Free Dining vs Room Only vs I don't know what to do?!?!?

[Disney Bumfords]

So here is the situation - we have a grand gathering - planning to travel 2/26/11 through 3/4/11, therefore eligible for the free dining. YAY - right?

Yes - except a little snafu. Two of the parties in our group, will not have the balance of their $$$ available to them by the 45 day point. They need an additional two weeks.

Any workarounds for this?

Should we book room only now - if they convert it 30 days out will they still get the free dining?

Can we book room only with a room only discount and then add a one day park hopper and dining for the length of stay?

I'm so perplexed - and feel bad because they really want to go. Unfortunately, I myself am not in the position to pay for them.

Come on Disney Pros - give me the good news!!!

 

[summerlady]

I've heard (well, actually read here at the DIS) that if someone isn't able to make their final payment at the 45 day mark, Disney will give them an extension and not cancel their reservation unless it's unpaid at 30 days.

Hope this helps but they should call just to confirm.

 

[sndral]

I believe that promotional offers have a set number of rooms available for that promotion. When those rooms are booked you cannot get the promotion. I would probably just book room only with the room discount that you can get now for those 2 parties and then free dinning for those who can pay. When the 2 parties are able to pay you can check to see if any free dinning promotion rooms are available and if they are switch to a free dinning package. If they aren't you can go ahead and either add tickets and dinning plan or let them pay OP. BTW, depending on party size and composition and resort selected, room discounts can be a better deal than free dinning.
I don't know how the grand gathering factors into this, tho'.

 

[disneyfan55]

So here is the situation - we have a grand gathering - planning to travel 2/26/11 through 3/4/11, therefore eligible for the free dining. YAY - right?

Yes - except a little snafu. Two of the parties in our group, will not have the balance of their $$$ available to them by the 45 day point. They need an additional two weeks.

Any workarounds for this?

Should we book room only now - if they convert it 30 days out will they still get the free dining?

Can we book room only with a room only discount and then add a one day park hopper and dining for the length of stay?

I'm so perplexed - and feel bad because they really want to go. Unfortunately, I myself am not in the position to pay for them.

Come on Disney Pros - give me the good news!!!

there are no room only discounts for the time you're talking about. What you could do is just get the minimum tickets with the package, can they pay that much on time? They could upgrade the tickets to hoppers/number of days upon arrival. I don't know if that helps. Or they can do that and maybe someone lend them the money for 2 weeks. Anyone have a Credit card they can charge it to for the 2 weeks, the ticket change will decrease the cost somewhat and no problem with upgrading when they get there. As far as getting the FD added later I think there is a book by date for that ( not sure of the date but it may be prior to your pmt date anyway )