Regarding Free Dining

[disneyisspecialtome]

What is free dining? How do you get it? I'm a FL resident and tickets are reasonable enough? Would it make sense for me to ever do this with a couple friends of mine?

Sorry, but I'm a newbie, so any and all responses are welcome and appreciated!!!!!

 

[kittythepoohbear]

Hello and welcome! You'll find lots of great info here on the Dis which I am sure you will find helpful.
Free dining is a promotion that WDW has been running for a few years now which basically offers the Disney Dining Plan as a free add on to packages for guests staying on property late Aug. - late Sept. To be eligible, you must book a room at a WDW resort at rack rate with at least a one day ticket no later than June 24 (may be a different date).
Whether or not this would be helpful to you as a FL resident is up to you. I know that my family in Orlando enjoys booking a weekend at a value or moderate resort in order to avoid the drive back and forth. So if you like paying to stay on property and enjoy eating a lot at the Disney restaurants, it may be worth it. If you don't want to shell out the money for a room or don't eat a lot you might be better off just paying out of pocket for food when you visit.

 

[bibbity bobbity boo]

Oooooooooh so you CAN stay at a moderate and get the free dining? The way it was worded on Disney I thought it was only for value guests.

Sooo, I could stay at PORR and get the DDP free possibly Sept 2008????

 

[twinspluscade]

Oooooooooh so you CAN stay at a moderate and get the free dining? The way it was worded on Disney I thought it was only for value guests.

Sooo, I could stay at PORR and get the DDP free possibly Sept 2008????

Yep, you sure could, providing they offer it again next year! We're staying at POR this year Sept 8-16, with free dining. The tricky part is you won't know if they'll be offering it or not in 2008 for about 10 more months. This year, they started offering it April 4 or thereabouts. And there was even speculation they wouldn't offer it at all. Dates were more limited this year than in the past two years, too. So only time will if they'll offer it next year or not.

 

[Claire&TheBoys]

I'm a FL resident and this is what we're doing (with guidance from the DIS! )

I booked a MYW package at Coronado Springs for the dates I wanted, but instead of getting the 6-day-base ticket they suggested, I told them I wanted 1-day-base tickets. I still get the free dining for my whole visit - it's based on number of nights you spend, not number of ticket-days. I had already bought vouchers to get our Resident Seasonal tickets at a military discount, so I can keep those 1-day tickets for another time. If I hadn't already bought them, I could have upgraded my 1-day-tickets to the Seasonal pass at Disney World and paid less for them, but oh well. 6 nights at the Coronado with the free dining plan for 2 adults and 1 paying child was less than $1200. The seasonal tickets were about $630 total (military rate, no tax).

So, it's pretty easy to take advantage of the free dining if you're a resident! But if it wasn't for the DIS, I wouldn't have known I could opt for the 1-day tickets instead of the length-of-stay ones, and wound up getting everything I wanted!

 

[mla973]

I believe there was (is?) a date by which the package had to be booked. It's likely somewhere on the DIS, but I thought maybe it had passed already. ???

 

[tink606]

i think a Dis member above mentioned that you have until June 14th to book this package.

 

[antmaril]

The Free Dining package must be booked by June 24th, 2007.