? about discount math

[bridgie04]

Can someone help educate me on figuring out the math on the free dining vs. the room only discount?

I can't see that the room only math is better than the free dining.

Looking at Jan 21st or so for about 5 nights. 2 adults, 2 kids (8 and 6)

Free dining adds up to about $137 a night. vs. 30% off a mod? Free dining clearly wins, correct? I do like the Disney dining, as I am trying to avoid renting a car for this trip.

Thanks in advance for any light you can shed.

 

[Phatoomch]

I did loads of comparisons when crunching numbers for us, the free dining always came out on top.

Some say dining is not worth it because you could eat cheaper OOP but that all depends on how you like to eat.

We loved our dining plan (this was our first trip) and will always get dining plan whether its free or not

 

[tinka-belle]

For values and moderates, free dining usually wins. With the deluxe resorts you've got to crunch the numbers since a % off a high room rate might trump free dining. Depends on the number of people and the % off amount, AND if the % off is available for most or all of your nights. The FD goes by check in date, the % off promos are on a night by night basis.

 

[Saylan]

I'm in the same boat here. Based on the price of the dinng plan, it's almost doble the savings of a room-only. But the price of the dining plan may not be the 'value' since you would rarely eat 51.54/adult/night.

What I think makes the most sense is to take the savings of a room-only discount and divide that by the number of nights. That's how much per night you'd have to spend OoP on food to make the FD offer work (not counting tips and tax).

What I'm going to do is look at where we want to eat (we want to do table service but won't if we don't have the dining plan) and see if our estimated meal costs would be close to the amount we need to beat the room-only. If it won't realistically beat it, then we'll go room-only.