this might stir up the pot some??? universal free dining!!

[dis2cruise]

info from here (disboard) maybe disney will change their free dining dates??? bad thing is its only for the 1st 2 people in the room

Two Park - Free Dining

Guests staying at either the Hard Rock Hotel, Portofino Bay Hotel or Royal Pacific Hotel can get free dining at both the Universal Theme Park and Islands of Adventure.

Travel Dates: August 17 - October 9
Book by: June 22
Minimum of 3 nights, maximum 7 nights
Offer is for the first two guests in the room. Additional guests must purchase the meal deal for the entire stay
The first two guests in the room are required to purchase the 2 park Unlimited admission ticket and additional guests are required to purchase park admission
Guests are provided with two Universal Meal Deal Plans and two unlimited soft drink cups. These allow for unlimited food/beverages from 10:30am till a half hour before the park closes at the following locations:
Universal:
Mel's Drive In
Louie's Italian Restaurant
International Food and Film Festival
Classic Monsters Cafe
Islands of Adventure:
Cirkus McGurkas Cafe Stoo-pendous
Comic Strip Cafe
Captain America Diner
The Burger Dig
While this offer can be a great deal, if you have more than two in your room, you must pay for adding on the features for the others in your party. It's a smart idea to compare prices with other types of admission (without the meal offer) to see what's the best option. Get a no-obligation quote

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[housemouse]

Where are you finding this? It would work for us since there's only 2 of us going. We were planning some Universal time and Seaworld time so this could work.....

 

[G&J's Mom]

SWEET!!!! Will have to look into that. Thanks for the heads up!

Denise

 

[esdras]

Go to the Universal section of the wdwinfo.com site and click on the discounts tab - here's a direct link:

http://www.wdwinfo.com/discounts/discounts-universal.htm#free

I hope this helps with getting a good offer from Disney - admittedly, there are limitations to the Universal promo - i.e., only two people per room get the deal and anyone else HAS to buy the plan, but it does have the benefit of UNLIMITED food/beverages at a number of the restaurants - although not all of them as far as I can tell. The dates are the huge factor though - Aug. 17 to Oct. 9! While I don't think Disney will take their FD into October because of the Food and Wine Festival - I hope this might make their offer start on the same weekend - which would help a lot of people hoping for FD.

Actually, I'm now wondering if this is why we haven't had any fairly accurate "leaked" info regarding the travel dates this year, unlike previous years. As long as Disney is planning on giving the offer, I can't imagine it would take all that long to "free up" or "assign" rooms to the offer in their computer reservation system - probably only a few days at most to check current confirmed reservations, tentative holds without deposit, etc., for all the dates they are considering.

IF (and this wouldn't surprise me if true) Disney found out that Universal was planning on offering a Free Dining promo, perhaps Disney chose to wait until Universal put out their offer "officially" to determine exactly what the mouse would do for 2008.

Disney, if this was their intention, has played it brilliantly. IF (and again, I think this is likely) they had a pretty good idea that Universal would officially announce their offer at the end of March, Disney (to avoid losing too many bookings) made sure to leak info well before Universals offer that there would be Free Dining for the Public in '08, with booking dates starting the second week of April. Even with Universal's offer out there, those knowing that a FD offer is coming from Disney could still consider waiting to see what was available before making the choice.

Further, Disney then has about a week after Universal's promo comes out to decide exactly what the offer will be, and then after making the decision, they still have the couple of days required to open availability in the computer system, and prep the ads that will likely run online and perhaps in a number of newspapers. Disney has ensured that the bait is out there (leaking the "booking" dates for the offer), but ensures that they get to see the details of their competitors "copycat" offer thereby allowing them to tweak the Disney FD in a way to best counter the promo from Universal. Again, Disney played this brilliantly.

For all of us wondering why we heard nothing regarding the travel dates for Free Dining this year - it wouldn't surprise me if the Universal promo was a large part of that reason.