Stay, Play, Dine Calculation

[SouthFayetteFan]

The 2018 thread can be found here: https://www.disboards.com/threads/stay-play-dine-2018-calculation-thread.3638155/

The 2017 thread can be found here: http://www.disboards.com/threads/stay-play-dine-2017-calculation-thread.3550783/

FOR 2016 CALCULATIONS HEAD HERE: http://www.disboards.com/threads/2016-stay-play-dine-calculation-thread.3451389/

So I came home from work tonight determined to decipher how the Stay Play Dine Discount works. Sorry for the long post but I figured some people might find this interesting.

I created a spreadsheet and ran numbers for 1, 2, 3, and 4 adults at Wilderness Lodge, Beach Club, Caribbean Beach, & Pop Century for both 4 nights and 5 nights with multiple ticket options. Here's what I found:

Moving tickets from 2 days to 3 days, to 4 days, etc. always cost the full amount. There appears to be no discount on park tickets (no surprise there).

When I upped the number of adults from 1 to 2 OR 2 to 3 OR 3 to 4 there were consistent increases in the savings amount. At Deluxe and Moderate it was a little over $33 increase in savings per night when adding an additional adult. This held true regardless of the number of nights or whether moving from 1 to 2, 2 to 3, etc. At value resorts it was a little over $23 increase in savings per night when adding an additional adult. What is the correlation there: both numbers were exactly a 55% savings off the normal cost per night off of the respective dining plans (regular for mod/deluxe and quick service for values).

Regardless of what I did to the number of nights or adults this 55% always held true.

I had one thing left to prove the 55% which was to add a child to a 2 adult and 3 adult package at the different resort levels. The math held true yet again.

THUS - I believe I have proven that one component of the SPD deal is a 55% discount on the dining plan cost.

HOWEVER - No matter how much I played with it I could not figure out how the room portion of the discount works. It seems to be a set amount per night but it varies by resort, resort category and length of stay. I saw it at $9 off, $26 off, $12 off, $5 off and $12.50 off per night depending on a lot of factors. It seemed to get less per night the longer you stayed but I couldn't detect a pattern.

Hopefully somebody finds this interesting - I sure did. If anybody else is playing with it and sees anything different let me know! I love a good math problem so it's been fun trying to determine how it works.

 

[dmunsil]

Interestingly enough, I've been doing the same thing, and I also get exactly 55% off for dining, no discount on tickets, and an amount off per night on the room that seems to vary from resort to resort, but I don't see it varying based on length of stay. I didn't look at a wide range of stay lengths, so that might be why I didn't see it.

The average room discount I saw was about 2% for value, 5% for moderate, and 15% for deluxe, plus the 55% discount on dining plan.

Anyway, it's very encouraging that we independently came up with the same results. I'd call the 55% off dining a pretty robust result; it always came up that way.

 

[CdnSquirrel]

We are booked in January for 7 nights and according to my calculations stay play and dine (for our trip anyways) consists of child prices for dining and tickets with rack room rates.

 

[Colonel W]

We just booked SPD for 7 people in two rooms at POR and the savings on the entire package came out to 21%.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

I don't want to sound argumentative but what the other post and me are trying to do is dissect the deal to actually determine how the savings works.

The child's prices does not hold water in my sample size of over 50 different people, resort, ticket makeups. I've compared the regular package amount to the SPD in all of this research.

The 21% is a helpful number but only if we know the makeup of Adults and Children, the room category you've booked, your ticket options and whether you upgraded or not.

As the second poster stated it appears clear to those doing the research that the SPD works with a 55% discount on the dining plan and an additional savings on the room. Thus your total savings will vary depending on the number of adults and children in the room. I'm going to continue to work this and hopefully the second poster will as well to see if we can really crack this case! It seems very interesting to me!

 

[DPickering]

Tyvm! Very helpful and interesting.

 

[dmunsil]

We are booked in January for 7 nights and according to my calculations stay play and dine (for our trip anyways) consists of child prices for dining and tickets with rack room rates.

You really can't figure this out by looking at one scenario. I don't doubt that the savings you got add up to that amount, but I think it's basically coincidental. It's really clear when you start comparing the savings for different numbers of adults and children, and different numbers of stay nights and ticket lengths, that there is no discount on the tickets.

For example, if the discount was that adults get the same price as children on tickets and dining, then a 3-night reservation with 3-day tickets for 2 adults and 1 child should come out the same as one for 1 adult and 2 children. They don't come out the same.

This is basically a math problem where you're solving a system of multiple parallel equations. It's made harder by the fact that you don't know whether the discount is a percentage off each component or a flat dollar amount, so you have to try it both ways.

It's looking more and more to me like the room discount varies semi-arbitrarily from room to room and resort to resort. It often comes out to a round whole dollar amount before tax, which suggests that it's not based on a percentage. I would guess there's basically a big database of resorts and room types, and they've put in a dollar value per night for each one. It's probably based on rate, availability, and possibly other mysterious factors.

About the only thing I can say is that so far, the Deluxe resorts have had a larger room discount component than the Moderates which have been larger than the Values.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

It's looking more and more to me like the room discount varies semi-arbitrarily from room to room and resort to resort. It often comes out to a round whole dollar amount before tax, which suggests that it's not based on a percentage. I would guess there's basically a big database of resorts and room types, and they've put in a dollar value per night for each one. It's probably based on rate, availability, and possibly other mysterious factors.

About the only thing I can say is that so far, the Deluxe resorts have had a larger room discount component than the Moderates which have been larger than the Values.

The whole dollar amounts is what I was seeing on the resort - Obviously after factoring out the 12.5% tax (or 13% if you're looking at certain resorts ) It's really weird how much it varies though. I felt like I was seeing the amount per night and even the total hotel discount actually go down on longer stays (i.e. 8 or 9 nights).

When I said back in 8th grade I never thought I'd use Algebra I never realized I'd find it fun someday when trying to decipher a Disney discount!

 

[lolly2ga]

I love the math challenge, too and am so glad some of you are getting close to figuring out.

 

[dmunsil]

The whole dollar amounts is what I was seeing on the resort - Obviously after factoring out the 12.5% tax (or 13% if you're looking at certain resorts ) It's really weird how much it varies though. I felt like I was seeing the amount per night and even the total hotel discount actually go down on longer stays (i.e. 8 or 9 nights).

When I said back in 8th grade I never thought I'd use Algebra I never realized I'd find it fun someday when trying to decipher a Disney discount!

Yeah, it feels like a puzzle.

I was only looking at 3, 4, and 5 day bookings (and not many 5's), so maybe the resort discount is only for the first N days, and then it goes to zero for each additional night? I'll take a look at some longer stays and see if I can get anything.

Keep in mind that weekend rates are different from weekday rates for most of the hotels, so if they have a different discount on weekends/weekdays (which they probably do), you'd see a variance when you add a weekend to your stay. If you want to factor that out, you'd have to look at a DVC resort, which doesn't have different weekend rates, or include the two rates and two discounts in your equation. That's why I never went above 5 days; I didn't want to have to figure out how the weekend/weekday thing worked.

Don

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

Don - are you the guy that updates all the MouseSavers stuff???

I recognized your picture by your username from a thread back when Mary retired I think.

 

[msb578]

This is going to sound like a total cop out math-wise.

Is there any chance that the percentage for this discount is at the discretion of the individual resort general manager? (Dining plan meals come out of the resort budget, yes?)

It just seems to be so inconsistent!

 

[Hitchhiking Ghost]

The whole dollar amounts is what I was seeing on the resort - Obviously after factoring out the 12.5% tax (or 13% if you're looking at certain resorts ) It's really weird how much it varies though. I felt like I was seeing the amount per night and even the total hotel discount actually go down on longer stays (i.e. 8 or 9 nights).

When I said back in 8th grade I never thought I'd use Algebra I never realized I'd find it fun someday when trying to decipher a Disney discount!

For those of you that are doing the in depth math calculations, can I ask a question? Just out of curiousity are you running each of these scenarios through a travel agent or a Disney CM? Only reason I ask is that the TA that I use said you can't really determine where the discount is because Disney doesn't itemize the package and it sounded like you couldn't go on line to book S-P-D but had to call for package pricing. Is that correct?

I had her get me a quote for 9 nights at POR starting March 6th and the S-P-D discount appeared to be about 20%

The RO discount seemed out of whack as it appeared to be only about 15%.

 

[dmunsil]

Don - are you the guy that updates all the MouseSavers stuff???

I am.

Is there any chance that the percentage for this discount is at the discretion of the individual resort general manager?

It's possible, but it doesn't seem like the way Disney usually works. Generally resort discounts are handled centrally.

My guess is that the discounts are based on what they have more need to fill up. Disney usually does a flat discount of, say, 30%, but that's for simplicity. If they've decided not to advertise a flat discount, why not use the opportunity to do larger discounts for the rooms they have more need to fill?

For those of you that are doing the in depth math calculations, can I ask a question? Just out of curiousity are you running each of these scenarios through a travel agent or a Disney CM? Only reason I ask is that the TA that I use said you can't really determine where the discount is because Disney doesn't itemize the package and it sounded like you couldn't go on line to book S-P-D but had to call for package pricing. Is that correct?

You can book S/P/D online, and the prices are the same as TA prices. You couldn't do the Disney Visa offer online; you had to call in. But they've opened it online now.

They don't break down the individual components in the final quote, but you can work out how the discount is calculated by varying different input numbers, like length of stay, number of adults and children, and length of tickets.

 

[msb578]

It's possible, but it doesn't seem like the way Disney usually works. Generally resort discounts are handled centrally. My guess is that the discounts are based on what they have more need to fill up. Disney usually does a flat discount of, say, 30%, but that's for simplicity. If they've decided not to advertise a flat discount, why not use the opportunity to do larger discounts for the rooms they have more need to fill?

Ok, yes. Whoever is making the decisions (and central management makes more sense), I'm convinced they're not using fixed across-the-board percentages.

Those of you crunching the numbers, I'd be happy to be proven wrong. Carry on

 

[dmunsil]

One thing I just checked - you don't get any additional discount if you upgrade dining plans. In other words, you always get a fixed dollar value off your dining per person per night.

For Value resorts, the dining discount amounts to $23.09 per adult and $8.81 per child per night.

For Mod/Deluxe resorts, the dining discount amounts to $33.35 per adult and $10.57 per child per night.

Obviously that's in addition to the (highly variable) room discount per night.

Don

 

[Pfau]

Interesting!

With the above dining calculations and a 10 percent room discount (POR), the calculated difference is only cents off.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

I am.

Don,

I have to say I feel honored to be swapping discount info and ideas with you on a DISBoards thread! Your site is so awesome and is the main reason we figured out how to do Disney right and are now obsessed. Thanks so much for the work you guys do!

OK...sorry but I just had to say that!!

Now back to your regularly scheduled thread trying to crack this code!

 

[Sammyjo199]

What about the calculations for a value resort with the regular dining plan not quick service? How does that calculate out?

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

What about the calculations for a value resort with the regular dining plan not quick service? How does that calculate out?

It should be a small discount per night on the hotel + Full price tickets + 55% off the quick service dining plan cost + The full difference between the QS and regular dining plan to upgrade.