Free Dining

[SplashMo]

How good of a deal is free dining and/or what is your technique that you use to get the most out of it?

 

[squirrel]

It depends on your family and what level of resort you stay at.

I stay at a value resort and take one of my niece's each year. The room is around $95 a night and our food is covered (I might buy souvinier popcorn bucket).

I probably wouldn't purchase a DDP, but now that I've been going so many times with it it makes it hard not to. I upgraded this year to the DDP from the QSDP as there was no bounceback offer.

I would probably spend about $30 day for food if I wasn't doing Free Dining. I wouldn't do TS meals and I wouldn't get the extras (soda, desserts, more expensive CS, etc).

Any discounts at a value resort would be around $30. So I do save some $ and I don't have to worry about $ for food. If I had more people in the room, then I would save a lot more $.

 

[tinkmom2]

In 2009 we originally booked when free dining wasn't out yet. When it came out I called and got the free dining and added one TS for a few dollars more. I ended up saving aroud $300 off my package by doing this. I like having the TS because we like to try new places everytime we go. It can be a bit overwhelming just to eat QS places the whole trip. I try to book new places to eat every trip and at least one character meal every trip. As soon as free dining comes out for fall I will be right on the phone We are a family of 4 (then a family of 3) and didn't have any dining plan on the first trip to Disney. We spent all of our spending money and then some that week. We had almost $700 and came home penniless. From then on we have never been without the dining plan. Free dining is a tremendous savings for us. Signature restaurants like Jiko we would have paid $150.00 out of pocket for the two of us.

We had the Deluxe dining plan once and found it was too much food. It works out great for us to have a big breakfast, maybe a snack at noon, and dinner around 5-6PM. That would be our normal time at home. Some days we just do QS to save credits for the character meals. I've been planning this trip for 2 years so I am always doing reserarch on the Disney website and here on where we want to eat and where we will be each day.

 

[wtrmlnlabs]

It saves us hundreds of dollars when we get it, value resorts with QS. I've priced booking without and it's always 2-300 more and that's if we only eat one meal in the park a day (which we do with the free dining anyway, not hungry with all the running!) It's nice to have that option and freedom to not worry.

I'm not sure if it's a big savings if you are staying off site and can eat other places though, I suppose you could go and save more, but I've not done the research.

 

[kellydizfan]

I won't stay again without the dining plan. We went in 2009 and I wish we had it then. We drove so we had our car. We ended up spending just as much eating elsewhere as it would have cost for the dining plan - even quick service. And it took time away from the world by leaving property to eat, etc. We are going during Free Dining this year and are looking forward to the ease of the quick service. I couldn't see paying the extra $500 to upgrade. We usually eat the same places everytime and this time we only have two sit down meals planned and they are Trex & Sci-Fi.

 

[cbg1027]

I'm not a fan of the DP, or the free DP promotion. But that's because of my eating habits. I don't order dessert with every meal, I don't get more than water to drink at every meal, and I rarely snack. So the DP doesn't save me any money. It would only be saving money for me if I normally ordered all those things. Plus, I hate the inflexibility of it. I don't want to worry about whether or not a restaurant takes the DP and have any restrictions on what I am able to order. I also frequent the signatures, which makes the DP an even worse idea for me.

You have to assess what you would normally do and the cost of it before you know if the 'free' DP promotion is a good deal for you.

I say 'free' because you pay rack rates for the room. If you decide the DP is not a good deal for you, then a percentage off the room rate is a better deal. I always book room only with a percentage off. I also am a passholder so I have a TIW card, which gives me 20% off at most TS locations. It fits my eating habits much better than a DP, so I save a lot of money using the TIW card.