Waiting for discounts/special offers?

[Honeybee83]

We are planning a WDW vacation in October 2015. As all of you know, it helps to save pennies where you can. We are hoping that free dining will be offered during our stay. We have not booked yet, even though our dates are fixed, because I know that the more people that book ahead of time, the less inclined Disney is to have a promotion going.

We have never done a table service meal and would not unless we had the free dining plan. I know some reservations are hard to come by so waiting until a couple of months before your trip to make ADRs, after you know a discount will be offered, is really rolling the dice. Is it possible to book a vacation now, so that you can make the ADRs 180+10 days in advance, then wait a few weeks until it is less than 180 days from your vacation and cancel your vacation with disney (but keep the dining reservations). That way, if free dining is offered for the resort and dates we want (hoping for POR, Oct 17-26), our ADRs will already be secured and taken care of, and we can rebook at that time.

I didn't know if we cancelled a vacation package if it would automatically cancel our ADRs as well.

Thanks in advance for any tips or tricks that have worked for you.

 

[Marionnette]

We are planning a WDW vacation in October 2015. As all of you know, it helps to save pennies where you can. We are hoping that free dining will be offered during our stay. We have not booked yet, even though our dates are fixed, because I know that the more people that book ahead of time, the less inclined Disney is to have a promotion going.

We have never done a table service meal and would not unless we had the free dining plan. I know some reservations are hard to come by so waiting until a couple of months before your trip to make ADRs, after you know a discount will be offered, is really rolling the dice. Is it possible to book a vacation now, so that you can make the ADRs 180+10 days in advance, then wait a few weeks until it is less than 180 days from your vacation and cancel your vacation with disney (but keep the dining reservations). That way, if free dining is offered for the resort and dates we want (hoping for POR, Oct 17-26), our ADRs will already be secured and taken care of, and we can rebook at that time.

I didn't know if we cancelled a vacation package if it would automatically cancel our ADRs as well.

Thanks in advance for any tips or tricks that have worked for you.

I know that if you make changes to an existing reservation, you do not lose your ADRs. You might want to make your package reservation for October now and then switch it when/if *free* dining is announced; instead of making a phantom reservation just so that you can make your ADRs at 180+10.

In the past, cancelling a resort reservation did not result in cancelling the ADRs as well. However, if enough people start making "phantom" reservations so that they can get an added advantage to secure HTG dining and FP+s reservations, Disney will likely act to close that loophole.