Using Dining Plan and tickets on arrival day before checking in

[rwbriley]

My family is driving to Disney for a Saturday to Saturday stay and are coming in a day before our reservation starts with Disney. We plan to stay at an offsite hotel the Friday night and rope drop Animal Kingdom on Saturday before we check into our Disney hotel. Has anyone had experience with this? Are the Dining plan and tickets active on the first day of your stay before you check in with the hotel? I have done the online check in for a 7:00 am start but didn't want any surprises once we get there. Thanks for all your help.

 

[disneydreamer1980]

Theoretically as long as you’ve checked in (online counts) you should be fine. But with Disney’s IT nothing is guaranteed.

 

[truthteller4life]

If you have a MagicBand, and you use the MDE to preload your tickets to your MagicBand, you can enter the theme parks the first day of your arrival without having to stop by the front desk. If you don't have a MagicBand, you can stop by the front desk of your resort, but they will provide tickets for you to enter the park. The Dining Plan and your tickets would be active on Day 1 even if your room is not ready yet.

 

[cropper]

I was told I have to physically check in to start the DDP and online checking doesn't count.
does this sound correct?

 

[SG131]

I was told I have to physically check in to start the DDP and online checking doesn't count.
does this sound correct?

No, that does not sound at all correct. I typically don't go to the front desk and everything works fine. The only time that it got a little dicey for me was a split stay.

 

[cropper]

It is a split stay but wanting to do the DDP on the last leg of the stay.
I have called twice and gotten the same answer both times.
first call I told them it was a split stay.
2nd call I just said I was going to rope drop before going to the resort (I didn't mention the split stay)
Both calls gave me the same answer....that I had to physically check in before the credits started and that online didn't count

 

[jillt2ph]

If using dining plan on last leg of split stay, you definitely have to make sure they close out your account at the first resort. I ended up having to charge my breakfast at 1900 Park Fare to my magic band on the day I checked out of BLT and moved to SSR. When I got to SSR that afternoon they removed the charge and used one of my meal credits. But it took quite a while because the charge was on my BLT stay and the DlxDP credits were on my SSR stay. It all worked out in the end

 

[MLB1974]

My family is driving to Disney for a Saturday to Saturday stay and are coming in a day before our reservation starts with Disney. We plan to stay at an offsite hotel the Friday night and rope drop Animal Kingdom on Saturday before we check into our Disney hotel. Has anyone had experience with this? Are the Dining plan and tickets active on the first day of your stay before you check in with the hotel? I have done the online check in for a 7:00 am start but didn't want any surprises once we get there. Thanks for all your help.

For this situation it’s not considered a split stay since the first part is off property.

 

[Lovetherodent]

It did not work for me until a room number had been assigned. Then, my dining plan was active. Thank goodness I learned this ordering from the app and not at the counter!