Lost my Free Dining. Help me get it back.

[eweiss1979]

We were going to the World Friday Oct 2 - Tuesday Oct 6th. We had booked the vacation through the disney website using the Free Dining Promotion. We had paid in full before the 45 day time.

The Reservation was for 4 nights Magic Your Way with Free Dining as Coranando Springs Moderate Resort. It also including our airfare which we booked through the Disney Website also. And we purchased the Insurance option.

Unfortunately my son got a fever and was diagnosed for swine/H1N1 flu on Wednesday Sept 30th. Doctor advised cancallention of the trip.

We called Disney and they told us we would get all our money back (less the insurance premium). Disney itself would reimburse us all Disney related expenses minus a $200 cancellation fee. The airfare cost and the $200 cancellation would be reimbursed to us by making an insurance claim for it.

We called the Insurance company and started the claim process. Filing a claim required us to fax the Insurance company the doctor's notes from his diagnosis they wanted the doctor to fill out and sign an insurance form also (doctor charged me $25 to do this) basically saying that he advised to cancel the trip. We faxed over all the paperwork.

Sure enough about 1 week later the credit appeared on our checkcard account for everything but the $200 cancellation fee and the airfare from Disney.

Then about a month later Nov 1st we recieved a check in the mail from the insurance company Travel Guard for the airfare and $200 cancellation fee. So in the end everything was reimbursed expect for the Insurance Premium of about $133.90 .

I'm happy about that and shared that with you in case you are wondering how this is handled.

On 10/7 after finding out how all this works and filing our insurance claim we decided to rebook our vacation for 11/27 - 12/1 . We have paid this one in full also already.

Unfortunatly I could not get the Free Dining. When I asked about it and told our story they said Free Dining needed to be book by Sept 26th, a few days before we had to cancel. On top of that the CM told me that if we had just modified our original reservation to the new dates and not cancelled we could of gotten the Free Dining still. The Cancellation CMs did not tell us this. And I'm not sure if that would of prevented us from filing the insurance claim for the airfare or not.

So basically in the end we lost about a $400 value on Free Dining. And we are paying little more for Airfare and for the Resort nights because it is a busier travel dates.

I was thinking of writing a letter to Disney pleading to have the Free Dining added to our new reservation but it seems that I'd have to speak with someone that can override the computer system. Because that was the CMs excuse was that the system wouldn't let them add it on.

Who should I address such a request to?

Thanks for your help.

 

[littleelvis]

I don't think you will get it back. Disney will not offer a special promotion to be booked outside of the dates regardless of the circumstances. I know it stinks but I think you are out of luck.

 

[Gabes_mommy]

Can you call the Reservation number and ask to speak to the manager? They probably have increased privileges over the regular operators.

Good luck!

 

[princessmom29]

sorry, but I think you are just out of luck here. I don't thin kyuo would have been able to ge FD had you moved your trip anyway. All of the FD rooms at the mods were gone for that time period within a couple days of them opening it to the GP in August. We booked it on the first day, but when a friend tried to call back a week later there was nothing available for the promotion. There would have needed to be an avalible room for the promotion on your dates for you to modify the reservation anyway, which is highly unlikely at that point. Sorry you had to cancel, but glad you had the insurance!

 

[Broncobilly83]

Are they really out of luck if they speak to a supervisor and explain that they were not offered or advised to move their reservation compared to canceling it? I mean, if it was an unsure or untrained CM, why should the customer have to pay for the oversight?

 

[ccudmore]

If it's any conciliation, the guys at touringplans.com did an analysis recently that showed that the free dining wasn't a huge savings anyways. To get free dining you have to pay rack (i.e. full) rates for the rooms. If you don't use free dining you can use promo codes that, when combined with paying for the dining plan, works out to very close to the same thing.

 

[princessmom29]

Are they really out of luck if they speak to a supervisor and explain that they were not offered or advised to move their reservation compared to canceling it? I mean, if it was an unsure or untrained CM, why should the customer have to pay for the oversight?

the Cm at the time would have only been able to rebook them for FD IF there was a rooms open during that timeperiod for free dining. I think that possibilty that there was is slim to none b/c do one had reported being able to book it at a mod for those dates for weeks before the end of the booking window. It had long since been full for travel over thanksgiving. The OP would have also been trying to rebook AFTER the booking window for FD had passed and that may be why she wasn't given the option to rebook with FD.

 

[princessmom29]

If it's any conciliation, the guys at touringplans.com did an analysis recently that showed that the free dining wasn't a huge savings anyways. To get free dining you have to pay rack (i.e. full) rates for the rooms. If you don't use free dining you can use promo codes that, when combined with paying for the dining plan, works out to very close to the same thing.

for us it was only 50 dollars cheaper to book FD than 40% off.

 

[Jennasis]

If it's any conciliation, the guys at touringplans.com did an analysis recently that showed that the free dining wasn't a huge savings anyways. To get free dining you have to pay rack (i.e. full) rates for the rooms. If you don't use free dining you can use promo codes that, when combined with paying for the dining plan, works out to very close to the same thing.

Huh...I ran all the numbers myself and found that (for the time we were considering going) booking free dining saved considerably over getting the AAA pkg with dining. Course, that point is moot now since we had to change our date to a non free-dining time for next year.

 

[littleelvis]

Are they really out of luck if they speak to a supervisor and explain that they were not offered or advised to move their reservation compared to canceling it? I mean, if it was an unsure or untrained CM, why should the customer have to pay for the oversight?

I believe the OP shares in the responsibility of knowing what their options are as well when they canceled. The CM maybe could have mentioned it but I don't think you can put all of the responsibility on them. It seems that when the OP canceled they were not planning on rescheduling otherwise they would have.

 

[TDC Nala]

You can't get it back, the offer has expired. If you had been able to move your trip to another date instead of cancelling it, you could have retained the free dining (assuming it was still available for the dates and resort you wanted), but you cannot book a new reservation now and attach the free dining discount to it, as it is no longer available for new reservations.

So you will need to get in touch with a manager or someone with the power to override the reservation system. I do not know the odds of your request to add free dining being met, though. I do not see that this is Disney's fault for neglecting to advise that you could move the trip if you called and said you wanted to cancel it. And your trip insurance would not have kicked in unless you cancelled, so you would have lost out on the airfare.

I would look into the currently offered room discounts - some of them are substantial - use one of those, and buy the dining plan.

 

[auralia]

isn't that block of time during the buy 4 get 3 free? you should check maybe you can stay a couple of extra days for the same price?

 

[chartle]

Unfortunatly I could not get the Free Dining. When I asked about it and told our story they said Free Dining needed to be book by Sept 26th, a few days before we had to cancel. On top of that the CM told me that if we had just modified our original reservation to the new dates and not cancelled we could of gotten the Free Dining still. The Cancellation CMs did not tell us this. And I'm not sure if that would of prevented us from filing the insurance claim for the airfare or not.

Sorry about your situation but I don't think you can pin this on the first CM.

If you just called and asked to cancel your res, the CM did exactly what you asked of them. Unless you specifically asked about modifying your res the CM would not have known you were thinking about rebooking.

 

[eweiss1979]

Thanks for all responses.

In our case and to stay on our original budget we downgraded to the All Star Movies. This was because the Moderate price was higher in Late November than it was in early October. We also had to pay more money on airfare than originally booked. And also we now needed to budget in food money since they didn't offer us the Free Dining.

The first 2 nights (Nov 27, Nov 28) I believe were we are paying rack rate because it is the Fri and Sat night of the Thanksgiving holiday. They didn't offer the room discount for those nights.

The last 2 nights (Nov 29, Nov 30) we are getting a discount not sure exactly how much. (no more than 30%) off rack rate. It wasn't that much of a savings. I would of happily of taken Free Dining which is worth about $400 for (4 people for 4 nights) than that 30% off for 2 nights of a Value Resort.

I don't mind writing a letter and crossing my fingers that it will read by some considerate Disney Manager and get our Free Dining restored before we leave. Not much work for a lot to gain. But I would like to know whom to address it to.

Thanks Again.

 

[TDC Nala]

A letter will not be processed in time for your trip. Call Disney Reservations and ask to speak to a manager and see what they say (do not get angry with them if they say no). The best they can do is offer to pay your dining plan for you as the free dining discount has expired and they cannot rebook you under the same type of reservation (I wouldn't count on this under the circumstances)

 

[eweiss1979]

I believe the OP shares in the responsibility of knowing what their options are as well when they canceled. The CM maybe could have mentioned it but I don't think you can put all of the responsibility on them. It seems that when the OP canceled they were not planning on rescheduling otherwise they would have.

We were planning on rescheduling at the time of cancellation. First we needed to get our son well, that was priority number 1. When I spoke to cancellation CM I was mainly concerned with how to get reimbursed for the airfare. Because at the time I wasn't sure if without that money in hand I could rebook at that moment. When I was told it would take up to a month to get that money back and dependant on the wether the claim was accepted or not I wasn't thinking at all about Free Dining so I never asked. But the CM did know that I wanted to reschedule at some point but I couldn't tell them at that moment when. You have to understand this conversation took place Thu Oct 1. We were originally scheduled to fly to Orlando Fri morning Oct 2. So I needed to get done what was needed to get done quickly so I could be reimbursed for the airfare which totaled about 40% of the entire vacation expense. Free Dining didn't even cross my mind until my wife and I had time to plan new dates out and get time off work etc.

 

[KCMiller]

We were planning on rescheduling at the time of cancellation. First we needed to get our son well, that was priority number 1. When I spoke to cancellation CM I was mainly concerned with how to get reimbursed for the airfare. Because at the time I wasn't sure if without that money in hand I could rebook at that moment. When I was told it would take up to a month to get that money back and dependant on the wether the claim was accepted or not I wasn't thinking at all about Free Dining so I never asked. But the CM did know that I wanted to reschedule at some point but I couldn't tell them at that moment when. You have to understand this conversation took place Thu Oct 1. We were originally scheduled to fly to Orlando Fri morning Oct 2. So I needed to get done what was needed to get done quickly so I could be reimbursed for the airfare which totaled about 40% of the entire vacation expense. Free Dining didn't even cross my mind until my wife and I had time to plan new dates out and get time off work etc.

As a parent myself, I'm sure you were dealing with an enormous amount of stress, with a diagnosis like that for your child. I would suggest calling, asking politely to be immediately upgraded to a manager, and telling them your whole story, very simply, and asking them if they could help in any way. They are trained to provide Magical Experiences, and while a well child IS a Magical Experience , they may also be able to help with the Free Dining promotion.

Good luck, and please keep us posted.

KC

 

[TDC Nala]

They will not be able to get you the Free Dining promotion - that's over. The best they can do, if they are so inclined, would be offer to pay for a dining plan for your family (not saying they will.) Do you have a package reservation to which a dining plan can be added - because if you don't have that, you aren't going to be able to get a dining plan in any form. If you don't have one you can probably switch to one if they do offer to give you a dining plan.

 

[Doctor P]

This reminds me so much of our experience with DCL over a hurricane-altered cruise (we booked a 7 night cruise which ended up as a 4 night cruise going out of a different port among other things, which caused us to need to cancel). Disney is really good about making you feel that they have done everything they can to help you, but when push comes to shove they sometimes really let people down, IMHO, when they have some culpability. In this particular case, I'm not sure how culpable Disney is, but I'm not sure they are very good at "making people whole" in a lot of these circumstances. In our case, they offered a discount that was good for less than a year on a a space available basis , would not honor the original cruise rate that we had gotten (which meant that the discount ultimately meant paying way more out of pocket with the discount than we had paid for the canceled cruise), would not offer the same accomodations concessions made to other customers even though they stranded us in Orlando with no place to stay. We were treated well by our trip insurance company, but it still left a very bad taste in my mouth to this day. We would LOVE to take another cruise, but have not found the money or the time to do so. Deep in my heart I might also find it difficult to give DCL more money given how badly they botched our previous cruise without any willingness to accept responsibility for the things that WERE under their control (including communicating with people that were supposed to be on the cruise). I wish the OP luck, but I suspect that, especially since Disney was not culpable here, there will be little satisfaction gained (nor am I sure there should be, except for bending over backwards to give a customer a break).

 

[BenandMorgsMom]

Are you an AP holder? I received an email yesterday announcing savings. We are splitting Nov 25 - Dec 5... the first 4 days at POR/then BWV. I plugged in my POR ressie...I paid 180.00 per night for the room...with current offer it was 124.00 for same dates. I called and the CM said they certainly would switch my res but only CBR was available. The savings were substantial but my kids like POR so I'm pathetic and staying with POR. Good Luck. I agree you should call and inquire. You may be pleasantly surprised.