Why does FD make everybody crazy?

[Love Tink]

As for those who worry that it is too much food...well, it is definitely too much food! (I agree with a PP that it is the desserts that do us in.)

BUT, if you have kids, you probably already end up throwing away a ton of food every time you take them out to eat. My older boys do much better now, but my five-year-old still usually only eats about 20% of what's on his plate in a restaurant.

It relaxes me not to have to worry about splitting plates between kids or tossing out food that we paid for. With the dining plan I don't fret as much, and that's worth almost as much to me as any money we save.

Plus, when the kids whine for a treat I love being able to say, "You can use your credit sometime today. Pick one thing. Is this it?"

 

[Missytara]

That is interesting you mentioned that. This is the first year I got free dining, because I took along an entire crew in two rooms. Normally I go solo, or with one friend, so it doesn't pay off.

We had a 14 month old, who had just started a few months before on solid food and was a good eater - I have never seen one youngun' eat more fruit in my life.

The five year old was used to home cook meals (her mom is an excellent cook) and didn't go for the usual chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese thing. So I made our ADR's around the nicer kids meals, and the adults were very happy with our choices.

One thing I noticed is exactly what you said. The five year old was sooooo dramatic about eating. OMG, she would have her mother cut up her food and then indicate "how much of it she HAD to eat before she could get up."
Anytime, anyone would stop and get a snack and she wanted what we had. She would eat two bites and toss the rest out (this was all out of pocket).

After the second day, her mom said, you get a CS for breakfast, you get a snack around lunchtime and you get a TS at dinner time and that is it. If you don't eat enough at breakfast, too bad.

Boy, things changed dramatically after that. No more drama.

 

[angierae]

Free dining for our upcoming trip saved us roughly $1500 - four Disney adults in a mod room.

A 90% room discount wouldn't have saved us that much. And we were paying for the DDP anyway, eating OOP wasn't an option for us - DH likes being able to order whatever he wants, we like getting desserts and tasting everyone's.

We then did upgrade to DxDP, but the DDP->DxDP upgrade was still $80 a day less than what we were going to be paying for DDP. So we still saved over $500 from what we were <i>already going to pay</i> and got more food/shows/signature meals.

If I had small kids, it might not have been as much of a slam dunk, but this was obviously the best deal for our situation.

 

[Meetmeinmontauk]

I see a lot of people saying it's too much food. I myself don't normally eat so much, but all of the walking makes me super hungry. DBF & I literally ate almost every bite of what we had with the regular DDP on our 8 day trip! All of it was yummy too! Minus Biergarten

 

[Gr8t Fan]

FD for our family of 5 for 13 nights at POR is $3,349 (including 2 day tickets) -- room only is $2,449 (without a discount, as currently there is no discount offered for late August, 2012). That's a difference of $900 for 65 TS meals, 65 CS meals and 65 snacks. Even with a 30% room discount and paying for food OOP, we still need to factor in the cost of tickets, so our total would be higher. It's a great deal for us and we're thrilled!

 

[d23cndrela]

For my family free dining is a great deal. We travel with either 4 or 5 adults. 2 of which are very hardy eaters. For our trip this year we will be stating at CBR with 4 adults. Free dining saved us $412.32 per person and over all 1649.28! Most promtions that disney offers does not work for my family. We don't have any little kids, we never stay in a deluxe resort, and we prefer to travel in the fall. We like the dining plan because it allows us to eat at some of our favorite restuarnts and not have to worry about the cost, and when Disney offers it for free we can use that money we saved to stay at a mod instead of a value and/or take a tour or just buy more souviners. I hope you all have wonderful trips what ever you choose.

 

[DisDaze]

When we used it for our last trip, it was the desserts that killed us. The food was so good, then you had to get a dessert and by the time you eat a meal with a dessert twice a day for 5 days and you're only used to eating just a meal, you kinda want to get rolled around like a beach ball. And i love dessert don't get me wrong, and i know i didn't have to eat the desserts, I just seriously didn't want to waste all that food, and since we got it anyways i forced myself to eat it. i have crazy person logic I know.

We certainly don't east dessert with every meal in our everyday lives, but we eat most the desserts with our Disney meal or at least a portion of it and love every bite Call us glutens if you must, but we love all the food and not one person in our family has ever said the regular plan was too much food.

Anxiously awaiting the October - December free dininig dates . . . . .

 

[Disney-Chick]

We certainly don't east dessert with every meal in our everyday lives, but we eat most the desserts with our Disney meal or at least a portion of it and love every bite Call us glutens if you must, but we love all the food and not one person in our family has ever said the regular plan was too much food.

Anxiously awaiting the October - December free dininig dates . . . . .

I with you on FD for Oct/Dec. They don't usually come out until late summer but I am hoping that they will come out a bit sooner.

 

[DisDaze]

I with you on FD for Oct/Dec. They don't usually come out until late summer but I am hoping that they will come out a bit sooner.

I wish they would too! I'll probably have to make my ADRs before I even get to make my resort reservations this year. Trying to decide between Veteran's Day/Week and the third week of December . . . . . . decisions, decisions

 

[KELLY]

Even the QSDP saved us around 850.00 for 11 days. A room discount may have saved us 200.00 at the most. Most of the values are only getting 20% off. There is no way I can feed the family for 200.00 for 11 days. So it works for us.

We prefer the QSDP because of the freedom it gives us. We will probably pay for 2 TS meals. But those will still come in at what we would have spent on tips. So it works for us.

 

[Disney-Chick]

I wish they would too! I'll probably have to make my ADRs before I even get to make my resort reservations this year. Trying to decide between Veteran's Day/Week and the third week of December . . . . . . decisions, decisions

I think we will be checking in on Dec. 9th and leaving on the 20th. That way we hit before the crowds. That all depends on FD. We were checked in on Dec. 3rd last year and were at Disney for my b-day which is on the 4th. I just want to know the date and always feel better once I know were booked.

It's better to book ahead of time and cancel what you need to. Better safe than sorry.

Which resort do you stay at?

 

[DisDaze]

I think we will be checking in on Dec. 9th and leaving on the 20th. That way we hit before the crowds. That all depends on FD. We were checked in on Dec. 3rd last year and were at Disney for my b-day which is on the 4th. I just want to know the date and always feel better once I know were booked.

It's better to book ahead of time and cancel what you need to. Better safe than sorry.

Which resort do you stay at?

I had originally planned on December 12 - 20. The kids usually get out around the 16th, so they were only going to miss a few days of school. Then I got the school calendar and they don't even get out this year, due to where Christmas falls this year, until December 21! So, we would have to miss the whole week of school. It would all come down to when my oldest daughters finals fall this year. Also, her grades were good enough to be excempt from her exams last year, but I can't bank on that for this year. Anyway, so now I am looking at moving the trip up to Veteran's Day/Week, as they have 2 days off that week, so we would only miss 3 days. But, we love going in December and I would miss the Epcot Christmas activities - even though we could do most of the other activities. Anyway, we are going back somewhere in that holiday time frame.

As for resorts, I really wanted to stay at the new AOA resort, but it looks like it's going to be blacked out for discounts and I'm not paying full rack rates to stay there - we will just wait until next year. We like All-Star Movies and Pop for values and we like Port Orleans for moderates. Poly is my favorite deluxe, but we haven't stayed there in a few years, it's just gotten to expensive and I don't like how they have cut back on the monrail hours. Anyway, we haven't been to Pop in while, so I think we will be going back there this year.

 

[DisneyRunner2009]

I'm the OP. Look at my signature to see how many times I've used FD. My family prefers the QSDP. I thought yesterday was crazy on the boards with regards to FD. A lot of hoopla. I have a FD bounceback offer booked from last summer, but I've changed it to the end of September for the TOT 10 mile weekend. I don't know if we will use it, I'm trying to get to Disney as cheap as possible for this trip. We just booked a one way ticket down for a July trip. Now, I have to call Disney and move the June trip to the July dates. Hoping for a July room only discount. I'm off to find a trip ticker for July.

 

[TDC Nala]

People love free dining. They just do. It's not any crazier than it was last year and the year before that, but there does seem to be more complaints about lack of availability at certain resorts, especially the values, and lack of availability in cheaper room categories.

I have seen that free dining is more successful at filling rooms that would have gone unsold than any previous promotion. But I think the difference may now be instead of just "get 'em down here and fill the resorts" they are using it to see how effective it is at filling certain undersold categories.

As for Pop Century, maybe they can now fill it without offering this discount as extensively as they did in the past.

 

[Disney-Chick]

I had originally planned on December 12 - 20. The kids usually get out around the 16th, so they were only going to miss a few days of school. Then I got the school calendar and they don't even get out this year, due to where Christmas falls this year, until December 21! So, we would have to miss the whole week of school. It would all come down to when my oldest daughters finals fall this year. Also, her grades were good enough to be excempt from her exams last year, but I can't bank on that for this year. Anyway, so now I am looking at moving the trip up to Veteran's Day/Week, as they have 2 days off that week, so we would only miss 3 days. But, we love going in December and I would miss the Epcot Christmas activities - even though we could do most of the other activities. Anyway, we are going back somewhere in that holiday time frame.

As for resorts, I really wanted to stay at the new AOA resort, but it looks like it's going to be blacked out for discounts and I'm not paying full rack rates to stay there - we will just wait until next year. We like All-Star Movies and Pop for values and we like Port Orleans for moderates. Poly is my favorite deluxe, but we haven't stayed there in a few years, it's just gotten to expensive and I don't like how they have cut back on the monrail hours. Anyway, we haven't been to Pop in while, so I think we will be going back there this year.

My daughter has always come with us and we always took her out of school. She will be going to High School next year and found out if she didn't miss more than 6 excused days then she could get a pass on an exam so she has decided not to come with us. We always stay at POP, but have stayed at AKL. MIL/FIL have stayed at CB and we actually like it there. Maybe we will book there this time instead of POP. Just never know.

I don't know when our school would get out. I am thinking around the 21st as well.

 

[nowellsl]

I booked this morning for free dining at Pop 9/14 - 9/17. It came up as available for every weekend in Sept. It wasn't coming up at all yesterday.

 

[Coconuts]

We are a family that always likes to stay on property and doesn't rent a car. That means that we have to eat on property. We like the ease of having our meals prepaid for and not having to carry a ton of cash or credit cards with us. I think you tend to really put your food/restaurant choices under a microscope when you pay OOP because you're always adding and trying to stay in budget. We love the ease of FD and like other pp on this thread, it's usually a bigger savings for us than a room discount.

I don't think that the buzz on the boards recently has been any busier than previous FD offers. We went away with friends this weekend, that frequent WDW like us, and I told them that FD was likely to come out, because it usually follows the Disney Visa promotion. They were like, "WHAT?!", and they jumped on their laptop to start pricing their trip.

This FD offer is actually the same time period that it was originally offered, mid to late August-September, and then extended to the end of the year. It's only been in the last year or so that it was offered earlier in the year. I did notice that some resorts, like POP, were excluded though.

 

[Zim]

It seems like it went in a wave yesterday that enabled Disney to bump a lot of would-be Value resort visitors up to Moderates by making only AS Sports available for the initial 7am onslaught. By the end of the day it seemed to open up ALL the Value resorts for free dining (sans AoA of course), at least for the weeks I checked.

I usually do free dining, but it's only two of us this year and it seems the real savings is when you have a group of four or more. So we are doing the YES program and room only.

Right now we have a 10% AAA discount, but I talked to a Disney rep this afternoon, and she told me another discount should be opening for the next three month season (ie., July, Aug, Sept) before the end of this month. She couldn't tell me if it is a pin code for the lucky few or a general room rate discount (hoping for the latter!).

 

[poppypetal]

We like the FD for a few reasons
1) Dont have to worry about how much every meal is costing us
2) Can partake in a character meal everyday - without the FD we wouldnt' do this because of the cost

I dont know how much we saved by doing the FD last year, but I can say we probably ate at least 200 worth of food a day over 8 days. And by having the FD on this year, we saved almost 600 just on the booking standpoint - plus whatever we actually would have paid out of pocket if we didnt even include the dining plan.