Family accidentally buys $10,000 in gift cards — for Disney+, not their vacation

An elderly couple who thought they'd purchased $10,000 worth of Walt Disney park gift cards for a family vacation later discovered they'd made a terrible mistake.

The gift cards, it turns out, were for Disney's online streaming service, Disney+.

All $10,000 worth of them.

TikToker user @aofthecoast, whose real name is Andie Coston, revealed Dec. 18 in a now-viral TikTok video that her parents had been planning to take 16 family members on a family vacation in 2020, but their dream was thwarted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The couple rescheduled the vacation for Christmas 2023, and went online to purchase $10,000 in gift cards to Disney parks and restaurants.

But when they later tried using the cards to book the Disney trip, they realized they'd accidentally bought a lifetime's worth of gift cards for the company's streaming service, Disney+.

“I went home this weekend, and they were having problems loading the gift cards correctly and purchasing the tickets,” Coston wrote in her video, before showing photos of the gift cards to her viewers.

“We leave in 6 days and the parks are selling out of tickets because it’s Christmas. My mom is distraught, Dad frustrated, and the kids worried we won’t get into Disney,” she added.

TODAY.com reached out to Coston for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Coston explained in her caption that she was trying to help her parents find out who they could contact to remedy their mistake.

“It is not about the funding of the trip. It is about finding someone who can help us transfer the money into the correct gift card so we can make it to Disney!” she wrote, adding that her parents are "not familiar with Disney Plus" and had no idea the cards could be for a streaming service.

Less than 24 hours later, Coston updated her followers in a new TikTok video, revealing that someone at Disney reached out to help them by “turning the $10,000 of Disney streaming gift cards into $10,000 of Disney Parks gift cards.”

“I’m glad that this is resolved. I hate that this is what it took. I really hope this doesn’t happen to other people,” Coston said.

“I mean I know that it has, so I guess it probably will, it just is so frustrating to think that there are other people who have done this, in smaller amounts,” she added.

Coston acknowledged that the situation might have been financially "disastrous" for other families, and said she hoped Disney would make it easier for folks unfamiliar with their streaming service to avoid the same mistake.

"I’m really hoping Disney takes note of this and creates a little bit better system because they are not transferrable — we tried," she said.

Disney did not immediately respond to TODAY.com's request for comment.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com