Buying Tickets Early vs Package Deal Later

[Tall Todd]

Hi All,

We're starting to plan a trip that we won't be taking for two years. Sad to say I'm that type of planner...

While I know it's impossible to predict what type of deals and offers will be available in the future I do have a few questions now. I'm thinking of buying park ticket here or there, or whenever I have enough to buy one. Knowing they don't expire until after activated this shouldn't be too much off a problem. Unless there is something I don't know here...

My main question is about the dining plan. Can I book a dining plan with my room when I make that reservation closer to travel time? Spoke with a WDW Rep earlier today about this; she said I couldn't, that I'd need to book park tickets, room, dining plan all together.

I said "Alright, thank you." and went about my day.

Is this the way it is? I assume they know what they're talking about. Just sounds odd to me...

Thanks for any help,
TT

 

[slappy magoo]

Short answer: Yes. That is the way it is.

Longer answer: If you want to take advantage of a free dining promotion, it usually involves the whole package - your room and your tickets, and the possibility of upgrading your dining plan. I know when they first started offering free dining promotions, they'd offer a deal to annual passholders if they a: booked their room at rack rate and b: bought a single day park pass. But now, I think the passes have to be length of stay and purchased with the package.

But keep this in mind - if you buy passes in advance, they never ever expire if they're never used. If you buy a 10-day park hopper tomorrow, and never use it for 10 years, it'll be valid until the first day you start using them. So (while it's a big chunk of change you may be sitting on for a while), you can buy park passes now, and if a free dining promotion comes out later, save the pre-purchased passes for another time.

 

[dreamfinder]

Dining Plan needs to be part of a package. If you are paying for it, you should be able to only buy a single day ticket for each guest on the package. If you end up going for free dining, it would depend on the terms of the deal. I believe the recent offers required a 2 day ticket purchase for each guest. The only exclusions to the ticket purchase are AP and DVC holders. Those two groups can add the dining plan to their room reservation and not have to buy tickets. And in most cases, having to buy those new tickets will greatly outweigh any savings from buying tickets now.

I would suggest simply saving the funds. If you are hoping to get free dining, then the 10-20 bucks per ticket you would save by buying now is no big deal. Just get a Disney Gift Card, and add the money to that instead. Then just use the gift card to pay off the equivalent portion of the package.
If you aren't hoping for free dining, but just want the dining plan, you could buy the tickets, and then just pay for dining OOP. Unless you would typically eat exactly what is offered on the plan, you would end up at worse breaking even if not coming out ahead with that method.

 

[Master Yoda]

I can confirm what the others have been saying. To get the dining plan, free or pay, you must either book a package with tickets or book an AP dining plan package. If you want the dining plan, you are going to have to wait and get tickets with your package.

 

[Tall Todd]

Thanks all for the sage advice.

Guess I'll have to go the old fashion way and get some envelopes out to save up.

 

[WDW Vet]

Actually we have a great way to save money and also teach children to sacrifice and save,

When we plan a Disney trip we get a small cardboard box and the whole family decorates it. So if we go out to eat instead of me buying a beer for dinner I'd have a glass of water. We normally have dessert with dinner but we'd not do that and have cookies or ice cream at home. So the cost of the beer and the dessert will be cash added to our box. The kids won't get dessert at lunch in school and put that in our box. Instead of going to the movies we'd rent a video and have popcorn at home. So the cost of going to the movies, popcorn and soda would be added to our box.

After a while you can accumulate a pretty good amount that you can use on vacation. And the kids come up with many ways to save it may help them in the future.

But come vacation time we all play hard and we all enjoy it more because of what we gave up. Try it.