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Free dining not worth it for us

Beth06015 said:
If we change our reservation we will be going the week leading up to Labor Day! The week we have we had to upgrade to a pool room which didn't give me a great deal. I can do earlier in the month on free dining garden view. Do you think it will be busy? Doesn't seem it from the restaurant availability!
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It's not empty by any stretch of the imagination, but not as crowded as late May/early June or October.
 
kandb said:
I am still very torn on which deal to take. I love free dining but would also love to stay at the BC which we have never stayed before and is very accessible to EP and HS.
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Why not book both and then decide later????
 
lauradis said:
Why not book both and then decide later????
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YES!

We are doing a room only discount and paying for dining. It will save us money if we do all the meals I want rather than paying OOP. And I don't have to pay for park hopper. I know everyone says park hopper is a must but I don't think with my small kids we would use it much and we'd probably feel obligated to use it! If we have free time after a park we can just go to the hotel. When they are older I can see it being valuable but not now.
 


Beth06015 said:
YES!

We are doing a room only discount and paying for dining. It will save us money if we do all the meals I want rather than paying OOP. And I don't have to pay for park hopper. I know everyone says park hopper is a must but I don't think with my small kids we would use it much and we'd probably feel obligated to use it! If we have free time after a park we can just go to the hotel. When they are older I can see it being valuable but not now.
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park hopper is some thing we always get, because i like the freedom to go anywhere, but I truly think a slow park per day plan with kids is best..

park hoppers are not a must, its an option/opinion
 
Beth06015 said:
YES!

We are doing a room only discount and paying for dining. It will save us money if we do all the meals I want rather than paying OOP. And I don't have to pay for park hopper. I know everyone says park hopper is a must but I don't think with my small kids we would use it much and we'd probably feel obligated to use it! If we have free time after a park we can just go to the hotel. When they are older I can see it being valuable but not now.
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With you on that.

We spend 8 park days and just do base tickets. We've got time to see what we want. I think it takes too much time for us to get from park to park.
 
Beth06015 said:
YES!

We are doing a room only discount and paying for dining. It will save us money if we do all the meals I want rather than paying OOP. And I don't have to pay for park hopper. I know everyone says park hopper is a must but I don't think with my small kids we would use it much and we'd probably feel obligated to use it! If we have free time after a park we can just go to the hotel. When they are older I can see it being valuable but not now.
Click to expand...

It is almost a catch 22. Last year we added a park hopper and did not have the dining plan. It ended being a waste as we park hopped twice and really only because we had the hopper and needed get some money out of it. Now this year we have free dining from our bounceback and so far no park hopper, yet I feel like our dining reservations will lock us into what parks we need to visit.
 


I agree, the one reason we have never gotten park hoppers is because who wants to spend time traveling between parks, going thru security etc. Just a waste of time.
 
Unfortunately for our family it doesn't seem to work for us anymore. The rack rates have gotten so high and now the PH requirement just pushes it even higher, and every time I check on the website for our dates there are no standard rooms available for the offer at the resorts we want to stay at - although if I unselect the offer and just do a room only or package the standard rooms ARE available, so not only have they added the PH requirement it seems they are also pushing us to upgraded rooms.

So sad, really wanted to do this again and refuse to pay the high buffet prices so FD really worked for us in the past but not this time.
 
FD is definitely not as great of a deal as it used to be. But now that we are a family of 5, which includes 2 Disney adult children, 2 adults and 1 child, going to Ohana's will cost our family around $250 with tip. We love some of the dinners that you have to pay one price (Garden Grill being the other one) and it's hard to go to Disney and not go to your favorite dinners. FD is nice because you don't have to try to not spend too much on lunches/dinners/snacks all day. It would bother me to get an ice pop for my 3 kids and it costing $12. FD is nice because you can get what you WANT.
 
Last edited:
kandb said:
I am still very torn on which deal to take. I love free dining but would also love to stay at the BC which we have never stayed before and is very accessible to EP and HS.
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Apparently the deal you got is very good. It might not be there for a future time, I say go for the new experience at the BC.
 
I know the deal was great for the Beach Club but we have gone many years with free dining and love that also. We went with the free dining at Caribban Beach because I think eventually that will be gone too. It was a hard decision to make.
 
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