Help with free dining/annual pass

[grossmansr]

So I really want to book the free dining plan for my family this summer but I have a few questions. Here's the plan so far (hopefully):

Stay one week on Disney property to take advantage of the free dining. Purchase the 10 day parkhoppers for the family and spend another week off property with my parents in their timeshare (free stay! yay!). Finally enjoy the 2 week Disney vacation I've always dreamed of.

With that in mind, can I upgrade to an annual pass at some point during the trip so that I can enjoy the benefits of free theme park parking/memory maker/etc. once we move off property? I originally planned on purchasing the AP for myself before I found out about the free dining, but now it seems that I need to buy the package tickets first?

Also, with the free dining, do we need to use all our credits during the stay onsite? Or can we save some for the second week?

Thanks in advance!

 

[starry_solo]

Upgrade the pass to an AP immediately and you can get discounts right away.

Dining credits expire at midnight on check out day. They cannot be saved to your second week of vacation.

 

[siren0119]

You can upgrade to the AP at any point up until the last day of your visit. But you'd probably want to upgrade one ticket to AP on your first day so that you will have Memory Maker right away plus the food and souvenir discounts.

With the free dining, the credits are ONLY good for the length of your stay under the package. They are tied to your hotel stay not your park tickets.

We are doing something similar, except we are still staying on property (we got a crazy deal on a value resort through Priceline for 4 nights). I asked very similar questions when trying to figure out whether booking additional days through the FD plan would be worth it. So we will be staying 4 nights under the Free Dining promotion package, with dining credits for those 4 nights - then staying 4 more nights under our Priceline booking with no dining credits available so everything out of pocket. We just plan to front-load the most expensive character meals to fall under our dining plan time.

 

[grossmansr]

Thank you all so much! It's hard to pass up free dining. We've never done the dining plan before and we usually stay off site. But this has the makings of a Disney dream come true... if only I can get my husband to agree. Speaking of that, I have one more question. If I go ahead and book the package and pay the $200, and then for some reason we change our minds, can we cancel and put the money towards tickets?

 

[gap2368]

Thank you all so much! It's hard to pass up free dining. We've never done the dining plan before and we usually stay off site. But this has the makings of a Disney dream come true... if only I can get my husband to agree. Speaking of that, I have one more question. If I go ahead and book the package and pay the $200, and then for some reason we change our minds, can we cancel and put the money towards tickets?

as long as you are within your cancel window you can cancel your trip and get your money back ( I think it is 30 days before but you can double check) also remember if you use the tickets that you have towards the AP your date of the AP will start the day you first used your tickets not that day you upgraded to the AP

 

[Missyrose]

So we will be staying 4 nights under the Free Dining promotion package, with dining credits for those 4 nights - then staying 4 more nights under our Priceline booking with no dining credits available so everything out of pocket.

Double check the validity dates on the package tickets. Disney added weird wording to the free dining package tickets that make it difficult to determine if you can use the tickets past your package checkout day.

 

[siren0119]

Double check the validity dates on the package tickets. Disney added weird wording to the free dining package tickets that make it difficult to determine if you can use the tickets past your package checkout day.

I posted about this in the Tickets thread, but we had an issue with the valid dates showing only to the end of my "package" stay. Per Disney wording tickets are valid for length of stay OR valid period of tickets, whichever is LONGER. I brought this up to my TA and when she pulled up our package in HER system, our 7 day PH tickets show the correct date - valid through 9/4/19 (10 days from start date). We think it's just a system glitch with MDE but she's calling Monday to make sure.

Which makes total sense if you think about it - the tickets are not directly connected to the free dining/room package (other than that they require you to buy parkhoppers to be eligible for the package). The tickets are at full Disney price, no discount. If tickets were only going to be valid for length of stay, you wouldn't be allowed to buy park tickets that had more days than the length of your stay, so I wouldn't have been able to select a 7 day parkhopper on a 5 day stay.