Am I doing the math wrong? Cheaper offsite even with FD?

[100AcreWood]

We enjoy staying offsite but I was tempted by the Free Dining deal for October. Doing the math, I'm not sure I would save that much money staying onsite even with free dining. I just can't get my head around $200 a night for Coronado Springs. I can get a MUCH better hotel for $129 a night. Even the ticket prices aren't that great. But it would be nice to not worry about how much we spend on food I guess.

 

[Brian Noble]

It depends on how many in your party, what you would ordinarily spend on food, and if you need a rental car and/or whether you would ordinarily skip the rental car onsite.

The difference between the two room rates is $70. Unless you have an AP, $14 of that is daily theme park parking. That leaves $55 or so for food each day. Would you spend more than that or less? If more, then the dining promotion might make sense.

I'd only do a single hotel room if it was just my wife and I. But, that could be fun.

 

[robinb]

I just had the same dilemma and I chose onsite with free dining. My deliberation is here: http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2498578

The deciding factor with me was that I had 4 "Disney Adults" and feeding us would cost way more than the savings between staying at the Sheraton Vistana Villages at a kick-butt price and the cost of rack rate at POR.

How many "adults" 10 and under are going and how many kids 9 and under? Would you eat a lot of meals at your off-site resort? Do you have an AP for free parking? Would you rent a car even if you stayed onsite?

 

[100AcreWood]

Thank you both. I thought I could use table service credits for counter service meals. I don't want to sit down for a nice dinner every night. We have three small kids .

 

[RMAMom]

You don't have to use them for dinner you could book some great Character breakfasts. Have you thought about downgrading your hotel. If you stayed at a family suite at ASMu you would have plenty of space and you would get the QS meal plan for free.

 

[robinb]

In general, WDW will not allow you to use your TS at CS restaurants. They will sometimes allow you to do it during free dining because scads of people arrive at WDW without dining reservations.

Have you considered character meals? That is a great way to use up TS credits and the kids love the characters. You can also use your TS credits for lunch (and a nice break) and your CS credits for dinner.

The family suites over at All Star Music are also available under the October free dining promotion. That will fit your family of 5 and you can get the QSDP for free. You can also book two rooms for about the same price as a moderate and less than a family suite.

 

[nchulka]

We were staying on-site All Star Music family suite 190-210 a night depending on weekdays vs. weekends. We were going to do the free dining. When we found out it was only QS at the values this year we started looking for alternatives. I found a beautiful 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom townhouse with private pool for 94.50 a night We got a discount because we're staying 16 nights, but still the regular rate was only 105.00. We did the math and found that even with paying for all of our meals out and paying 14.00 to park each day at the parks it was still a few hundred dollars cheaper to stay off site. I am so excited about the house, it's bigger than our own home. The kids room is totally decorated in Mickey, even their own bathroom is Mickey We are doing quite a bit more QS than we were planning too, we originally had 16 restaurants booked. We kept 5 that we really wanted, including some character ones and decided to eat QS the rest of the time. I think it will work out better this way, trying to eat at a restaurant everyday was going to eat up a lot of time. We are staying at Windsor Hills and really looking forward to it, they have an awesome pool with a cool slide and all sorts of other amenities.

 

[100AcreWood]

I thought about using the credits for character meals. I would love that! But we're going with my in laws and that's the first thing my MIL said "I don't want to spend all week eating with characters." HA HA!

Anyway, I'm conflicted because we normally stay at the doubltree DTD. It's a lot more space for us which is nice.