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Free Dining News????
- Thread starter DonnaG
- Start date
ninjaprincesst
Well-Known Member
Really odd after An hour and half of dialing on four different phone I got one phone on hold they said estimated hold 45 minutes, but over an hour it was still on hold, then all the sudden I got in on a different phone the odd thing was after entering all my info when I thought I was going to hold it went straight to a person. I got my free dining and the phone that had been on hold for an hour was still holding.
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ninjaprincesst
Well-Known Member
Don't give up keep checking online. Last year I knew some people that were told there was no availability and in a day or two it opened up for them.
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GrimGrinningGhost15
Well-Known Member
we are going Sept. 23rd-Oct.1st. I called in again around 1pm today, the cast member said to keep trying because things always open up, especially the week following. So we are going to hold off from changing to a value resort and see what happens this week!
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ElleJay1119
Member
I had to upgrade to a courtyard room at WL. But we got it. Not too much of a discount, but every little bit helps. The site wouldn't let me modify so I had to make a new reservation and delete the old.
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Weather_Lady
Well-Known Member
I just wanted to piggyback -- this is what happened to us last year:
1 - We booked a trip that had us arriving 11/14, and "Free Dining" was later released for arrivals on 11/15 or after, meaning we needed to modify our booking to be eligible.
2 - Our TA spent 7+ hours trying to get through (and/or on hold) on the day the offer was released, and struck out. By the time she got to speak to a real, live person, all of the free dining rooms at our resort were long gone.
3 - Thanks to the folks on this forum, I was advised to "keep checking -- WDW will probably release more free dining rooms about 2 weeks from now."
4 - Exactly 14 days later, I woke up, checked the WDW website (which was, by then, a daily habit), and sure enough, there were additional "free dining" rooms available for our resort. I booked one online immediately (rather than trying to call) and had my TA cancel our initial reservation. (I did later switch my new reservation to her, so she wouldn't lose out.) Although I had to upgrade our room choice to preferred and tickets to parkhoppers (spending an extra $600+ for my "free" dining), we still saved about $400 off of what we'd have spent on food otherwise for our party of 5.
So the moral of the story (for me) was... IF free dining is going to save you money and you don't qualify to make modifications online to get it, KEEP WATCHING the WDW website -- check it first thing every single morning -- and if something pops up, just BOOK A WHOLE NEW ROOM/PACKAGE ONLINE while you can, and cancel your initial reservation. (If you've already made dining reservations, you won't lose them -- they're tied to your MDE account and not to your room reservation or tickets.)
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GrimGrinningGhost15
Well-Known Member
Sitting on the phone wait line for the 4th time (yes I swear I have a job!) and my husband emails me... if we checked in 3 days later on on our 8 day trip we are able to get free dining according to WDW website. What are the chances they let me have free dining for our entire trip if I mention that? haha I am sure it is a technical thing, like all eligible rooms are booked during those first 3 days, but our thought is if they allow people to carry free dining over into October as long as their check in date falls in the eligible dates, why not make this exception? We are really grasping at straws, if you cant tell haha trying to be creative!
Im mostly bummed because in 2015 I called at 5:30pm on release day and got free dining added to our coronado stay with no issues, I know I waited on the phone for about an hour that time, but I had free dining added after 2 minutes talking to a cast member. I was 100% prepared this time, and called all day starting at 6am, and by 10am I was told it was a no go. Do you think they opened up less available rooms this year?
Im mostly bummed because in 2015 I called at 5:30pm on release day and got free dining added to our coronado stay with no issues, I know I waited on the phone for about an hour that time, but I had free dining added after 2 minutes talking to a cast member. I was 100% prepared this time, and called all day starting at 6am, and by 10am I was told it was a no go. Do you think they opened up less available rooms this year?
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Tuvalu
Premium Member
Zero percent.
The "start" date is there for a reason...to limit availability of the promotion. You check in 3 days prior to the offer and think it should cover your entire trip. What about the person who checks in 7 days prior and the free dining begins on their last vacation day....shouldn't the offer cover their entire trip too? Multiply that by hundreds/thousands of guests and you can see the reason for a specific start date. Disney is in the business of making money. People should be glad that free dining covers their stay past when the promotion ends....Disney could have cut off the free dining partway through their stays.
What you can do is make two reservations, one for the 3 days prior and a second when the free dining begins.
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Chernabog75
Active Member
Like others have said keep checking. Tried to book end of August (20-26) and couldn't unless I removed the 20th. Booked it just to make sure i had something. Before bed checked and was able to modify for that day.
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GrimGrinningGhost15
Well-Known Member
I think I worded that wrong. We check in 9/23 and will be there for 8 days. So the entire trip lands in the eligible time, but when my husband played around with dates we could technically cancel our current reservation and check in at the same place on 9/27 and have free dining but not for the first 3 days we are there. I truly did not mean to offend anyone or make anyone mad... we were just curious. With the price increasing so much each year, free dining is the only time we can afford to go
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Weather_Lady
Well-Known Member
I think I worded that wrong. We check in 9/23 and will be there for 8 days. So the entire trip lands in the eligible time, but when my husband played around with dates we could technically cancel our current reservation and check in at the same place on 9/27 and have free dining but not for the first 3 days we are there. I truly did not mean to offend anyone or make anyone mad... we were just curious. With the price increasing so much each year, free dining is the only time we can afford to go
A similar thing happened to us (the option your husband mentioned) last year. Our flights were already booked, so we couldn't change our trip dates, but free dining was scheduled to start the day AFTER we checked in, which meant we wouldn't be eligible unless we changed our arrival date. What we did was: (1) book a room-only reservation at our resort for our arrival night; and (2) book a second, package reservation with tickets and free dining, which began the second day of our stay (which was the date the free dining promotion started).
The "pros" were that we saved about $400 on our total expected costs, even after paying to upgrade our tickets to hoppers and our room to a preferred location (both were required to be eligible for free dining), and even though we had to pay for our first days' meals out-of-pocket. The down-sides were: (1) even though both of our room bookings were the same resort and room category, and we didn't have to switch rooms, we did have to go through the exercise of physically going to the front desk to check out of (and immediately check back into) our room on the morning of our second day; (2) we couldn't make Fastpasses for our arrival day until the day-of, after check-in, because our multi-day tickets were linked to the reservation that started the next day and the Disney system isn't set up to allow you to make FP+ before your package arrival date, even when you have, as we did, a 6-night hotel stay with 8-day tickets); and (3) our 180-day ADR window was separate for each booking, so we had one days' less advantage with respect to the later days of our stay.
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GrimGrinningGhost15
Well-Known Member
Interesting, when I asked the CS just now on the phone if we could split the reservations she said we could but that I wouldn't be able to keep my 8-day tickets, that I would have to split them up by reservation and do 3 day and 5 day tickets which she said would jack up the price, since tickets get cheaper the longer you are there. The other problem we have is that we are going with my SIL and her BF, both of them are firefighters so we do not have much of any flexibility, it really has to be that last week September because it is their off week. I know we will figure something out, I was just hopefully it would be easy peasy like 2015 haha.
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Jahona
Well-Known Member
So I had a trip planned for October 6th to the 15th with a stay at POFQ. Airfare for those dates has been kind of terrible and they were outside the free dining dates anyways. my travel agent was able to move to September 22nd to October 1st with a studio at Boulder Ridge for cheaper then staying at POFQ with the Disney Dining Plan. Also on a side note airfare is much better as well for those dates.
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ninjaprincesst
Well-Known Member
I don't know what resorts your looking for but online for 9/23-10/1 the following are currently showing availability Caribbean Beach, All Star Sports, Pop Century and Art of animation.
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GrimGrinningGhost15
Well-Known Member
We are at CSR right now, CBR only had pirate rooms available last I checked and those are really expensive. We are actually thinking of switching to POP right now. It is a great deal, just have to convince the hubby. He wants to wait a week and see what comes up for CSR, he prefers the resort over the value, he tried to convince me to do WL last night... when we put that in our cart the total about made me choke so I scratched that idea quick haha. I however don't care where we stay as long as it is affordable. At this point I would like to just have everything booked and guaranteed free dining!
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cslafferty
Well-Known Member
Last year the only rooms at CBR that qualified for free dining were the pirate rooms
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