Dining Plan Dilemma...HELP!

[cheerful chickadee]

DDP newbie here with a question....

We're booked for a week in september and we received the free dining promotion. It turns out my DS will not be able to fly down with us, he has an event he must attend. We will fly down Wednesday but he will fly down Saturday morning. Now how can this work with the dining plan?

We are already booked for our family of 4, we have 5 day tix and dining. Can we just check in on wednesday, and then when we pick him up from the airport saturday give him his KTTW card then? I'm totally confused.

 

[abdgeek]

As far as the dining plan is concerned, you will have a specific number of meals. They can be used however you want to and whenever you want to during your stay. If your DS isn't coming until later, you may have some meals left at the end of the trip unless the other guests eat those 3 days worth of meals in addition to the meals they already have(I hope that made sense). With the tickets, your DS just won't wind up using all of the days. You would have to find out when the tickets expire to see if DS could come back later to use the remaining days. I think most tickets expire 14 days after activation(don't quote me on that!)

 

[sharonabe]

Another option would be to change all your tickets to the 2-day min required for free dining. Then when you get to WDW, you can upgrade to the number of days you need. This would save you some money on DS's ticket.

PP is correct. All meals will be on your KTTW card when you check in, including DS's meals. The family can use the meals however you want, before or after he arrives.

 

[cheerful chickadee]

Awesome, thank you both so much! I was having a mini panic attack there for a minute thinking ds would have to lose the dining plan. I

I thought I had read somewhere that everyone in your party had to be present at check in for the dining plan. Idk where I saw it but it concerned me. I am OK with having extra credits to use, I know some will be wasted because we wont be able to use them all. I am thinking of downgrading to the 2 day base ticket for all 4 of us and then adding days onto just mine, DH, and DD's when we get there, didn't know you could do that!

 

[purple figment]

If you have the regular DDP or the DxDDP you can use the extra credits for 2 credit meals - CRT, dinner shows or signature restaurants.

You can also reduce all your tickets to the number of days your son will need, then add days to your ticket, DH's and DD's or will just 2 days be enough for your son?

Also, if your son is at least 16, he could take Magical Express to your resort so that you won't have to drive to MCO to pick him up.

 

[TDC Nala]

When free dining first started, there was a policy in place at some of the resorts that everyone had to be present for check-in, because there was a trend with groups adding a "phantom teenager" to the reservation so they would get an extra set of dining credits without having to pay for an extra person in the room, for just the price of a one-day ticket.

I think they've pretty much stopped that, and began requiring two-day tickets, which seems to discourage the practice sufficiently for Disney.

 

[cheerful chickadee]

my ds is 17 so we will be calling magical express and having them arrange for his transfer, he's flown alone before and done all this by himself so I'm not worried about that aspect of it. I'm kinda bummed that he's going to be missing the first 3 days of our trip. In a way I am glad he won't be missing a whole week of school which is hard during senior year but this is the only time of year my DH can take vacay.

I don't know if I should leave my current dining reservations the same or take the chance of modifying them, anyone have any insight on that? I have an Ohana dinner res. a Cindy's bfast reservation and a Chef Mickey's breakfast that ds will not be there for BUT my reservations are for 4 people. Will I be penalized in some way for this?

 

[TDC Nala]

Call 407-WDW-DINE and ask to have him removed from the Cinderella's Royal Table reservation. You dont need to remove him from the others.

 

[cheerful chickadee]

so they can remove him from the Cindy's reservation without cancelling and re-booking it?

 

[JessM]

so they can remove him from the Cindy's reservation without cancelling and re-booking it?

Yup They can modify reservations down but not up usually.

 

[cheerful chickadee]

awesome, thank you very much. I have heard horror stories of calling to change it and the cm cancels it and tries to re-book it and in the that split second the time is gone! The reservation is for breakfast on my DD's Birthday (her choice) so I definitely don't want to lose it, very special!

 

[TDC Nala]

When you call, make sure you tell the phone agent that you do NOT want to cancel the reservation. All you want to do is remove one adult. If they say they can't do it, then ask if a supervisor or guest services can.

CRT is different because it is prepaid and you are supposed to cancel in a certain amount of time to get refunded for people who don't show up. I do not know what happens if you didn't prepay (credit card hold for dining plan) and you show up with one fewer person. At the non-prepaid places it will be fine to show up with one fewer person. If you want to check for a rebooking at CRT, make sure the CM makes the new reservation BEFORE they cancel the old one.