I am going to Las Vegas in November and as I am an old biddy I want to know would I be better off taking a pre loaded card with my dollars on it, if so how do I go about this ? or good old fashioned travellers cheques which I have always done before ?
what would happen if I got there and the ATM refused my pre loaded card ? could this happen or are they safe ?
To be honest whenever I go abroad I just take come local currency in cash and use my own bank cards, informing the bank first that I'll be going obviously, because at least that way if there is a problem they usually have safeguards in place. I know people who use preloaded cards and swear by them but like you I'm a littler concerned what would happen if things went wrong with them.
I can't help with best practice in the US as we've never been, but in Europe we just take our normal bank cards (making sure that there's not a lot of money in the account before we go!), and just use the ATMs when we get there.