Am I crazy, or..

[DanielleOG]

Is the free dining promotion offered in the fall really not that great after all? It SOUNDS really good until you start crunching the numbers. You can't get a room discount, you can't buy discounted tickets AND you have to get park hoppers. So why is it such a popular option? I'd like to hear form people who have done it and how it worked out for them. When it is worth it and when is it not?

 

[sxeensweet]

Never worth it for us being we stayed deluxe so the room Discount was always much greater savings. We would take the room Discount and added a paid dining plan and still came out way ahead. But we are only 2 people so room discounts usually are better for only 2. We now own DVC but room discounts were our best offer before joining saving us thousands. (Usually $2000-3000 off of room alone being we stayed 9-10 days) savings back when they did 40% off on Deluxes at the same time as free dining). People Just have to do the math to see which offer is best.

 

[DisneyDreamer08]

It was a great deal for us last Sept. It was myself, husband and 2 girls, age 5 and 1 (obviously the 1 year old was free). We stayed in Sports for 8 nights, had 8 day park hoppers and the *free* quick service dining plan for about $2500. We like the quick service so we don’t have to over plan & commmit to daily sit down meals with little kids. There are still great choices and it was actually too much food for us, we had leftover credits at the end and used them on snacks to take home. When you consider how much you *could* spend out of pocket, for us, the package deal was well worth it.

 

[JIMINYCR]

Its ALL about crunching the numbers and seeing where you end up for your family and vacation plan. Sometimes weve made out better with it and other times not. Weve never had a HUGE savings using the DDP but sometimes it was just enough to say yeah lets go with it over other deals offerred. A LOT of people just see FREE !!! and thats all it takes to sign up for it. They dont do the work to see how much value they are getting or losing out on by using other discounts. Disney uses it to attract attention and drive up bookings, it works. Try making an ADR during free DDP periods and youll see theres much more competition getting a table.

 

[Herdman]

The numbers have never worked out for the 3 of us. Some people do it even knowing they are losing a little money just because they want to have everything paid up front.

 

[DisAl]

No, you are not crazy, you just have the intelligence to look closely at things and determine what makes the most sense in each case. I agree with what Jiminycr said. The word "Free" is just as effective as Pavlov's bell for many people and they don't take a close enough look to see if an offer is really a good deal.
As for the dining plan itself our benefit has ranged from 110% of the plan cost to as much as 170% of the plan cost. But after the 170% week on the deluxe dining plan I felt like Jabba the Hutt.

 

[DarthVader]

s the free dining promotion offered in the fall really not that great after all?

its hard to justify, even free, because you're still on the hook for gratuities and I found it difficult to use all of the sit down meals. With that said, I initially booked our vacation for the fall, just to take advantage of the promotion, but then comparing the 2017 dates and projecting what it could be for 2018, there was no way we could make that time frame.

 

[DarthVader]

While we did enjoy some of the sit-down meals (the DDP was 1 QS, 1TS), the hassle of scheduling those was a pain

There's the rub, with the dining plan, you need to account for the time needed with sitting down and eating. The longer time you're sitting down, the less time you're in the park.

We used the free meal plan to help offset the costs of dinner shows, such as the Hoop-De-Do (2 dinner credits), and we also looked to having character meals (particularly breakfasts) and so we were able to make it work, the last time we had the free meal plan.

As our next Disney vacation approaches, we'll be planning a number of sit down reservations, but nothing compared to what I had to do when we had the meal plan.

 

[Rsj88]

We do the math every trip. While free dining becomes less of a value every trip, it still ended up saving us money this year. We stay at a value resort with two kids. The room discount at a value is much less than what we would pay in food everyday for four people. We also always get park hoppers anyway so that does not make a difference in our price. Sometimes we upgrade to sit down sometimes we don't. But it has always been the best deal for our family. It definitely depends on the resort and amount of people going.

 

[DanielleOG]

Sounds to me like...if you have kids, free dining makes more sense than a room discount, whereas a couple would benefit more from a room discount. Also, if you never get park hopper tickets, then having to upgrade to them when you don't want to is just extra cost. If you always get it anyway, then it works out.

 

[TiggerDad]

Sounds to me like...if you have kids, free dining makes more sense than a room discount, whereas a couple would benefit more from a room discount. Also, if you never get park hopper tickets, then having to upgrade to them when you don't want to is just extra cost. If you always get it anyway, then it works out.

It's not that simple, and may actually be the other way around if your kids don't eat much food. The bigger issue is what kind of meals you like to eat at Disney. If you like sit down scheduled meals at nice restaurants, the plan makes more sense than if you prefer quick CS meals to have more time to do the attractions.

 

[Greg H]

We enjoyed the free dining promotion. Usually go for two weeks (two adults/two kids). Cost on the DDP this year was around $2650 likely closer to $2800 next year with the recent price increases. That is a pretty significant discount. Having said that, we have found the value of this deal to be deteriorating. I still think it can be a good deal, especially if you have 4+ people, enjoy having the PH option, and would buy the dining plan anyway. With the recent changes of moderates getting QS, I also think this really pushes the value towards the value resorts.

 

[carriebeth]

works out for us because we have 8 children. We get 2 rooms that hold 5 people. But no room discount is going to come close to paying for dining for 10 people when 4 children are disney adults and they are all really big eaters.

 

[I am Timmy]

With our family of four, it always works out cheaper with the free dining plan, since my kids (who are now adults) have always enjoyed eating at restaurants. It's part of the experience for them. So, we do a sit down meal every day we're at DW, and they've always looked forward to it - they also enjoy ordering expensive food. So the dining plan has also worked well for us in that sense, we seem to make good use of it.

 

[Weather_Lady]

It can be "worth it," in the sense that you might save a few hundred dollars off of your food costs. It is not, however, as the OP noted, equivalent to getting dining for "free" -- it's just a discount.

When we visited last year during a "free dining" promotion, we'd booked a standard room at CBR (6 nights) with Magic Your Way (non-hopper) tickets. To get "free" dining, we had to upgrade to a preferred room (at a cost of nearly $400) and to parkhopper tickets (another $400, as there were 5 of us - 4 adults and 1 child). After our $800 in upgrades, we "saved" about $700 off of the cost of the DDP (which would have been about $1,500 for our party).

However, we also have to take into account that the cost of the DDP was already about $300 more than we were planning to pay, out-of-pocket, for what we typically order and eat at the restaurants we'd chosen (which mirrored the DDP in the sense that it averaged out to 1CS, 1TS, and 1 snack pp/pd - we just can't eat all of the extra desserts, fountain beverages, or snack substitutions that the DDP offers and is priced to account for). So at the end of the day, 5 people saved a grand total of about $400 (about $80 per person, or $13 per person per night) by making the changes necessary to secure "free" dining, and also received some minor intangible benefits from having a preferred room location and parkhoppers.

Granted, saving $400 is certainly better than saving nothing, and we were grateful to have it, but it's worth it to do the math whenever discounts are released, to see which ones are really better for you when all is said and done.

 

[NelleBelle]

I think it's a good deal if you're able to 1) eat all the food that the plan gives you and 2) you take advantage of the most expensive items on the menu. For example, if you're vegetarian, those entrees tend to be the least expensive items on the menu. Some would argue that you aren't taking full advantage of the plan to get your $$-worth.

 

[DisneyDaver]

It's not that simple, and may actually be the other way around if your kids don't eat much food. The bigger issue is what kind of meals you like to eat at Disney. If you like sit down scheduled meals at nice restaurants, the plan makes more sense than if you prefer quick CS meals to have more time to do the attractions.

All this is true, but another big factor is whether a family drinks pop (or prefers water) and eats dessert. My family doesn't drink pop and rarely eats dessert. When I factored into the math that we would prefer tap water to ordering a drink and would skip dessert most of the time, the meal plan didn't make sense for us.

 

[ninjaprincesst]

It all depends on your circumstance and the numbers, for us we would be getting the dining plan anyway as paying it out is the only way we could afford any table service meals, we always get park hoppers and there are four of us so for us it is a good discount and the room discount does not even come close. It is whatever works for you.