that promo was the first time it was offered beyond Aug and Sept times for
free dining. I believe you had to be a Visa card holder for it. Also, it wasn't a very long standing offer and there was a limited amount of free dining packages for any of these open dates that were offered.
I'm not sure about public resort codes for the same time last year, but I don't think there was any or it wasn't very good. There were e-mail offers to certain people for resort codes at that time, but it was very limited and random for those offers.
I do think this year, Disney will be doing a lot more public codes; because, the economy is not well. I think that is eveident already with the 4/3 offer, right now.