tinkandonaldfans
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 21, 2008
- Messages
- 936
Last year, Virgin Holidays launched the Free Dining Promotion for this year. As of April last year my mother in law decided to treat all 9 of us to a Beach Club holiday in August 2025. I booked us all through their website and got us all the free dining!!! All very exciting, however I wanted to make you all aware (as I certainly wasn't despite having booked with them for many holidays) that there is some important info that is not made clear.
In the recent weeks my inlaws health have been made questionable. We therefore asked Virgin about either taking one or both grandparents off the booking (essentially 1 of the 3 rooms). We were told that if we did that the whole booking would need to be cancelled and re-booked with the confirmed passengers. This would mean that the confirmed passengers would no long be entitled to the free dining promotion! This would be a massive loss at over £8,000 if were to have purchased the dining plan to make up for it. I have been back and forth with Virgin and apparently the Disney team have agreed to release the grandparents without penalising the remaining guests is necessary but we have to notify them asap and that this decision is a completely one off gesture! I just wanted to make you all aware if you are booking a large group with multiple rooms to do them all individually!!
Also, we paid additional money to pre-book our Virgin flight seats. Since pre-booking our seats our flight time changed. Happy days as it means we get to Disney even earlier BUT the change also resulted in them changing the type of plane. This meant that our very well thought out seating arrangement was all messed up, they've dumped us at the back of the plane. All the seats are greyed out and can't change them currently! I had a big argument over the phone but was only until I sent an email did I get a proper response and confirmation of a refund! So lesson number two, when they tell you your flight time has changed, double check the plane as any pre-booked seats will have changed and they do not try to replicate what you originally booked.
In the recent weeks my inlaws health have been made questionable. We therefore asked Virgin about either taking one or both grandparents off the booking (essentially 1 of the 3 rooms). We were told that if we did that the whole booking would need to be cancelled and re-booked with the confirmed passengers. This would mean that the confirmed passengers would no long be entitled to the free dining promotion! This would be a massive loss at over £8,000 if were to have purchased the dining plan to make up for it. I have been back and forth with Virgin and apparently the Disney team have agreed to release the grandparents without penalising the remaining guests is necessary but we have to notify them asap and that this decision is a completely one off gesture! I just wanted to make you all aware if you are booking a large group with multiple rooms to do them all individually!!
Also, we paid additional money to pre-book our Virgin flight seats. Since pre-booking our seats our flight time changed. Happy days as it means we get to Disney even earlier BUT the change also resulted in them changing the type of plane. This meant that our very well thought out seating arrangement was all messed up, they've dumped us at the back of the plane. All the seats are greyed out and can't change them currently! I had a big argument over the phone but was only until I sent an email did I get a proper response and confirmation of a refund! So lesson number two, when they tell you your flight time has changed, double check the plane as any pre-booked seats will have changed and they do not try to replicate what you originally booked.
