Free Dining and YES tickets

[erbeaman]

I need your help in figuring this out. I am planning a trip for late August, and I see that there are YES programs available. I was hoping for free dining, but now I'm wondering if I can hold onto my dining package tickets for another trip, and use my YES tickets for this trip. Does that make sense? So my questions are, do I need to activate my package (free dining) ticket to get free dining, or can I hold onto them for another trip? How many days of tickets do I need to buy to qualify for free dining? I know free dining hasn't even been announced, I'm just being hopeful in my planning.

 

[arihillfarm]

If free dining is offered again under similar terms as in the past, you'll need to buy two-day base tickets to get free dining, but you don't have to use them. You can have them removed from your KTTW card and save them for another trip. I've done this using military promo tickets during free dining. Saved the one-day tickets (this was in 2009 before the 2-day ticket requirement for free dining) and applied them towards the purchase of the military tickets that we bought last summer.

-Astrid

 

[auralia]

You can save the tickets and last year I believe it was a minimum 2 day ticket

 

[Marionnette]

Last year's Fall free dining offer not only required the purchase of a minimum 2-day pass, you also had to purchase a 20-page Photopass book as a part of the package.

If you normally buy a Photopass book, then it's still a good deal. But if you don't, then this is an added unnecessary expense. The book added about $100 to the cost of the package.

 

[leadfootlevi]

Here's what we did:

To get free dining, we had to purchase base 2-day tickets for each person. So we had 2 adult 2-day tickets and one child's 2-day ticket. I bought YES tickets for DS and myself. DH used both of the adult 2-day tickets (we added two days to one after we checked in). Now, we have a 2-day child ticket left.

I'm sure it wasn't the best use of the tickets, but we don't know when we'll be going back and the thought of keeping track of the tickets makes me nervous. We've talked about selling the child ticket or giving it away to friends/family we know are going. Not sure what we'll do with it yet.

 

[Colleen27]

I need your help in figuring this out. I am planning a trip for late August, and I see that there are YES programs available. I was hoping for free dining, but now I'm wondering if I can hold onto my dining package tickets for another trip, and use my YES tickets for this trip. Does that make sense? So my questions are, do I need to activate my package (free dining) ticket to get free dining, or can I hold onto them for another trip? How many days of tickets do I need to buy to qualify for free dining? I know free dining hasn't even been announced, I'm just being hopeful in my planning.

Yes you can hold on to them. Disney doesn't care if the tickets are activated, all they care about is that you bought them. We did just that for our January trip. You'll have to add 2 day base tickets to qualify for free dining, but those tickets can be saved indefinitely as long as they aren't used. And it is a nice head-start in saving for the next trip... Our tickets are in our Disney jar where we collect change and coupon savings, an $880 chunk of our next WDW vacation budget already set aside with no temptation to use it for something else!

 

[tlh0726]

Just remember if you purchase the required tickets and then save them for a future trip, the next promo that Disney offers will most likely make you buy even more tickets and you cannot combine them together.

 

[mousiemom]

Can you just do the 2 day base tickets and then still buy the 3 day YES tickets? Or would the best deal just use the 2 day tickets for future trip?

 

[Colleen27]

Just remember if you purchase the required tickets and then save them for a future trip, the next promo that Disney offers will most likely make you buy even more tickets and you cannot combine them together.

That depends on when you travel... Other than free dining, there hasn't been a really great package offer. The rest of the year it is usually percentage-off deals that can be booked with or without tickets.

For us, we know our days of traveling during free dining are numbered. My son is in 7th grade this year and won't be able to miss school for vacation once he gets to high school, plus he'll have the summer demands of football (which starts a month before the school year does in our area). For our 2013 trip we're looking at either the lull between the end of baseball in early July and the start of football in early-mid August or the week of New Years if I can convince my ex to rearrange his holiday visitation. Either way, those tickets will come in handy in offsetting the sticker shock of suddenly traveling in peak season at rack rate rather than value season with a deep discount.

 

[jjsdad]

Never thought to do this but it is genius!

Just so I am clear on this as far as the dining plan goes:

If I have a 7 night stay package at the POR with free dining (I have this already from a bounceback offer last August) and switch my park tickets to 2 day base tickets for each person in my party I get 7 nights worth of free dining?

If the answer is yes, then my answer is YES (see what I did there?)

 

[leadfootlevi]

Never thought to do this but it is genius!

Just so I am clear on this as far as the dining plan goes:

If I have a 7 night stay package at the POR with free dining (I have this already from a bounceback offer last August) and switch my park tickets to 2 day base tickets for each person in my party I get 7 nights worth of free dining?

If the answer is yes, then my answer is YES (see what I did there?)

Yes, free dining is for the entire length of you reservation (up to 14 days, I think, but maybe 21?) even if you only buy 2-day base tickets.

 

[jjsdad]

Thank you!

This really is brilliant, we are basically getting free 2 day tickets for each of us for our next trip!