Dining now or later

[brendah008]

I plan to travel to Disney World on January 25, 2014 and stay for a week with my husband and two kids. I've noticed in the past they offer free dining. Should I book my package with dining now and then call back if/when it becomes free or should I not book the dining just yet?

 

[timandjanl]

When my husband and I went in 2009 we had already booked our trip including dining and then the free dining dates came out a couple weeks later. I called and they credited me the cost of the dining with no problems. Hopefully some other folks have more recent experiences that were the same.

 

[Taylor'sMom]

There is no benefit to having the dining plan already on your package. If they releaae FD you still have to call and have it added. So the question is... if they DON'T offer free dining, would you PAY for a dining plan? If so, then sure, might as well add It. If not, doesn't really gain you anything, might as well leave it off and save yourself a cancellation call if they don't offer it. Fingers crossed for you though!

 

[Sally]

For our trip I went ahead and added in the dining, since we want the dining plan regardless. My thought process was if there is an offer for dining/room discount YAY, if not Oh Well. My trip is planned and any discount is a bonus.

 

[Skjhjb]

We are booked for May 2014, and we added dining to our package when we booked. We wanted it anyway, and are budgeting to pay for it. Any discount that comes along that might be able to be applied to our current booking will be a bonus!

For our family, it wasn't a matter of "will we eat our money's worth if we pay for the dining plan", but more that dining is paid for. We don't have to go for meals and tell the kids, "ok, you can only eat a $12 entree for dinner today, that's all that is in the budget."

We have a great travel agent, so any discounts or changes needing made, she has no problem taking care of it for us!

 

[pittsburghmom]

This past January, there was no free dining. It was stay/play/dine, which isn't quite as good of a discount as free dining. Adults pay child's price for tickets & dining plan. RUMOR has it, this will be the discount for this coming January as well. Last year, winter discounts were released October 10th. As a previous poster mentioned, reserving a room now will do nothing to guarantee you will receive the promo or have it "applied" to your existing reservation. For the fall free dining, several resorts and room categories were blocked out of the promo all together and many people were having to switch resorts and room categories to secure a free dining room. Hope that helps

 

[mousehunter3]

Book it how you want to have it as if free dining was offered. If it is, you just have to call to add the free dining. If it's not, you can always cancel your dining reservations. That's what we did. So happy we did too because so many places were already booked by 08/01 when they announced free dining for fall!