Paid cash for free dining. good idea?

[SunnieRN]

Well, that is why I was asking. I am not saying the food is free, nor the tickets. What I am saying that I would have to pay $2050 for food and tickets if I was using my points. So that money is out of pocket regardless of which way I go. And then I would be using up my points for the year. But by paying an extra $600 I still have 8 days worth of the points that I can use for a second trip when I will use my AP and Tables of wondeland card - plus I will have an unused 7 day ticket to trade in when I renew my AP. No I won't be staying in a villa, but I will have everything but the microwave I would have had in the studio. It seemed tome that my points are worth more than the $600 extra I was paying at the hotel.....

So what I am wondering is if other people see it the same way or really disagree - and why. If I didn't have the cash, I would obviously not do it - and I did buy points to avoid paying rack rate all the time - but with the free dining and three adults plus a child to feed, it seemed like a good idea....

We changed our plans to take advantage of the Free Dining also. We were already planning on purchasing the Dining Plan for my family of 4 with kids that are 10 & 12 (full price).

With this promotion I was able to get a Moderate resort + Dining Plan for the same amount that I would have paid for the Dining alone.

In the end I decided that getting to stay in a Moderate for no extra money and saving the points for another vacation later was worth the reduction in level of accommodations.

I purchased the single day tickets with the package and will upgrade them to a DVC AP.

For my family this made the most sense to us.

Both of these examples make perfect sense!! We were going to do free dining in Sept/Oct. We are two adults and one dining plan aged child and one too young. When we priced it out at pop we found that we would be better off using points, since we have them. I had full intentions of using the free dining program prior to booking our dvc stay.

 

[ftballfan7]

We are also taking advantage of free dining. We are staying at SSR for seven nights in August using developer points. We had planned on 4 table service meals, and as such purchasing the DDP would not have made sense for us (especially when considering the requirement for entire length of stay). However, when the free dining offer came out I did the math and realized we could book a value room with free dining for less per day than what the DDP would have cost us had we paid for it seperately. The best part is we made the reservation for only the four days we want, so it works out perfect for us. So basically we have booked a room at Pop that will not really be used. Here are the numbers:

DDP for 7 days (full length of stay - 4 people) = $1092.00
DDP for 4 days (4 people, all considered adults) = $624.00

Package price 4 nights @ Pop 1 day ticket w/ free dinning = $694.76
Adjustment for aplying the cost of 1 day tickets to AP upgrade = -$300.00
Actual cost of Pop room + free Dining = $394.76 ($694.76 - $300.00)
Our cost per day to get dining plan is $98.69
Regular cost of DDP per day (for us) is $156.00

If we weren't staying on developer points, I might consider cancelling our DVC stay and saving the points like previous posters. Although after 14 nights in a value last year with myself, dw, and 2 boys (12 & 13), I think I am officially done with that. Very much looking forward to our 1 bedroom.

I know it sounds crazy to get an extra room we don't need and probably won't use, but we usually spend over $100.00 when we do a sit down meal at WDW. We were planning on 4 sit down meals anyway. The numbers work for us.