******Official 2017 Free Dining Plan Watch, Wait, and Dream

[stayathomehero]

I've been trying to convince my wife to try Splash Mountain next trip, and then this happens. We were joking that pixie dust flew her way this time.

 

[Elsaalltheway]

GOOD NEWS! IT WAS THE TRANSFORMER NOT THE WELL PUMP! $ 200 instead of $ 1200.00, thanks for all the pixie dust...it worked!

This is great news.

 

[samsteele]

I don't know what is going on with the Disney site but this morning when I got up to make our dining reservations it was only up for like 10 minutes and then I started getting the swirly I'm thinking things going on and now I just went in to look at rooms and absolutely no rooms are showing available for the time that I put in there. It says that there's no rooms are under that offer and I didn't pick any offers

Try a different web browser. The site doesn't always play nice with the browsers. I alternate between Firefox, Chrome & Safari.

 

[ShinyRedGloss]

Oh, where about are you?

Near Naperville in the NW suburbs. You?

 

[ThistleMae]

I thought splash mountain was going down in 2018....is it going down this summer?

 

[v0mich01]

I just went and bought $200 worth of disney gc from target so I'm ready to put a deposit down on a new reservation as back up if necessary to get free dining! Eeeek! we have a TA and we have current res for 2 rooms at CBR, but the more I think about it, the more I want a 1 br villa in kidani village with a savanna view(and trying to get FD seems super fun for some reason). and....I'm a SAHM former teacher(meaning, no consistent income) and my DH doesn't have the opportunity for overtime so we are pretty set to our budget. Well, my old school just called and asked me to do a last minute maternity leave starting mid april through the end of the school year meaning EXTRA MONEY! I think a good part of if will go to savings, but I think we can afford to do kidani village, just trying to figure out if we can swing 7 nights!

So if we go six we're going 11/26-12/2, if we do 7 we're going 11/25-12/2. Is it best to book seven and decrease later to six if necessary? I figure it'd be easier to hard to tack a day on, then to take a day off.

 

[Tom P.]

Maybe the slowness is due to them preparing their servers for the tidal wave of free diners.

I have never seen evidence of Disney having their servers prepared for just about anything.

 

[Susan Doeberl]

I can get in on my phone. I didn't go so far as to actually make a reservation. I was just checking for you, but I could see what's available this morning to reserve.

I'm trying to make reservations for September and it will let me go through my MDE, but when I click on My Itinerary and try to make reservations I just get a little swirly on the screen and it won't go anywhere from there. I don't know what is wrong. Thank you for checking though.

 

[Rusty2rules]

We NEED more 2017 Free Dining rumors!!!!!

Amen to that!

 

[Elsaalltheway]

I just went and bought $200 worth of disney gc from target so I'm ready to put a deposit down on a new reservation as back up if necessary to get free dining! Eeeek! we have a TA and we have current res for 2 rooms at CBR, but the more I think about it, the more I want a 1 br villa in kidani village with a savanna view(and trying to get FD seems super fun for some reason). and....I'm a SAHM former teacher(meaning, no consistent income) and my DH doesn't have the opportunity for overtime so we are pretty set to our budget. Well, my old school just called and asked me to do a last minute maternity leave starting mid april through the end of the school year meaning EXTRA MONEY! I think a good part of if will go to savings, but I think we can afford to do kidani village, just trying to figure out if we can swing 7 nights!

So if we go six we're going 11/26-12/2, if we do 7 we're going 11/25-12/2. Is it best to book seven and decrease later to six if necessary? I figure it'd be easier to hard to tack a day on, then to take a day off.

I'm going to target to pay my credit card bill and get a few more gift cards. I only have a balance of 400 right now till my vacation is paid off.
It might go up if one of the two people in our party cancel, but I would still be ok with that.

 

[ThistleMae]

Time is ticking....that's all I got!

 

[MickeyPlanning]

Really hoping for free dining 11/16-11/22. Currently booked at Contemporary- Garden Room. Looking at other options of resorts. Are the Polynesian Deluxe Studio rooms usually included? Which resort/ room would be the better option? 2 Adults/ 2 Kids (4 and 6).

 

[disneydreamer1980]

I've been having weekly payments automatically put into the online Disney vacation savings acct. For every $1000 in you get a $25 Disney GC. Not much, but it's something.Plus it's easy to save $ for the trip when it's automatically coming out of your bank acct. I don't even think about it.

 

[jlundeen]

I've been having weekly payments automatically put into the online Disney vacation savings acct. For every $1000 in you get a $25 Disney GC. Not much, but it's something.Plus it's easy to save $ for the trip when it's automatically coming out of your bank acct. I don't even think about it.

Just for clarification - the $25 Gift Card is only for each $1000 used on a qualified Disney purchase. I've used this account for several trips now, and get Disney Gift Cards using my red card at Target with a 5% discount, and deposit them into the Vacation Account, then when I need to pay for something, (like Reservation Packages, Tours, Dessert Party tickets, etc.) the amount paid goes towards the $25 GCs. I request the GCs before my trip, and it's amazing to me the amount that has accumulated!

 

[Elsaalltheway]

I've been having weekly payments automatically put into the online Disney vacation savings acct. For every $1000 in you get a $25 Disney GC. Not much, but it's something.Plus it's easy to save $ for the trip when it's automatically coming out of your bank acct. I don't even think about it.

We set that up too. I've opened the vacation account and we are paying it with Disney gift cards that we get from Target using the red cards so that saves us another 5. So in all we are saving around 70 each.

 

[randye1]

Just for clarification - the $25 Gift Card is only for each $1000 used on a qualified Disney purchase. I've used this account for several trips now, and get Disney Gift Cards using my red card at Target with a 5% discount, and deposit them into the Vacation Account, then when I need to pay for something, (like Reservation Packages, Tours, Dessert Party tickets, etc.) the amount paid goes towards the $25 GCs. I request the GCs before my trip, and it's amazing to me the amount that has accumulated!

Did this recently go up to $25? I only received $20 per $1000 spent last year.

 

[v0mich01]

Just for clarification - the $25 Gift Card is only for each $1000 used on a qualified Disney purchase. I've used this account for several trips now, and get Disney Gift Cards using my red card at Target with a 5% discount, and deposit them into the Vacation Account, then when I need to pay for something, (like Reservation Packages, Tours, Dessert Party tickets, etc.) the amount paid goes towards the $25 GCs. I request the GCs before my trip, and it's amazing to me the amount that has accumulated!

Oooo this is good! I'll have to look into it, do they have a giftcard option? I didn't know if you could do both.

ETA, I'm looking and the only options I have are a disney visa, then the usual ones, I don't see a disney giftcard option.

 

[jlundeen]

Oh, one more thing about the Vacation Account: Your Disney Vacation Account must be active for a minimum of 120 days at the time of spending in order to receive this bonus. There is a Dis thread about this topic... Lots of folks use it.

 

[jlundeen]

Did this recently go up to $25? I only received $20 per $1000 spent last year.

OOPS - yes, you are correct - $20 bonus of funds used to pay for Disney stuff....

Edited to add link: https://disneyvacationaccount.disney.go.com/

 

[FinnsMom7]

I'm going to target to pay my credit card bill and get a few more gift cards. I only have a balance of 400 right now till my vacation is paid off.
It might go up if one of the two people in our party cancel, but I would still be ok with that.

this may be a stupid question, but why purchase gift cards to pay the vacation?