Well I know for a fact that I will be on my knees praying for free dining lol.
We go for 3 wks at a time due to flight costs from the UK,we have 5 in our family but always take my mother in-law too so it makes 3 adults and 3 kids, my oldest on our last trip turned 10 so was on the adult plan! We upgraded our twin boys who are 7 to the adult plan also as we knew how much they hated the god awful kids nuggets and enjoy adult desserts,
We managed to have the twins share at nearly every meal which meant plenty of TS credits left over to do either signatures or to get breakfast with!
Now the 1st time we stayed on property with no
DDP the boys was 1,1,3 and even then food cost us a fortune for what we wanted to eat " we enjoy as part of our holiday to sit down most days and have a good meal" the next trip we paid for the DDP and LOVED it!! No wondering if we should have the cheaper option at dinner, no having to choose how many restaurants we can afford to eat at, yes I know we might have paid the same OOP but we wouldn't have chosen the more expensive meals knowing it was coming out of our spends!!!
The last 2 trips we have had free dining and it's been brilliant its saved us a fortune! Our boys still love character meals and those alone have rocketed in price, we enjoy not saying NO to them, my wife normally does not eat snacks but likes saving up the snack credits to bring home gifts from the sweet shops, our boys will have a few ice-creams or slush drinks throughout the trip but always choose to share since they are so big, they really enjoy buying lots of treats at the end I the trip to take home, in fact 5 months on and we still have loads of sweets left from our trip
My wife has been going to Disney for over 20 years and still enjoys the restaurants as much today as she did back then! We also always go in September and yes it's got busier but I think that's because others have realised that September is a slower time others was bound to clock on at some point!
We also as a family of 6 have been able to either book that morning or get a walk up many times still, so unless your very selective about where you want to eat there is always normally a restaurant you can get into without doing the 180 ADRs.
So for us free dining is great! We rarely get room discounts in the UK, so it's dining or nothing.
Free dining is FREE just because you could have gotten a better discount on the room does not mean that the free dining is not free!?!?!