If you turn down free dining.....

[autismgoesdisney]

I have friends that DO NOT LIKE THE DINING PLAN (I personally love it), and they said even if its free, they would rather be responsible for their own food and would take money off their room instead.

Can you do that? Get a percent off your room instead of taking free dining, if its offered? I never heard of that (but I love free dining so I have never had a need to ask!)

 

[twocat]

If there is a discounted room available at their chosen resort, they can definitely chose to take the room discount over 'free' dining. The key word being available.

You just can't stack discounts.

 

[LilyWDW]

I have friends that DO NOT LIKE THE DINING PLAN (I personally love it), and they said even if its free, they would rather be responsible for their own food and would take money off their room instead.

Can you do that? Get a percent off your room instead of taking free dining, if its offered? I never heard of that (but I love free dining so I have never had a need to ask!)

If there is a current percent off room promotion going on at the time, then they can choose that instead of free dining. If the ONLY promotion going on is free dining, it's that or nothing. They will NOT give you a percentage off the room just because you don't want the free dining. You take what they offer.

 

[ancestry]

We too usually prefer the room only discount in lieu of free dining. If you stay deluxe often you will save more money with the percent off than you will with the free dining promotion.

 

[Lumiere Lover]

DH and I stayed at POFQ September 2010 with free dining. I had never had the dining plan before. Boy, am I sold on that!! I love not having to budget food, souvenirs, etc. We are booked for next December, and whether or not we get free dining, I already have it on our reservation.

Some people love it, others dislike it. We do the regular plan, one TS and one QS. That is plenty of food!!

 

[pepe of ohio]

We too usually prefer the room only discount in lieu of free dining. If you stay deluxe often you will save more money with the percent off than you will with the free dining promotion.

We gladly take the room only as we only stay deluxe....the savings is alot better.....plus we want no ADR's during our stay.....don't want our vacations rub by a watch and having to be here or there at a certain time.....works great for us and we eat just fine.........

 

[mickeynut1]

If there are different discounts offered at the same time, you can choose between them and pick the one that offers the bigger savings. But as LilyWDW said, if free dining is the only discount offered, you can't get a room discount just because you don't want free dining. The choice would be free dining or no discount at all. We stay deluxe and sometimes free dining comes out to be the bigger savings for us, but everyone has to run the numbers to see which one works best for them.

 

[Missytara]

When I travel solo, a room discount is better by far. On my last trip, the free dining allowed more people to go (afford it that is).

You do realize you do not have to take a discount.....I didn't even know discounts existed until I got on the disboards.

 

[krystaaa]

I do not understand why someone would pass up the free dining plan. Me and my family (three of us total) saved nearly 200 dollars a day with free dining. An over the counter meal, a snack, and a sit down meal was more then enough to keep us stuffed the entire day. I felt like we never stopped eating and we even had credits to spare at the end of the trip! We were able to eat at fancy, more high end restaurants we would never be able to afford. We ate a $150 dollar meal in Canada (even though that requires two credits now) and Italy. I love free dining plans. However, I would never pay for the dining plan because I feel like that would not be beneficial at all.

 

[RedfromNL]

We (2 adults) chose room-discount over free dining. It makes much more sense for us. I did some counting and found that even when doing quite a few TS meals and picking more expensive items etc. we would still SAVE about 1000 dollars that way! In reality we will spend less on food so save more but I always go for the high end when budgeting That leaved less nasty surprises at the end of the trip

 

[Mrsjvb]

I do not understand why someone would pass up the free dining plan.

simple. paying rack rate to get free dining.. we spend much less money by using a room only discount and paying for our meals OOP.. and that is minimum 2 TS a day.. usually breakfast and dinner . we split nearly every CS option out there. we split an appetizer( or dessert.. never have both in the same meal)

and we also use TiW which saves us 20% off alcohol, too

 

[fla4fun]

simple. paying rack rate to get free dining.. we spend much less money by using a room only discount and paying for our meals OOP.. and that is minimum 2 TS a day.. usually breakfast and dinner . we split nearly every CS option out there. we split an appetizer( or dessert.. never have both in the same meal)

and we also use TiW which saves us 20% off alcohol, too

It really depends on your travel party, which works out to be the better deal. I travel solo most of the time, and prefer to stay deluxe or DVC. So a room only discount is almost always a better deal for me than paying rack and getting dining free. I don't typically spend as much oop per day as the dining plan costs either, so buying the DDP is not a good deal for me either. It just depends on how you prefer to travel and the number/ages of the traveling party. For families, especially those who prefer to stay value, even if they have to pay to upgrade the free qsdp to the regular DDP, it can often be cheaper to take the free dining.

 

[Missytara]

I do not understand why someone would pass up the free dining plan. Me and my family (three of us total) saved nearly 200 dollars a day with free dining. An over the counter meal, a snack, and a sit down meal was more then enough to keep us stuffed the entire day. I felt like we never stopped eating and we even had credits to spare at the end of the trip! We were able to eat at fancy, more high end restaurants we would never be able to afford. We ate a $150 dollar meal in Canada (even though that requires two credits now) and Italy. I love free dining plans. However, I would never pay for the dining plan because I feel like that would not be beneficial at all.

Free dining does not work for people going solo. Remember, it is not totally free; you are paying full rack rate for the room. So if you are traveling solo and paying full rack rate for double occupancy, then the free dining, especially if it is only the low end dining plan does not pay off.

 

[sjs314]

Free dining does not work for people going solo. Remember, it is not totally free; you are paying full rack rate for the room. So if you are traveling solo and paying full rack rate for double occupancy, then the free dining, especially if it is only the low end dining plan does not pay off.

I agree with Missytara, even with 2 guests if staying at deluxe a "good" RO % off(30-40%) is a better deal than FD. I did the math and FD for 2 at your monorail or epcot deluxe resorts only allows you a savings of 15-20% since you are paying rack rate for the room. Less of a savings for the higher priced catagory of rooms if not going with the cheapest catgory at the resort.

 

[pixarmom]

I agree it's different for everyone, based on the variety of factors that previous posters mentioned. Our friends are doing free dining next month - the plan works for their family's dining styles and they are staying at a moderate.

The dining plan doesn't work for us anymore. We're a family of five (including two pre-teen "Disney adults"), and we've booked with up to 42% discounts on CL rooms at deluxes. We eat breakfast and evening snacks in the club lounge and have ADRs for both lunch and dinner. Dinner is usually at a signature, but one of our pre-teens always orders kids' meals, and our oldest son and I usually prefer appetizers instead of entrees. So using two credits for that wouldn't make sense. We use our 20% TIW discount to the entire check (including wine), so we're definitely getting a better deal with the room-only discounts on CL rooms at this stage.

 

[TaraPA]

I do not understand why someone would pass up the free dining plan. Me and my family (three of us total) saved nearly 200 dollars a day with free dining. An over the counter meal, a snack, and a sit down meal was more then enough to keep us stuffed the entire day. I felt like we never stopped eating and we even had credits to spare at the end of the trip! We were able to eat at fancy, more high end restaurants we would never be able to afford. We ate a $150 dollar meal in Canada (even though that requires two credits now) and Italy. I love free dining plans. However, I would never pay for the dining plan because I feel like that would not be beneficial at all.

That's simple - when reserving a deluxe suite or villa - and most are around or over $800 a night rack rate, the 40% room only AP discount is a MUCH better deal at a $320+ a day savings, rather than $200 for free dining.

I'd MUCH rather have the discounted room than free dining!

 

[autismgoesdisney]

I think it depends on how many kids you have and whether or not you stay deluxe.

Our dining bills with 3 kids are HUGE. We also stay moderate for now. However, even if we do stay deluxe, it won't be in a $800 a night room! LOL

So for us it makes sense. For my friends that I posted about that don't like the dining plan, its not even the dining plan itself that they don't like, its the time factor. They HATE ADRs and living by a watch. Now that I understand. It can be difficult six months in advance to know which park I want to go to and which restaurant I feel like eating at. On the other hand, since I am not picky, I usually get so excited for the restaurant that I haven't felt the "living by the clock" mentality that my friend did LOL!

 

[mickeynut1]

I think it depends on how many kids you have and whether or not you stay deluxe.

I agree. It also depends on the ages of the kids. We are a family of 4 with 2 teens, so we are 4 adults for the dining plan. Free dining can also turn out to be the better deal even staying deluxe, depending on which deluxe resort/room type you book. If we stay at WL or AKL, free dining comes out ahead of a room discount. The Poly has even come out better for us with free dining over a room discount depending on the time of year. With that said, it all comes down to how many people are in the room, their ages, the resort, room type and pricing season to determine if free dining or a room discount is the better deal .

 

[shoney]

We booked our upcoming februrary trip back in September. It is for 7nights at POR with free dining. (our 2 boys are disney adults) We've never stayed onsite and never had an adr before. I made them for each day of our stay. while looking at the menus and costs, I don't think it would ever be worth it for our family to pay for the dining plan. My husband and I never eat dessert, we order wine at dinner (free soda means nothing), don't see us using a resort mug often, etc. Our boys eat like birds! But hey, it was free, so we'll do it. We'll probably squeak out an extra meal or 2 because of sharing or buying kids meals.

Shortly after a percentage off for the hotel was announced. It was 20%, I believe. I called to find out the price and it would have been 448.00 less.

I kept the free dining...I can't see us spending less than 448.00 on food! So, free dining was worth it.

Every situation is different...#of family members, age, resort, etc.... They just have to work the numbers a little.

Just because you have the dining plan, doesn't mean you have to be a prisoner to your adrs. If they were planning on a TS per day and were just going to wing it, they could still do that.

I am not crazy about this adr thing myself. With the exception of the f! pkg, we don't have any that require the credit card ressie, so if we have to cancel we will just call and do so.

 

[snykymom]

I do not understand why someone would pass up the free dining plan. Me and my family (three of us total) saved nearly 200 dollars a day with free dining. An over the counter meal, a snack, and a sit down meal was more then enough to keep us stuffed the entire day. I felt like we never stopped eating and we even had credits to spare at the end of the trip! We were able to eat at fancy, more high end restaurants we would never be able to afford. We ate a $150 dollar meal in Canada (even though that requires two credits now) and Italy. I love free dining plans. However, I would never pay for the dining plan because I feel like that would not be beneficial at all.

Count us in among those who hate the dining plan. I have several reasons for this:
1) I hate counting credits.
2) We eat mostly signature meals. The DDP doesn't have enough credits for us, and the DxDP has too much food (we're in the "app or dessert, not both" camp).
3) We often make meals of appetizers only. Often the apps are much more interesting than the entrees.
4) If I want to have dinner at one place and dessert at another, I can.
5) If we can't make an ADR or change our minds, I don't have to worry about where else I can use the credits or lose what I've already paid for. (Yes, I cancel my unused ADRs.)
6) I don't have to worry about whether a meal is "worth" the credits - it's either worth what I pay or it's not. If it's not, I don't go.
7) I don't have to worry about what to do with "extra" credits.

And as a AAA member, I usually get a room discount. Sometimes it's only 10%, but I'd rather have that 10% than "free" dining. Maybe one day if I'm staying value, I'll try the DDP, but not until then.