Hi all, here's coming from a phone company employee. Payphones do indeed have a surcharge for using a calling card, whether it be a card obtained through your phone company or a prepaid card you bought elsewhere. I believe the government just allowed in the last couple of years. The payphone surchage is usually 75 cents. From what I've heard, the Disney hotels also have a surcharge for using the phone in your rooms, but I don't know how much it is. You'll have to figure out whether you want to pay more surcharge for the convenience of laying on your hotel room bed while you talk. Personally, I would. Never ever dial out directly from your room for long distance, unless of course you enjoy overpaying for your calls. (Example, on a business trip last year, I made 4 calls of around 18-20 minutes each, directly dialed from my hotel room phone. When I looked at the hotel bill when I was turning my expenses in, the cost was around $70. Yikes! I glad I didn't have to pay it!) Like someone else suggested, call your cellular company to see if you have any state-to-state long distance included in your plan. I wouldn't recommend using a traditional calling card from your phone company, whether it be your local company (Verizon, Bell South, SBC, Ameritech, Pac Bell, etc.) or from your long distance company (AT&T, Sprint, MCI Worldcom, etc). With few exceptions, the per minute rates and surcharges on these traditional calling cards are pretty high. I used to work in our customer service department, and saw 2 minute state-to-state calls from a particular long distance company that were charged $16. Of course, this was the extreme, but pretty scary nevertheless. My recommendation is to go to Sam's Club and buy an AT&T prepaid calling card. If they are still the same as when I got mine, you will get the cheapest per minute charges on the 500 and 1000 minute cards. I think mine was 3.7 cents per minute, with no surcharges except the one for a payphone. This is super cheap, I even use mine for long distance calls from home. They also sell AT&T prepaids at WalMart, but the cards are coded differently and the rates are not nearly as cheap. Still, it's not a bad alternative if you can't get one at Sam's Club. Do not buy prepaid cards at gas stations, mall kiosks, etc. I bought one once that said 1.9 cents per minute. However, after I got the card and read the fine print I found that it not only had the 75 cent payphone surcharge, but it also had a surcharge of 1.50 for every call you made. It turned out to be a really bad deal. If you do get a card from Sam's, don't throw it away when it's used up. You can recharge it by using a credit card, at the same 3.7 cents per minute rate. I don't have a Sam's membership, but a nice co-worker picked up a card for me. DH works out of town a lot, so this card is a real budget saver for us. By the way, I don't work for AT&T, I actually work for Verizon. I feel kind of bad hyping up the competitions pre-paid card, but it truly is a good deal.
Sometimes you just have to learn the hard way!
