2018 Free Dining Watch Thread V3

[Disneylover99]

Yet another thing that's rarely factored into anyone's calculation is the savings you could get buying your tickets from undercovertourist.com. I bought 5-day PH tickets from there in February when the price went up (while they still had the old pricing) and saved $58 per person vs. the current pricing direct from Disney. Take that plus a room discount, and it just gets harder and harder to see how FD could be the best deal. Maybe for long trips you'll come out slightly ahead, but you still give up flexibility for a very slight difference having to do the package thing.

EDIT: I'm a little off topic here so I'll move this to a more appropriate thread going forward. I wouldn't want to violate the guidelines! (Oh, so many guidelines... so little time.. )

Yes. Our trips are long. We buy 10 day tickets and upgrade to an AP. I'd rather have a room only discount for any trip under a week.

 

[Huff]

Given the popularity of free dining, I actually don't see it going away. Rather, it'll just continue to be devalued. First it was QS for values, then had to buy a 2 day ticket, then 2 day with park hopper, then QS for moderates, and now a 4 day park hopper minimum. Compared to a room only discount stacked with an orbitz coupon, for example, it's often not even the best deal and it guarantees them a captive customer and a package with a more strict cancelation policy. So, to me, it seems like a huge win/win for them. Give people "perceived value" which makes them happy and guarantees WDW a package booking.

While the value of FD keeps going down there has never been any other discount available I've see that would be a greater discount for us. We're 2 adults and 2 teens staying at a Value and we always by PH'ers anyways. The best RO discount I've ever seen on a Value is 25%. At rack rate of $140/nt that would save us $315 for a 9 night stay. FD saves us far more in food costs.

FD is usually a bad value for those that do not eat much, or only 2 adults staying in a DLX when a 40% discount can be had.

 

[Mickeyluver37]

I remember The first few years that we went with free dining even the values got the dining plan and each meal included an appetizer, drink, meal and a dessert and all your tips were covered as well. Those were the days my friend!!!

I remember this too and it I believe our package was under $2K for a family of 4! I was pregnant with my now 10 year old when we last did this so it would have been 2007.

 

[maleficent83]

Is there anyway to look at availability and book online for visa cardholders? i have googled for 2 days and can't find a link or anything for cardholders to book the earlier dates. I've seen it posted, I know some people got emails, but we did not

 

[scard192]

Is there anyway to look at availability and book online for visa cardholders? i have googled for 2 days and can't find a link or anything for cardholders to book the earlier dates. I've seen it posted, I know some people got emails, but we did not

copied from a few pages back

https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/special-offers/resort-parks-stay-dining-visa-package/

 

[maleficent83]

copied from a few pages back

https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/special-offers/resort-parks-stay-dining-visa-package/

thank you!!! i have looked for 2 days lol, should have known just to ask here!

 

[kpd6901]

Looks like the Disney site is having issues again. Anyway, when people cancel rooms or packages does anyone know if the available inventory is adjusted immediately or does the system reset overnight? Don't know if we should keep looking throughout the day, or just a couple of times in the morning every day.
Thanks.

 

[Disneylover99]

Looks like the Disney site is having issues again. Anyway, when people cancel rooms or packages does anyone know if the available inventory is adjusted immediately or does the system reset overnight? Don't know if we should keep looking throughout the day, or just a couple of times in the morning every day.
Thanks.

I dont know what it's like this year, but in previous years, it seems like cancelled rooms were saved up and some were added back into the fd pool in waves. It seems like it was weekly for the first few weeks. Some may also get allocated into room discounted rooms or back into rack rate.

 

[cmdrshepard84]

Cancelled rooms go back into the rack rate pool and it's up to the individual resorts to decide what to do as far as adding them back to the FD promo or not. The bigger question is what happens to FD rooms that have a TA's 72 hour hold on them. Do they follow the same model as "consumer" booked rooms and fall back into the rack rate pool before someone has to make a decision to place them back into a promotional pool?

 

[scard192]

While the value of FD keeps going down there has never been any other discount available I've see that would be a greater discount for us. We're 2 adults and 2 teens staying at a Value and we always by PH'ers anyways. The best RO discount I've ever seen on a Value is 25%. At rack rate of $140/nt that would save us $315 for a 9 night stay. FD saves us far more in food costs.

FD is usually a bad value for those that do not eat much, or only 2 adults staying in a DLX when a 40% discount can be had.

I hate it when people say it's not "free". still the best discount for my family too:

2 rooms at a value, one room, my DD,DSIL. one DGD and me in the other room with the 2nd DGD. no way we can all eat on what we would save on a RO discount. PH are a must IMO in the Fall with MK closed 4 nights/week for the parties.

 

[jolynne28]

Hi! We went this same week last year (also FD then) and did not use free dining. We are going back the same week this year and not using free dining again. Last year the parks weren’t any more crowded than normal, and I didn’t notice the restaurants being crowded, but ADRs were a huge pain to get right at 180. The days we were actually at the parks ADRs were showing up all over the place. We actually booked a same day Be Our Guest lunch and a CRT dinner. But at 180, it was hard.

I have to second this post, we went the week before Christmas last year and ADR's was super hard to get 180 out. I used a reservation finding tool, https://touringplans.com/walt-disney-world/reservation-finder and got CRT and Ohana while we were on site. It was so much easier than stressing about it for 6 months! Basically you set your reservation parameters and they text you when one pops up and give you a link. I will admit that for both of the above reservations I happened to be scrolling on my phone when the text came through. If you don't jump on it right away you will probably miss out.

 

[minniesBFF]

We felt the same way. Kept checking to make sure FD was still on there.
We did have Dining in our original package. After the FD offer added, I noticed an increase of $70.

Did you book before February 11th of this year? That's when park ticket prices increased. I booked my package literally the day before the increase lol.

 

[jolynne28]

Do you have any recommendations for getting the reservations I want? Should I wake up really early every morning ?

You can do that, and hopefully you get everything you want! My experience last year was that things were super hard to get 180 days out, and really nothing popped up over those next 6 months, so it's not even worth checking. Try using this reservation finder, https://touringplans.com/walt-disney-world/reservation-finder once you are on site. You put in your parameters and they text you when a res opens up. We got CRT and Ohana on site using this. People hoard reservations like crazy, it is really unfortunate that disney doesn't have a better way to ensure that this doesn't happen.

 

[minniesBFF]

I hate it when people say it's not "free". still the best discount for my family too:

2 rooms at a value, one room, my DD,DSIL. one DGD and me in the other room with the 2nd DGD. no way we can all eat on what we would save on a RO discount. PH are a must IMO in the Fall with MK closed 4 nights/week for the parties.

Agreed. I priced up the RO discount with the quick service dining plan added, and it was almost $700 more than my current reservation with free dining on it. If we wouldn't have gotten the dining plan at all and only did the RO discount, we would only be saving about $250. That is way more than we would spend OOP on food over the course of 9 days (we like to eat, lol). Plus no matter what, we would have to pay the new resort parking fee because we were changing an existing reservation. So, for us, FD is the best offer available.

Just for reference, there will be 2 adults and 1 child under 3 staying at Pop Century. I know some people don't think FD is worth it unless you are a larger family size, but for us it feels worth it. Just my opinion.

 

[h&D3]

I swear.. I'm so frazzled right now. I did the all nighter, then I was able to modify online. Now the PIN code that I got about a month ago is finally working for the room we have and it's giving me the best price. So I guess I'm on hold (wait time now said 60 minutes) but there is no music playing. Just silence. Am I screwed? I don't want to hang up if in fact this does go through.... What should I do????

~D

I am so glad that you guys told me to stay on the line even though there was no music. I ended up waiting about 1 hour and 20 minutes and the CM finally came on the line. Scared me to death because I wasn't expecting them to jump on like that, especially after the total silence (and me pulling an all nighter that morning)
Anyway, I told her that I had a PIN code (the one that never worked before but did yesterday) She had some difficulty with getting it to take so she put me on a brief hold. She came back and said that she had to get a manager to get it in the system. We were chatting while she was finishing up and we were talking about the volume of people calling, the site going down, the phone lines going down/overloaded, etc. She said that she had just started at 11AM and there were 780 calls in the que. WOW!
So after doing the all nighter, getting a rate at 4:20 (or so in the AM), and then switching it again at 8:30 (got through on the site) and then calling again later in the morning, I ended up saving us over $1700 from our original reservation. And you know what... even though it was a pain, and having to sit on hold, or scrambling online to get an offer... I'd do it again in a hearbeat!
Thanks to everyone on this board... I really don't know what I would do without all of you. Actually, I do know... I would end up spending a LOT more than I would have to.

~D

 

[JackieO]

Just a heads up, I'm canceling my reservation for 5 at Caribbean Beach August 30- September 7th.

 

[scrappinginontario]

That's true. The current BB ends on 8/15, so I guess we'll see then! *fingers crossed*

Yes. We're headed down for a quick trip starting Aug 27th so I'll see what I can get.

I can even see them only offering FD as a BB and take it away as a promo offer. I sure hope not. It really is anyone’s guess!

Yes, I agree. I was saying (not very clearly ) that if the Aug 2018 BB offer is FD then there's a good chance we'll see some sort of FD offer again next April.

 

[Riss]

Just want to make sure you know: when it comes to making dining reservations that child under 3 absolutely DOES count. Whoever makes your ADRs must include the baby in the reservation number or they may not seat you. All your ADRs need to be for 7 people, not 6.

Yes, I do know that, thanks! I just meant as in the number count for the room and the amount of people that we had gotten FD for. I had made all of our ADRs for 7 people. I made them over a month ago because we were going on this trip, with the same dates and resort, whether we had gotten FD or not.

 

[momofbk]

I was hoping for later dates, but was able to book FD for 11/25-12/01. We have never been there at the holidays - are my dates too early for the Christmas festivities? We'd like to see the candlelight processional and maybe MVMCP....and anything else you guys suggest. I may keep trying to find later dates if mine are too early.
thanks, everyone!

 

[scrappinginontario]

Well, we made it through the first 24+ hours of the Annual FD Drop. While it wasn't without it's system crashes and phone line crashes, it does appear it was a little better than other years. I didn't hear of any crazy 4-5 hour waits on hold and far less 'dropped my call' reports.

While the system is not perfect, it also works most days and it appears some improvements may have been made.

While I didn't get our Plan A, our Plan B is exciting and we're looking forward to our Christmas FD trip!