I'm sorry I'm SO SELFISH!

[Harambe]

But I'm starting to get nervous that the free dining thingy is going to push attendance up at the parks in late summer and fall. We don't do any of the packages, and don't have the dining plan for our August trip, and I'll concede that WDW wants the parks full - but I was looking forward to manageable crowds.

Oh well! As my good friend Mick Jaegar says - You can't always get what you want!

 

[Fast Pass]

Most people can not get time off in September. The kids have just started going back to school and from some of the reading I have done most of the people who did get the free dining planned on going late Aug/Sept anyway.

The parks probably will be more full but I wouldn't get too worried about it. It won't be anything like Spring Break or the June or July time frame.
I would make you PS(s) though because I don't think you'll have a good chance of walking up and getting in any particular place; I wouldn't feel secure just winging it to see if you could get a walk up.
Don't worry about being selfish everyone wants Disney to themselves!

 

[C.Ann]

Initially I was thinking it wouldn't make much of an impact (although I do have to admit there are a LOT of people from the DIS who have rearranged their trips and added on extra trips due to this fabulous offer)..

But - now that it has gone nationwide - being advertised in all of the newspapers - I can see where it really might get terribly congested.. Probably the biggest problem will be with the dining - long, long waits and the inability to get into some of your favorite places.. In that case, I guess it would be in everyone's best interest to make whatever advance reservations they can, but still be prepared for long waits..

I'm sure you'll still have fun though - just do your best to plan for every possibility..

 

[ILoveWDW2003]

Look at it this way:

- Disney only offers deals when it needs to fill rooms
- Late August and September are Value season, and attendance is usually very low anyway

Yes, it is going to increase attendance - but already many resorts have sold out of the deal, telling me that they only offered a certain number of rooms at each resort for the deal.

Many times they use September as a time to do some maintenance on the resorts, so be careful of the occupancy statistics you hear. We were in the world 11 days after Sept 11, 2001, and we were told that ASMu was close to capacity, which I found difficult to believe! The parks were at very low attendance, all rides were walk ons.

Here, it turns out, 5 of the 10 buildings were closed down! But the remaining 5 were close to being full.....thus, at or near capacity!!!

I wouldn't worry about it until you see the park hours posted for September - if they run Spectro every night, and MK is open until 10pm or 11pm each night, then I would worry.

 

[aubriee]

I just booked Sept 17th-24th, but I was going anyway during that timeframe. The free dining deal just made me decide to use it instead of my AP discount. I chose Sept because of the low crowds, but am not too concerned about this dining deal increasing the crowds by that much. As someone already said schools are in session and lets face it most people take their vacations during the summer. I think Disney is concerned about how last years hurricanes may impact reservations for this fall, so they're trying to draw people in.

The same thing happened in May. I had already planned to go May 13th-22nd and then all the promos came out about the 50th Celebration and how a family of four could vaacation for $1500.00 and everyone was suddenly predicting huge crowds. I went expecting the worst and was pleasantly surprised at the low crowds. Using fast pass I don't think I waited much more than about 10 minutes for anything and usually I didn't even need fast pass. The crowds were less than they were when I was there in January.

Plan your itinerary, plan to use fast pass, make alot of PS: in other words plan for the worst and hope for a pleasant surprise like I had in May with low crowds.

 

[foxtrotter]

We booked Sept. 18th to 25th but, like the poster above, we were going anyway. Im not going to worry about crowds, I really don't think that it's going to be that bad. I will be making all of our TS AR's as soon as the dates become available though, just to be sure we get into the restaurants we want. Of course, knowing me I would have done this anyway, regardless of the free dining so...

 

[CarolMN]

The free dining promotion is only going to affect how full the WDW resorts are and how busy the on site restaruants are. It isn't going to have much effect on how crowded the parks are. That will depend a whole lot more on how many off site and locals decide to visit.
It's still hot and still hurricane season. I just don't think the number of local and off site guests is going to change much from last year. You should be fine! Try not to worry about it - you can't control it anyway. Worry about getting a PS if you must worry, LOL!


Best wishes -




Try not to worry

 

[LongIslandCouple]

We went during the last week in August last year. At that time, Disney was offerring a 5 + 2 free package (pay for 5 nights, get 7). The crowds were manageable if you *managed* them. I don't expect any difference in the number of people as both deals seem like similar incentives for travelers.

 

[Harambe]

As always, you've made me feel better! I have all of our PS's done and was able to book the Sunrise Safari (the one thing I HAD to do!), so I guess I'll just chill out and see what happens.

Now I'll go back to worrying about hurricane season!

 

[mommi97]

ok what is the sunrise safari??? I missed that one!

 

[milmore104]

ok what is the sunrise safari??? I missed that one!

Sunrise Safari is a private safari for Cons. level guests at an extra cost. You get a wonderful morning safari ride along w/ a beautiful breakfast feast at the Tusker House!

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

There are several ways to look at it. We are arriving 10 days after free dining and value season ends. The same trip 10 days earlier would have cost us $1000 less. That's a HUGE chunk of money!

BUT:
DS would miss more school going when there wasn't a school holiday. DH's schedule rotates and the way the days fall we would either lose vacation days or DS would miss WAAAY more school (like 7 days instead of 4). We would have to pay change fees of $100 EACH on three plane tickets. I have a charity event on October 1 that I really can't miss, so if we changed our dates chances are we would miss MNSSHP (which we already bought tickets for) since they don't start until Sept. 30. We would have to go earlier in September or arrive on October 2 and only stay 7 nights instead of 9 because DH would have to go back to work.

Our vacation isn't costing us any MORE than it was costing us to begin with. Yes, people going earlier will get the exact same vacation for $1000 less, but those dates don't work for us. I wish we could go earlier and take advantage of the savings, but hopefully we will have a fabulous time and not worry too much about what other people paid. And MAYBE other people who were going to go our week who CAN change dates will go earlier! Lower crowds for me! OK, wishful thinking, but there has to be an upside to it somewhere!

 

[meandtheguys2]

hehehe...just convince everyone to go in the fall, so the end of January is clear... That's my hope! ~~smile~~

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

I didn't change my dates one bit. I scheduled them around a school break. I really couldn't change them. I happened to get lucky if that info counts for anything.

Take the following as a guess worth every penny you paid for it. (namely nothing) I don't think they'd offer this plan until they sell out the resort, only until they get to a target percentage of which they fell well below.

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

hehehe...just convince everyone to go in the fall, so the end of January is clear... That's my hope! ~~smile~~

You know, as long as we're saving so much money, we can afford to go the end of January too. What a wonderful Idea!!! Thanks....

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

I was just thinking about this deal and I came up with something I think is interesting. (Feel free to think otherwise! )

They started out by offering free dining with a PIN only. I know I didn't get a PIN, and I am assuming there were plenty of other folks on the Disney e-mail list who also didn't get one.

I think it is interesting that they rolled this out nationwide without rolling it out to the entire e-mail database first. Maybe they just wanted to test the waters with the e-mail first? Obviously if they were trying to fill space during hurricane season they needed to come up with something clever. So now I wonder if the response to the e-mail was so favorable that they went public, or if the response to the e-mail was so dismal that they figured the only way to get the numbers up was to go public? If they were going to go public with it anyway then it wouldn't have hurt to send the PIN to all of us first. Just my thoughts. It seems it would have made a lot of PIN-less people feel better, even if they couldn't travel during those dates at least they would have gotten an offer.

 

[Harambe]

I was just thinking about this deal and I came up with something I think is interesting. (Feel free to think otherwise! )

They started out by offering free dining with a PIN only. I know I didn't get a PIN, and I am assuming there were plenty of other folks on the Disney e-mail list who also didn't get one.

I think it is interesting that they rolled this out nationwide without rolling it out to the entire e-mail database first. Maybe they just wanted to test the waters with the e-mail first? Obviously if they were trying to fill space during hurricane season they needed to come up with something clever. So now I wonder if the response to the e-mail was so favorable that they went public, or if the response to the e-mail was so dismal that they figured the only way to get the numbers up was to go public? If they were going to go public with it anyway then it wouldn't have hurt to send the PIN to all of us first. Just my thoughts. It seems it would have made a lot of PIN-less people feel better, even if they couldn't travel during those dates at least they would have gotten an offer.

Hey - that IS interesting. Maybe people didn't go for it! As we all know, WDW people are planners, so maybe people found it difficult to set up a last minute trip!

 

[NewEnglandDisney]

1) Disney offered this because reservations for this period were VERY slow. You can imagine they'd have to be, to be giving hundreds to thousands of dollars per family worth of free food, ESPECIALLY since food is what they make the most profit on.

2) Although the deal is being advertised, most of the "general public" isn't going to realize just HOW good a deal this is. They are advertising it (at least in the ads I've seen) as a low per-person price for the package, not saying FREE FOOD.

3) The number of packages is limited, and if they hit a certain point you can bet they will stop the promotion. They aren't going to sell out the place with free food. You also have to book it by the begining of July - it's not a permanent special for those dates.

It's still not going to be summer-level crowds, especially since many people won't take the kids out of school so close to the begining of the year. As long as you know how to take advantage of morning touring, and make your ADR's (PS's, whatever) you shouldn't be awfully concerned.

Good luck!

N.E.D.

 

[Ready to go in Ok]

I totally empathize with the OP. Initially I looked at the free dining plan, and checked to see if we could change our dates to fit. It didn't work out for various reasons, so I was jealous! But after thinking about it, I wondered as well if the offer would push attendance way up, and decided that I would be more happy with my dates as they are anyway. Am I deluding myself into being happy with spending around $1000 more? Absolutely ......but it makes me feel better.

 

[frannn]

I totally empathize with the OP. Initially I looked at the free dining plan, and checked to see if we could change our dates to fit. It didn't work out for various reasons, so I was jealous! But after thinking about it, I wondered as well if the offer would push attendance way up, and decided that I would be more happy with my dates as they are anyway. Am I deluding myself into being happy with spending around $1000 more? Absolutely ......but it makes me feel better.

I had the same thoughts, since we are arriving a mere 3 days after the free dining ends! I probably could figure out a way to change the dates, but I'd have to figure out a way to work while at WDW (date sensitive stuff), take DD11 out of school a few extra days, and have to pay more $$ for airline change fee. It kills me to miss out on this, but I will have to pass... All of this after turning down the .98 hotel room at HI at WDW because I wanted to be able to do EMH and be on property (could have saved over 1000). And, on top of all that, we couldn't take advantage of the AP discount on the MNSSHP tickets because there are no discounts available for our dates. You'd think $$ was no object to me..LOL...but unfortunately that is sooo not the case. No matter what, we'll have an amazing vacation. I just hope that some of the crowds that were originally planning to visit when we're going have moved their vacation up to take advantage of the free dining, and we'll have some breathing room in Oct, which will (hopefully) help them to decide to offer more Oct discounts. If a lot of people decide to take advantage of this plan by checking in on Oct 4th, my trip will be crowded (arriving 10/7) and I wouldn't have even gotten the benefit of free food to console me ...