift cards are great because they’re like real money, but they come with one major caveat: you can only spend them in one place. Imagine buying the wrong gift cards and then being stuck with them. It does happen.

One woman on TikTok and her family know this struggle all too well. They purchased a pretty hefty stack of gift cards to use on vacation, but the catch is they bought the wrong gift cards and now they have an enormous amount of credit for a vendor they have no interest in using.

A TikTok creator and social worker named Andie ( explained in a video that she and her family of 16 were planning a big trip to Disney World in 2020. But because of the pandemic, they ended up rescheduling their trip for 2023 around Christmas time.

“To save some money, my parents bought $10,000 worth of Disney gift cards to purchase our tickets and restaurant reservations," Andie explained. However, she said that during a recent visit home, she realized they were having trouble loading the gift cards onto the Disney Parks website.

Andie then shows one of the gift cards that her parents bought. If you read it closely, you can see it is for the streaming service Disney Plus.

Yup, Andie's parents accidentally purchased $10,000 worth of Disney Plus gift cards. “That’s over 70 years of Disney Plus,” she added.

And because of this gift card snafu, it meant her parents couldn't purchase the park tickets yet and solidify their vacation plans, which was risky as tickets are in high demand during the holiday season.

Andie pleaded for help in her video. “We need help! It’s not about the money! It’s about getting the money in the right form," she said.

Following that video, Andie continued to provide several updates as she and her family tried to navigate this complex situation. In another TikTok, she clarified that her video wasn't a scam and this did actually happen. She said her parents are 78 years old and don’t use streaming services, which is why they didn't realize they bought the wrong gift card.

“I don’t know why somebody let them buy that many cards of streaming services. I am also equally confused," Andie said. However, she later learned that her parents purchased all of the gift cards online, where there is apparently no limit on how many you can buy.

And because her parents had already scratched the numbers off on the back of each gift card, they weren't able to return them.

Andie also shared that “this is our one shot” for her and her husband to take their kids to Disney. So if things didn't pan out the way they wanted, they probably couldn't afford to take them again.

However, things started to look up after Andie got notice that her parents emailed, Bill Hambrook, the manager of gift cards at Disney. Fortunately, he was able to help her family and told them that Disney would be turning the $10,000 of Disney Plus streaming gift cards into $10,000 worth of Disney Park gift cards.

Finally, that happy Disney ending we were all hoping for!

Andie was relieved to hear the good news. But during this whole fiasco, people reached out to her sharing similar stories of how they purchased Disney Plus gift cards by accident instead of gift cards that can be used in the parks.

“I really hope that Disney takes note of this and creates a little bit better system," Andie said, urging the company to take better action and redesign the gift cards.