2015 FREE DINING THREAD _ All Questions HERE!!

[BugsDaddy]

I am so bummed-- our travel agent was up at 5 AM yesterday trying to adjust our reservations to get us Free Dining or even a RO discount. NOTHING. nada. Everything she is trying for our dates is not available. Anyone know what is going on at Disney the week of 9/27-10/2? We can also change our dates up. I'm just getting so frustrated with Disney over this. The whole way that they did this is NOT Disney-like. Very disappointing. If we hadn't bought our MNSSHP tickets, I'd actually consider cancelling the whole trip because I'm that pissed off.

I am sorry you didn't get what you wanted. That does suck but I am not sure what Disney can really do or did wrong here. Their hotels were already pretty well booked before putting this offer out there. They do not have an unlimited supply of inventory (rooms). I think releasing it to everyone at once was the fair thing to do given they knew about the limited inventory to begin with. I can imagine the uproar had they given it just to Disney Visa card holders first for three days and all of the preferred resorts and rooms were booked before it was even released to the general public.

 

[ehoops120912]


There was an error adding the payment method.

Error: We will hold your requested offer for 10 minutes.

Anyone get these messages when modifying?? I'm on a 2 hour phone wait at the same time and I'm just scared that they only hold the request for 10 minutes!

I did yesterday. I switched from Chrome to Firfox and worked perfectly Try switching browsers

 

[Abra Cat]

I just wanted to say, like many others have said, keep trying! Also, early morning seems to be the best time to get anything-- I grabbed the GF for my family of five yesterday morning around 5:30AM, and then when we decided we wanted the Poly instead, I kept getting the same "There was an error adding the payment method. Error: We will hold your requested offer for 10 minutes" message Plutopia was getting when I tried to modify our ressie (and at one point thought I'd lost my original reservation and almost had a heart attack!). Rather than take any chances losing my ressie while modifying, I kept trying all day to book a second reservation for the Poly and then cancel the GF later, but all of yesterday the system was showing no availability for anything. This morning, again at 5:30, I was able to get what I wanted in about five minutes. So, don't give up!

 

[smitch425]

she has been trying this morning. I have a reservation at CBR, I'm willing to stay at any moderate at this point just to get a discount. Otherwise, my husband will probably want to shorten our stay!

Fingers crossed for you!

 

[kbsparks]

Refreshed and now it's telling me there's an error with my payment method??? Ahhh!!! They must have 3 cc cards of mine on file plus the $200 deposit! Why am I getting this error message! So frustrating!! I had no problems whatsoever yesterday with modifications

I got that message yesterday. My reservation change was still made and it said there was a problem and I needed to call. I definitely wasn't doing it yesterday. Looked at MDE this morning and the message is gone. I think it is a glitch. I got through it by clicking on the additional payment option, entering my cc info then clicking back on whatever that top option is,deposit maybe? Like I said, I originally got an email saying it went through but there was a problem. Good luck

 

[Andie Savoie]

I am sorry you didn't get what you wanted. That does suck but I am not sure what Disney can really do or did wrong here. Their hotels were already pretty well booked before putting this offer out there. They do not have an unlimited supply of inventory (rooms). I think releasing it to everyone at once was the fair thing to do given they knew about the limited inventory to begin with. I can imagine the uproar had they given it just to Disney Visa card holders first for three days and all of the preferred resorts and rooms were booked before it was even released to the general public.

I understand that, I just think that the way that they rolled it out was terrible. Why would people use a travel agent if Disney isn't going to make it possible for TA's to do their job? Why would Disney offer up a discount if they don't even open up enough rooms for the special to make it count? Instead, the create hype for a promotion (that they are still promoting on facebook in ads) and they don't even have any discounts available for their chosen demographic. All of the site crashes, long holds on the line, etc. is the problem; from a PR standpoint, it looks really bad on them.

 

[Andie Savoie]

Fingers crossed for you!

Thank you!!!

 

[Aubrav]

Depending on when your trip is, the Water Parks may be closed or it may be too cold for them.

Included with Magic Your Way Package:

• DisneyQuest Indoor Interactive Theme Park Admission Ticket
  Voucher valid for two admission tickets per room. Guests under the age of 14 must be accompanied by a Guest 14 years of age or older.

Thanks! Question though. On another thread someone said the package includes one day to Disney Quest. I tried looking it up, but I don't see anywhere it says that. However, I do remember getting a package before that did include a day at Disney Quest? Anybody know?

A standard package comes with two admissions to Disney quest. A water parks & more ticket comes with entries for everyone in your party as one of the options with the water parks as well as wide world of sports.

 

[Plutopia]

An interesting observation. Take it for what you will. I called into the Disney reservations system today primarily just to see what the difference would be between free dining and possibly taking a room discount later. The wait was over 2 hours so I said, forget that. So, I went into the MDE app to see if I could just try to modify my reservation that way but was getting quirky problems. So, I called the Disney IT help desk line at 407-939-4357. The wait time was 9 minutes, not bad.

I got on the line with one of their help desk people in about 9 minutes and advised them that I was having an issue modifying my reservation through MDE. They said it is a known issue and asked was I trying to add free dining? I said, yes and she said that she could transfer me to the reservations desk to do so. I said, ok, expecting it to be a 2 hour wait again but it was a direct transfer! Within a minute, someone picked up and was helping me change my reservation. As it turned out, I couldn't get the room category I wanted but I wanted to pass this on to my fellow DIS'ers and let them know that if you are having issues with your MDE, call in!

I just want to thank you for posting this. I did it and I was able to right through. Thank you!

 

[Aubrav]

I am so bummed-- our travel agent was up at 5 AM yesterday trying to adjust our reservations to get us Free Dining or even a RO discount. NOTHING. nada. Everything she is trying for our dates is not available. Anyone know what is going on at Disney the week of 9/27-10/2? We can also change our dates up. I'm just getting so frustrated with Disney over this. The whole way that they did this is NOT Disney-like. Very disappointing. If we hadn't bought our MNSSHP tickets, I'd actually consider cancelling the whole trip because I'm that pissed off.

I saw a bunch of resorts available for those dates this morning. My date range was slightly longer but those days were included.

 

[leholcomb]

I understand that, I just think that the way that they rolled it out was terrible. Why would people use a travel agent if Disney isn't going to make it possible for TA's to do their job? Why would Disney offer up a discount if they don't even open up enough rooms for the special to make it count? Instead, the create hype for a promotion (that they are still promoting on facebook in ads) and they don't even have any discounts available for their chosen demographic. All of the site crashes, long holds on the line, etc. is the problem; from a PR standpoint, it looks really bad on them.

Site crashes, holds on the line, etc happens with every single roll out of free dining. EVERY SINGLE ONE. I for one am happy it went straight to GP. Last year I was on hold for 2 hours to talk with CM for the Visa pre-release. This year, I hopped on at 5am, got what I wanted and went back to sleep. Much much easier. Sorry it wasn't that way for everyone.

 

[bond24seven]

I got a couple of rooms this morning at All Star Sports for my mom and stepdad and my sisters family from Oct 1 - Oct 10 with free dining...

 

[ELSA711]

Site crashes, holds on the line, etc happens with every single roll out of free dining. EVERY SINGLE ONE. I for one am happy it went straight to GP. Last year I was on hold for 2 hours to talk with CM for the Visa pre-release. This year, I hopped on at 5am, got what I wanted and went back to sleep. Much much easier. Sorry it wasn't that way for everyone.

I agree, I am Disney Visa holder but so glad it open to GP yesterday, made it much easier to modify everything. I had to change our entire reservations completely but we are bringing kids now for a great surprise! I'm sorry not everyone is having the luck we did.
I just now have to come to terms with missing MNSSHP and trying MVMCP instead, without my home resort of POR

 

[THEDISNEYTHREE]

A standard package comes with two admissions to Disney quest. A water parks & more ticket comes with entries for everyone in your party as one of the options with the water parks as well as wide world of sports.

Ok. Thanks!!

 

[hellerjw]

An interesting observation. Take it for what you will. I called into the Disney reservations system today primarily just to see what the difference would be between free dining and possibly taking a room discount later. The wait was over 2 hours so I said, forget that. So, I went into the MDE app to see if I could just try to modify my reservation that way but was getting quirky problems. So, I called the Disney IT help desk line at 407-939-4357. The wait time was 9 minutes, not bad.

Thanks for the info. I had tried to cancel a reservation online and it seemed to go through but at the last minute an error popped up at the top of the page. When I went to look at my reservations the one I tried to cancel was gone, but I never got any kind of confirmation email. I called the IT support number, was on hold for less than 30 seconds and had them verify the reservation was no longer in the system. The tech said with all the website traffic these last 2 days they are seeing a lot of bogus error messages popping up which are causing a lot of confusion for the users. Isn't that an understatement!

 

[Plutopia]

I got that message yesterday. My reservation change was still made and it said there was a problem and I needed to call. I definitely wasn't doing it yesterday. Looked at MDE this morning and the message is gone. I think it is a glitch. I got through it by clicking on the additional payment option, entering my cc info then clicking back on whatever that top option is,deposit maybe? Like I said, I originally got an email saying it went through but there was a problem. Good luck

Thanks for the encouragement. By the time I spoke to a CM, my online booking disappeared like pixie dust. Even though it said the system holds the modification request for 10 minutes, it apparently didn't and I lost the hotel. Ugh.

 

[Aubrav]

I understand that, I just think that the way that they rolled it out was terrible. Why would people use a travel agent if Disney isn't going to make it possible for TA's to do their job? Why would Disney offer up a discount if they don't even open up enough rooms for the special to make it count? Instead, the create hype for a promotion (that they are still promoting on facebook in ads) and they don't even have any discounts available for their chosen demographic. All of the site crashes, long holds on the line, etc. is the problem; from a PR standpoint, it looks really bad on them.

I have a question. Would people who already have reservations be considered a chosen demographic to fill unused rooms? In my experience with other companies they aren't worried about rooms they can already get full price for, only the empty ones that aren't generating any revenue. Is this different at Disney? Obviously it's the most magical place on earth so you want to believe that they want to make vacations with them as affordable as possible, but it all comes down to business and profits.

It still seems as reports are rolling in that there were and still are quite a few rooms and that doesn't even count people that aren't on this board. The site crashes and hold times and phone line issues were a nightmare, I agree. I also think it was great help to have implemented the online modification system, an improvement from years past.

 

[Plutopia]

I did yesterday. I switched from Chrome to Firfox and worked perfectly Try switching browsers

That's such a great idea. I wish I did that because the modification request I made wasn't held and after speaking with the CM the room was already taken. But I thank you and will definitely switch to Chrome since Explorer is not helping me today and try that out. Thanks again.

 

[Aubrav]

There's a lot of misinformation on this thread about TA's. If you read through the Disney Travel Professionals FB page, you will see TA's across the country who had a horrible day yesterday. TA's on hold, literally, the entire day, never getting through, being hung up on, transferred, only to be hung up on again. The TA website was down as of about 6:30 am. Don't blame the TA's for failure to modify reservations. Blame Disney. And no reputable TA would EVER guarantee being able to get a client a discount. Most of the good earmarked agents know how this game works with dates, resort/room category availability, etc. Many have been doing this for years - imagine being on the phone for HOURS EVERY time a discount comes out. A lot of them have a ton of experience doing this and most are reporting yesterday was the worst roll out of a WDW EVER. Good earmarked agents would also encourage people NOT to book until the discount comes out for the very reasons we saw yesterday - virtually impossible to modify.

Disney's new policy is you can only shave dates off your reservation if your resort and room category are available for those new shortened dates. Disney puts certain room categories in inventory for certain lengths of stay - that's why you are seeing fluctuating availability when you put different dates in. There are numerous threads on the Resort forum regarding this new change policy. So chances are, when you call in to reduce your dates, you won't be eligible for the discount anymore.

You are absolutely right, I never meant to speak ill will about travel agents at all, i actually admire them. I was actually just trying to back up the idea that advance bookings reduce the need for Disney to offer anything other than "limited availability" for an offer designed to fill unused rooms (if they operate like any other company). It's good to know that travel agents don't encourage people to book ahead of time in most cases because we all know that those bookings affect the offers. I was actually specifically referring to a story I heard yesterday (not here) of travel agents who were promoting booking with them as soon as the rumors came out to guarantee free dining. I'm sorry if that came across as a blanket over all travel agents.

And that second part is great info! Since I was able to drop a day last year I assumed it would be the same this year. Where exactly is that new rule listed and how would I have known that it changed? It's something I can look for in the future. I did just try to modify my reservation to drop one day and it shows no availability. I'm still undecided whether I really wanted to drop that day anyway. Thanks for the update!

 

[Sasha3855]

Just released the spare reservation I made yesterday while waiting for TA to get through. Pop Century preferred room 9/15-9/25 with free dining. Hopefully someone can snag this. Good luck!