I have an AP and three tickets in my name on my account that my MB pulls from. NO issues with the wrong thing (AP) being used to enter the parks.
I would check at the desk when you check in to make sure your AP is listed first but I was told by multiple CM's that the AP had the highest priority on any MDE account and will always be accessed first.
You can save the tickets in your MDE account until you are ready to use. As I mentioned above I have three tickets in my name that are waiting to be used. I will use them on future trips.
I will say compare the price of getting room only with AP, using Dave's DVC Rental (
https://www.dvcrequest.com/) and with free dining. I think you will come out better using Dave's then doing free dining. A good way to see is to use this website
http://www.distripplanner.com/... it will calculate the cost of what the dinning plan will cost you and what it will cost if you just pay OOP. My experience I would price how you actually eat ... meaning if you usually get a appetizer add that but not dessert etc. and then figure the dining plan and see if free dining is cheaper. I will say that i've done free dining and a few times is been the cheaper route (esp. when staying moderate but staying deluxe it's never been the cheaper route) but its alot of food!
This past Feb. I had family that went and we had multiple rooms booked. We did the dining plan for them but I had a room only. At some places I paid OOP bc it was buffets but for lunch and at restaurants you ordered from we shared and I always had enough food.