Why get a 1 day base and the pay the...

[jsfein]

Please help me figure this out. I want to take advantage of free dining and plan on booking an 8 day stay. For my family of 5, I already have enough leftover days on park hoppers and options for us all for the duration of an 8 day stay.

Question 1. In order to take advantage of the free dining offer, what do I need to book? From what I gather from this thread, will I need to purchase a one day base ticket for each member of my family?

Question 2. Assuming that I do indeed need to purchase a one day base ticket for each member of my family, will I get the free dining for the entire 8 day stay?

Question 3. Assuming that I need to purchase a one day base ticket for each member of my family and we will get free dining for the entire 8 day stay, will I use my paper park hopper tickets for my admissions or will they somehow be transferred to my room key?

TIA!!

 

[MyGoofy26]

1. You're correct - just one day ticket for each member of the family.

2. You'll get the dining for each night. It correlates to the number of nights in the hotel, not days in the parks.

3. You could go to guest relations and have all the tickets combined into one pass onto your room key if that's what you want to do, but completely unnecessary. You can use your regular paper tickets to get in to the parks, and your room key to "pay" for your meals.

 

[lark]

3. You could go to guest relations and have all the tickets combined into one pass onto your room key if that's what you want to do, but completely unnecessary. You can use your regular paper tickets to get in to the parks, and your room key to "pay" for your meals.[/QUOTE]

Last time we were there, they wouldn't let us put our paper tickets on our room keys. This was at GS at the GF. I'd heard you could do it, but they were adamant. Maybe just a confused CM, I don't know.

 

[jmh]

Just spoke to a very nice CM this morning to book my September trip with free dining!

I asked about keeping the one day base tickets for future use. The CM told me to just keep the key and the tickets were valid for ONE YEAR from check-in date.

I may call back and verify this information with another CM, but I have to believe this CM knew what she was talking about. She seemed very knowledgable.

 

[vellamint]

This seems to be the conventional wisdom. And when you look at the MYW pricing structure, it's hard to argue with this.

But I'm starting to think that, for people who stay on site, this might not be the right move. Back when room only codes were prevalent, unused tickets were great. But now it seems disney has moved toward building in the steepest discounts into MYM packages -- whether it's with free hopping and plus features or dining. The point is that every time you return, you'll be required to buy at least a one day pass to take advantage of disney's biggest savings -- for a family of 4 this is about a $240 tarrif to take advantage of the package features. Seems like hoarding MYW tickets with no expire can lead to spending lots of money to get the no expire and ending up with drawers full of unused tickets to take advantage of next years' MYW package discount (or, giving back the "savings" of purchasing multi-day never expire tickets by constantly having to spend $60 a pop for a 1 day ticket).

The psychic benefit of having never expire tickets is neat -- you can always be planning the next trip. But I'm really starting to think that the buy-what-you-need-as-you-need it model might be more sound and preserve maximum flexibility to save money down the line.

This is what I have been telling myself since this promotion came out....

I have leftover passes from prior years already and since I do and only need to add 2 days tickets this year the cost seems astronomical....but of course free dining makes it worth it!

I will not buy more than what I will use this year.

I will not buy more than what I will use this year.

I will not buy more than what I will use this year.

Hope I can keep telling myself this - lol!