Free dining help

[Daisy-J&D]

I'm hoping someone with better knowledge of this or even better math skills will be able to help. We're already booked for 11 nights in September using the late summer room only discount. We paid $62/night for Pop Century.

Now that the free dining offer is coming up, I'm wondering if paying more for the package will end up saving us money or if should just stick with our original reservation and pay for food OOP.

Right now the room only rates are about $20-$30 more than what we paid. Will they be even higher as part of the package? Also, can I get free dining for a 2 week vacation or is it strictly for 5 night/6 day packages?

Any suggestions?

 

[Daisy-J&D]

I totally forgot to add that we are two adults and a toddler under 2!

 

[StitchesGr8Fan]

From what I understand, you will pay the rack rate for the room if you use free dining. So look at some menus and estimate how much your family will spend on food per day. If the cost of food plus your discounted room is more expensive than the rack rate on the room, then free dining might save you money. I believe you can book more than 6 nights to get free dining, but not less. A travel agent can help answer this too.

 

[RocketEAR99]

Ok, IF you can switch your offer. You CAN get free dining for longer than a 5-night stay. As far as I know, that was a minimum stay requirement (and I think it has since been lowered to 3 nights or something).

If you stay in a value accommodation such as Pop Century, the free dining applies only if you get a Quick-Service Dining Package, so no Table Service for free unless you upgrade to a higher-class resort. Your current savings with the room-only discount come to about $330 for 11 nights for the three of you. If you switch to free dining and still do 11 nights at Pop, since your 2-year-old is free anyway as they charge for 3 yrs and up, your savings would instead come to about $770 for the trip! A vast difference if you ask me.

So go for it and best wishes for your trip whatever you decide!

 

[Daisy-J&D]

Egad, I'm confused. $770? Is that considering what we would have paid full price Goethe meal plan? I think that we'd likely be spending $20 for breakfast/lunch so $40/day. I guess it depends on how much I'm going to be paying for the room with the package. If it's $95/night that is a $33/day difference meaning we'd be saving about $7/day. Does that make sense?? Or am I calculatingthis wrong? I was happy with my room only deal until this came up!

 

[RocketEAR99]

By the way, that's because you're saving $20-$30 per night by staying at Pop on the room only discount and you're saving about $35 per adult per night doing quick-service dining with the free dining discount.

 

[RocketEAR99]

I'll break down the math as I saw it.

Room-only discount:
You save $20-30 per night at Pop (let's assume the best and say you save $30 per night)
11 nights x $30 off per night = $330 total savings.

Free Dining (quick service):
Dining plan cost is $34.99 per adult per night
no charge for children under 2 years of age (Disney assumes you'll feed them yourself or share your portions with them)

$34.99 x 2 adults = $69.98 per night
$69.98 x 11 nights = $769.78 total savings.

That dining plan gets you 2 meals (beverage, entree, and dessert) and 2 snacks at all participating locations per person each night of your stay and each person gets a souvenir refillable drink mug for free refills of fountain beverages at your hotel.

 

[dizziedupbaby0127]

Yes you can book 11 nights with the free dining plan. Here's my math:

your cost now:
you said $62 a night is what you paid with the discount so
62x11nights=682room cost
10(average quick service meal)x2(meals per day)x2(people)x11(days)=440 food
4(average for 2 snacks)x2(people)x11(days)=88 snacks +2mugs 24 value
440+88+24=552
552+682=1234

Now with free dining (I assumed the quick service)
100(ave. cost of room)x11(nights)=1100

I didn't factor in tickets because they should be the same no matter what the deal. I would say that the free dining is best, even if you upgrade to the regular dining plan so you can do sit down meals.

Goodluck!

Wanted to add, we are going Sept 9th-18th at Pop with our DD18mos with free dining, we upgraded to the regular dining plan (booked back in September when the first free dining was released) and I LOVE the dining plan (3rd trip with it)

 

[DaniB]

You already know how much your resort & ticket cost for 11 nights is with your room discount.

So I would suggest now pricing out your trip again on Disney's website using the new FD offer. Make sure you use the same arrival & depature dates. Same type & number of park tickets. Once you have the cost, you can compare it to your total with your discount cost and see which one saves you more money.

Keep in mind that will give you the QSDP. If you want to upgrade to the DDP, that that total cost you just received on the FD offer and add $242. ($11 each x 2 people x 11 nights).

This way you have all three costs. One with room discount (paying OOP for food). One with the QSDP FD. One with the DDP FD.

We went with Free Dining last September, and are going again this September. Both times I found (CSR and POP) that the Free Dining gave us the lowest total cost of our trip over Room Discount.

If you tell me your arrival & depature dates, plus ticket type & how many days - I don't mind working it out for you.

 

[sly1971]

I faced a very similar situation last year. There was a group of 7 of us going requiring 4 rooms. Package all booked and then YAY we got a PIN offer for 40% off Deluxe hotels (we were already booked at WL). So I called and spoke to a CM who did the math for me and we determined that it was a better deal to take the 40% off the rack rate and pay for the DDP rather than take the first "deal" we had for free dining.

The only "catch" was that we had to take an upgraded Courtyard view because there were no standard rooms available under the PIN offer. Woohoo - this was STILL better for us. So we ended up in rooms with a great view of the pool instead of the parking lot or rooftop and paid less. The CM we got on the phone was more than happy to help up comparison shop and re-book the better value...the only other "catch" was that you can only book a max of 3 rooms under any PIN offer...so the last person to join our group was left out of the deal. Happy ending though cause about 10 days later, he also got the same PIN offer.

My advice - call guest services and ask the CM. If you don't get a "good" CM on the phone, call back until you get a friendly person who helps you work out the numbers. Good luck!

 

[TDC Nala]

With the current Free Dining package open now to Disney Visa and opening Monday for the general public, it requires booking a Memories Vacation Package. This package includes a PhotoPass photo book, which adds about $100 to the cost of the package. You cannot book free dining under this offer without also purchasing the photo book.

So to the calculations done above for the free dining package including 1) rack rate room at Pop and 2) at least 2 night tickets per adult - the 2 year old won't need tickets - you have to add the cost of upgrading the quick service plan (if you want to upgrade to get table service) to the basic plan for 11 nights for 2 adults (an extra $11 per night per adult, so $22 per night times 11 nights for a total of $242) plus the $100 for the photo book.

Free dining for two adults at a value resort is generally not a better deal than a room discount; depends on if you would have wanted to buy a dining plan anyway, and then on what type of dining plan you wanted.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

I faced a very similar situation last year. There was a group of 7 of us going requiring 4 rooms. Package all booked and then YAY we got a PIN offer for 40% off Deluxe hotels (we were already booked at WL). So I called and spoke to a CM who did the math for me and we determined that it was a better deal to take the 40% off the rack rate and pay for the DDP rather than take the first "deal" we had for free dining.

The only "catch" was that we had to take an upgraded Courtyard view because there were no standard rooms available under the PIN offer. Woohoo - this was STILL better for us. So we ended up in rooms with a great view of the pool instead of the parking lot or rooftop and paid less. The CM we got on the phone was more than happy to help up comparison shop and re-book the better value...the only other "catch" was that you can only book a max of 3 rooms under any PIN offer...so the last person to join our group was left out of the deal. Happy ending though cause about 10 days later, he also got the same PIN offer.

My advice - call guest services and ask the CM. If you don't get a "good" CM on the phone, call back until you get a friendly person who helps you work out the numbers. Good luck!

Yes, when staying in deluxe resorts, the % off the room is usually a better value because the discount increases as the cost of the room does. With FD, the discount is based on the # of nts of your trip & # of guests, so your discount will not change when comparing prices of say CBR to Poly packing rack rate at both resorts.

We're having this dilemma too. We've always wanted to stay at the Poly and currently booked at AAA rate for 4 nts. (We already have non-exp tix.) So to switch that to rack rate and add min. 2-day tickets, it really jacks up the price. (from around $1400 to $2800) just to get free dining! For us, the DP is still worth $736 whether we stay at Poly or CBR.
Granted, we'd all have 2 days tickets saved for future use but still a lot oop now when we just wanted a quick & not so outrageous getaway.

 

[Mousemom]

I have the disney Visa so when the free dining came out our travel agent w/magical journeys e-mailed me with the information and the cost difference. We are staying at a moderate and, I think, we got the 25% room discount when we first booked. Switching to free dining and paying the rack rate it increased our package $450.00. We are a family of four adults and we know that we will easily spend more than that in the 9 days we are there on food. We are also a family that enjoys and looks at eating at some really nice and unique restaurants as part of our vacation experience. We immediately booked using the free dining. I had already made ADR's at some of the places we really wanted to eat and was able to add a couple more that we had wanted to eat at but were really out of our budget without the free dining. You have to figure out how much free dining adds to your package and if it is worth that extra money for you. Also...do you want to spend the time eating at a sit down restaurant every day? Sometimes, like for our family, it's an easy decision...maybe not so with other.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

I have the disney Visa so when the free dining came out our travel agent w/magical journeys e-mailed me with the information and the cost difference. We are staying at a moderate and, I think, we got the 25% room discount when we first booked. Switching to free dining and paying the rack rate it increased our package $450.00. We are a family of four adults and we know that we will easily spend more than that in the 9 days we are there on food. We are also a family that enjoys and looks at eating at some really nice and unique restaurants as part of our vacation experience. We immediately booked using the free dining. I had already made ADR's at some of the places we really wanted to eat and was able to add a couple more that we had wanted to eat at but were really out of our budget without the free dining. You have to figure out how much free dining adds to your package and if it is worth that extra money for you. Also...do you want to spend the time eating at a sit down restaurant every day? Sometimes, like for our family, it's an easy decision...maybe not so with other.

You could also do a signature dining meal every other day if you don't want to sit down every day since they use 2 ts meals.

 

[Mousemom]

You could also do a signature dining meal every other day if you don't want to sit down every day since they use 2 ts meals.

This is what we did with Le Cellier and Yachtsman. It gives us a couple days that we won't be locked in to a dining reservation. We also have 9 meals but with our flight times in and out of Orlando we have 8 days at WDW. We have been doing the free dining for a few years now and, I think, we finally have figured out what works best for our family. Can't wait for our September/October trip!

 

[Daisy-J&D]

UPDATE: Thank-you for the help with calculating the difference. We ended up booking the package this morning. Ultimately for us, it worked out pretty close to even. We added a night (originally driving, now flying) and the total increase to our hotel was $477. We would have been paying the full price for thy last night so I am subtracting $80 and rounding up to $400. I had estimated about $40/day for what we would eat counter and snack so for 12 nights that would have been $480. If anything we're PLUS $80 but dining isn't "free". It's discounted and pre-paid.

All that said, I'm happy to try the Dining Plan. We've never done it before and have always felt a bit left out. Yay!!

 

[AndreaDM]

I'm glad it's working out for you!

Like a PP said, "usually" the % off deluxe rooms ends up being the better discount, however for our stay at AKL the discount is 25% off, or $65 per night, so we chose the "free" dining instead knowing we'd go over the $65 in food per day. My goal this year is to say YES to my DD whenever she asks for a snack. They hear NO so often so at Disney we say YES to eating a cupcake for breakfast if that's what we want!