Free dining and annual passes?

[Shelbizzles]

hello!
My husband I are planning a vacation for next September it'll be is two and my brother and we are hoping for free dining ( I know there's is always a chance it might not be available), we are going for 9 night 10 days. With 8 park days with park hopper. I've been thinking of possibly getting annual passes as we are planning on going the following year as well with (hopefully) a bounce back offer.
But I really don't understand how it works cuz I have to buy tickets to qualify for free dining but I can upgrade those? How much do they cost? Would it be a savings with 8 park tickets? Would I be able to use the annual passes for the bb offer as well? I'm so lost.

 

[Bete]

I can't answer all your questions but for starters you can upgrade your tickets once you are there and after you buy the room package for free dining. They make you pay the ticket price difference at the time you upgrade.

I'm not sure how it works for a bounce back after you have annual passes.

 

[MomTo3PrincessesInNJ]

What you would do is buy the tickets you need for your free dining trip and once you are at Disney for that trip you can upgrade those tickets to an annual pass. To know if it is worth it or not you would have to do the math yourself. For us an annual pass was a great savings because our trips are usually 3 or 4 per year, and 4 days long. If you were only going 2x's in 1 year for 6+ days the annual pass might not be as significant of a savings. Also keep in mind even if you have the annual pass you will still have to purchase tickets with a bounce back offer if the offer requires it. You could just save those tickets for a trip in the future though you don't have to actually use them if your annual pass is still active. Even though there are annual pass Resort discounts we never used them in the year that we had our pass, but we did however save a lot of money using the tables in Wonderland card which is only available to Florida residents, annual pass holders, and DVC owners. It was also nice to have the merchandise discount that comes with the annual pass.

 

[AtlantaDisneyDreamer]

If you are hoping for a Free Dining bounceback for this year and next and both trips are about a year apart, then an annual pass is probably not the way to go.

We had an annual pass last year and did the FD offer, but we saved the unused tickets (the ones we had to purchase with the FD bounceback) for future trips with family members who did not have passes.

We loved our AP and it was great for us since we took five trips with the passes, but two trips where you want FD will both required additional ticket purchases may not be a good value, unless you have family members with whom you want to share those tickets, or unless you plan to make WDW an annual destination and you can continue to upgrade and/or use those tickets you have to buy with the FD package.

I agree with MomTo3PrincessesinNJ that the resort discounts are not a significant savings. I do like the AP discount, but it is not much better than my Disney Visa discount. If you don't have a Disney Visa and you plan to make a lot of park purchases, then the AP discount can add up.

 

[kaybird]

You are able to upgrade the tickets to AP. Then if you want free dining the next year, you will still have to buy whatever ticket you need to qualify for the free dining. We have been able to use those tickets in the past to renew our AP.