People - please listen to this

[Joan1]

Don't book a room in hopes to change it to the free dining offer later. The more people book rooms now the less availability there will be with the discount and you may be shooting yourself in the foot. You can't automatically get a discount applied just because you have the room booked in a particular hotel. There actually has to be availability with the discount, when checking as a new reservation, in order to have the discount applied to an already booked room

The more rooms are booked at full price or with AAA discounts the less discounted rooms will be left. Wait until this is actually available to book and this way there will be more availability with the free dining offer.

If people start making the reservations now and a hotel gets pretty full it may not be available at all with the free dining offer

Please Please do not fill up the rooms at regular rates
That is why the offer isn't being offered until August 26 because most of August is pretty full already at the hotels

 

[rhiannonwales]

This doesnt affect me since i pointedly stay away from WDW during free dining, but i think that this theory has been proven false.
Every year this plea goes out and honestly, no one listens - and yet as far as i can tell its never been proven true. Every year since the first free dining, there has been free dining - and the same is true of every other discount out there - the same cry goes out for people who book hoping for AP rates.With the exception of the peak season there has always been an AP rate.

I think getting worked up over this is pointless.People will always book now hoping for a discount later.

 

[rhiannonwales]

And to correct you, the reason that its not being offered until late August is because of the return of the Pirate and Princess parties in early/mid August.They wont combine free dining with that, and it drew A LOT of people into the parks at a typically slow time.

 

[Joan1]

I appreciate your insight but it has been proven that some hotels have been filled and not available with the discount. People have had to be flexible with hotels or just keep what they have without the discount.

Can you tell us why there won't be any discounts for May 24 until August 25? I think it is because the hotels are pretty full and Disney doesn't need to offer a discount. The same thing happened last year

If the dates of the free dining are correct and it doesn't start until August 26 and they will be released sometime in April this means that they don't plan on offering any discounts for May 24 until August 25. They don't usually skip over months and then go back to them and offer a discount later

 

[Joan1]

And to correct you, the reason that its not being offered until late August is because of the return of the Pirate and Princess parties in early/mid August.They wont combine free dining with that, and it drew A LOT of people into the parks at a typically slow time.

Take a look at the availability of the Polynesian over the first week of August, not much left there the last time I tried to book a room for early August. We have had to rethink our plans and go at another time because that is the hotel we would like to try

 

[rhiannonwales]

June and July are very busy seasons for Disney.Travel in general is up, and Disney plans these discounts so far in advance that i dont think current occupancy levels figure into the equation. in 2005 and 2006 there was no general public discount from may to august free dining.. Look at the mousesavers link that shows the release dates for discounts.

http://www.mousesavers.com/historicalwdwdiscounts.html#codetrends

 

[Joan1]

Every year since the first free dining, there has been free dining

I am not saying that if people book now the free dining won't be available at all what I am saying is tht the more rooms are booked at a particular hotel the less availability or likelyhood that a hotel may not be available at all with the free dining offer.

Look at the history of discount availability at the Wilderness Lodge over the Thanksgiving time until Christmas, pretty limited, if any, availability because this hotel is very popular when it is decorated for Christmas

 

[MariaEllerºoº]

As someone who had a brother working at Disney I totally agree with Joan. Not booking until the actual promotion comes out will free up more availability for the promotion. If all the resorts are pretty much booked up Disney won't have the need to draw people to the resorts with a promotion.

 

[Joan1]

lets just agree to disagree on this subject. Neither one of us will change the others mind

 

[MissMichelle]

I am amazed at resorts already being fully booked for my week..I tried to book CSR for the end of August (8/24-9/2) NO availability...I am going to have to wonder if this convention resort has a MAJOR convention or if everyone is catching on! HAHA

 

[Joan1]

And to correct you, the reason that its not being offered until late August is because of the return of the Pirate and Princess parties in early/mid August.They wont combine free dining with that, and it drew A LOT of people into the parks at a typically slow time.

By the way here are the dates for the Pirate and Princess party
August 11, 15, 18, 21, 24, 28, 31 and September 3

 

[rhiannonwales]

The fact is there really AREN'T any really slow times anymore.Disney has learned how to maximize the offers and events to fill in the gaps in attendence.thats why free dining was created in the first place.Just like the P&P parties now fill in the jan/feb/early march gap. They put P&P back in early august to do the same thing.MNSSHP for late fall, and MVMCP for early December. We, the Disney vererans have gotten used to promotions and discounts to make multiple trips per year possible, but the fact is that someday, we may stop seeing them becasue Disney has learned to make WDW interesting year round.

 

[rhiannonwales]

By the way here are the dates for the Pirate and Princess party
August 11, 15, 18, 21, 24, 28, 31 and September 3

Youre right, i did see that. But also consider that the free dining dates on ***************** are speculation, and may change.

 

[Joan1]

We, the Disney vererans have gotten used to promotions and discounts to make multiple trips per year possible, but the fact is that someday, we may stop seeing them becasue Disney has learned to make WDW interesting year round.

After 20 trips to Disney over the last 9 years I consider myself a veteran also

 

[LakeAriel]

Free dining is offered during Hurricane season, plain and simple. Last year thank God, the predictions were wrong. It was always available at all hotels until completely booked. The only problem that will be major is if people book with no intention of going UNLESS there is free dining. If you are going to be there one way or another I would use whatever strategy works for you.

 

[rhiannonwales]

When i said "we" i was referring to all of the people like you and me and all of the DIS people who are WAY ahead of the average consumer and take numerous trips. Factis, wev'e been spoiled by the availablity of discounts, and it may dissapear.

 

[CanadianGuy]

I understand both sides of this argument.

That said.. we don't really know how Disney allocates rooms for these promotions.

We know the promotions are planned months in advance.. but what we don't know is .. for example .. do they look at room stats by resort as the booking period goes on and recognizing they have more cancellations than they expected at a particular resort.. do they then allocate more rooms to the promotion at that resort?

We don't know.

So as much as I agree with Joan in a broad sense ..

I have to still say the well articulated theory she puts forward for us to consider.. is just that -- a theory... one among many. And as much as we like to think we here on the DIS are a large chunk of the Disney universe, in reality, if every single visitor to the DIS followed Joan's instructions..or not.. it wouldn't even be a blip on the radar in the booking of Disney's 25,000 plus rooms each night.

The vast majority of people booking rooms at Disney resorts are NOT members of the DIS and therefore don't read all our wonderful advice and suggestions!

Some fun side math..

25,000 rooms for anyone one night at the resort. And that just 5% of every registered user (man, woman and child) registered at the DIS booked one room each on the exact same night.

That's still only 6150 of those 25,000 rooms And realistically, it's a MUCH, MUCH, MUCH smaller proportion of the DIS membership travelling at any one point in time.
With the exception of Christmas.. something like 2% or 1% or even less of DIS members are travelling to the world on any given day. And some percentage of those are staying off-site even. We just don't have the impact we all like to think we do.

To summarize : In the face of a lack of hard information on this - book whatever you think will work for you -- but do that with the understanding that rooms are limited at each resort for every promotion ... You may find if/when free dining is announced.. it may be for select resorts and the one you had your heart set on -- may not be on that list... or may not be available for your travel dates.

Flexibility will be the key.

AND as of today, no free dining has been officially announced. That too is, at this stage, just a rumor.

Knox

 

[brooke1]

I still say that Disney is not stupid and have been doing some type of discount for many many years, dont you think they know alot of people make ressies hoping for free dining or whatever discount for aug and sept which are slow months,wether a resort is almost full or not, Disney knows whats going on....

Brooke

 

[Momto8]

I think another the reason why they are not doing the free dining during August is because I heard Florida schools are not going back until 8/20 this year. I think that might have more to do with it than people booking and then hoping for a free dining.

That being said, we are going whether there is free dining or not. I booked our rooms because I didn't want to lose out on the resort of our choice. We have a Grand Gathering with 22 people going and this is why we booked early. I am not going to cancel just because they don't have free dining. We have the 40% off discount but even if we didn't, we would still be going.

 

[Trekker]

I personally think that more people are traveling - like back before the terrorist attacks in NY. With more people traveling Disney is selling more rooms to the avegare Joe who unlike us savvy DISsers know nothing about codes and rates. So the rooms are filling up and they need not offer as many discounted rooms.

I think we will be going back to the days when a discount was way out of the norm....

But remember this is JMHO!