free dining plan uk. which companies doing promotion?

[gingerbuzz]

This year I spent two weeks there with parents and this year coming if cheap enough I plan to return with friends.
I just wondered if anyone knew of any companies other than disney themselves who count 17 year olds as children as we really need to bring down the cost if it is to go ahead.
The group is a mixture of 18 and 17 year olds and we need the 17 year olds to get child prices.

The cheapest we have found so far is £850 per person booking rooms through disney and flyglobespan flights. this means that a transfer from sanford would need to be organised becasue as 18 year olds we cant rent a car.

We would all feel more safe doing a package holiday and need some help.
We plan to go during free dining plan.
something around the 900 mark would be great.
thanks in advance

 

[wannabeBelle]

I am not sure if I understand your question, but 17 year old dont count as children either within the dining plan or theme park tickets within Disney's pricing structure. Belle

 

[gingerbuzz]

a 17 year old can stay in a room with a person 18 or over and not pay to stay there. for example a room with 2 18 yr olds and 2 17 year olds, you are only paying for the two 18 year olds to stay in that room the 17 year olds are free of charge.

 

[meryll83]

Often it depends on the accommodation, I know some hotels accept children to age 19 (eg. I know through Thomas Cook there were various Howard Johnson's), but if you're staying on site I don't think this will be the case!! I'm pretty sure Disney will charge from a youngish age - I would guesss about 11 or 12.

Some companies I looked at which were doing free dining were:

Travel City Direct - cheapest
Virgin
Thomas Cook Signature
Thomson
Airtours
First Choice

(this is me looking from the UK also BTW)

Jetsave and Jetlife weren't.
Some of the companies e.g. TCS I had to ring and ask, but they did do it.

I did also look at pricing it separately and apart from a Monarch charter flight (again which I'm not sure about reports wise) which seems to be reasonable, any other airlines prices weren't going to be released until after the free dining offer had finished, so it was going to be a bit of a gamble, I would have had to have booked the tix/dining/accomm package through Disney and then just dealt with whatever the flight prices were on release. Just waiting now to see if I made the right choice!!

I rang a friend of mine who is a travel agent and Virgin quoted her about £400 more than me when I rang them directly. (Virgin's website wasn't pricing it up correctly so when I rang them they honoured the online discount after giving me the correct costing)

We've settled on Virgin in the end, after a bit of persuasion (and calling back to speak to a different person!) I managed to get them to discount it further it for £50 more each than Travel City (I have heard mixed reports on them, but had experienced Virgin first hand so preferred to pay the extra to go with them again). This is totalling just shy of £1000 each, but we paid slightly more than this last November and that was without the dining, so this seems like a good dealt to us!

As I mentioned, Travel City were actually the cheapest, but not all their planes are guaranteed to have seat back TV's, your luggage allowance is only 20kg each, (£15 each to upgrade) it cost £20 each to prebook seats, and £5 each to use their last day early luggage check in at Lake Buena Vista. So if we had added these extras on, which Virgin includes free, the cost difference is even less! But if you want a package and aren't bothered about the extras, Travel City was the best price by far, unless you try some bartering with other companies such as Airtours, I think their price was £2000 whereas Travel City was £1872.

These prices are based on staying at Pop Century for 14 nights, including 14 day Ultimate Park Hopper Tickets and free dining plan, return transfers and flights from Manchester. I think prices from (is it Glasgow you'll be travellling from?) will be similar.

Hope this helps, I've waffled on for quite some time now!!

BTW I tried to answer both questions there as your title seems to be on a completely different tangent to what you were asking in the post!!!

 

[CAPTAIN HOOK]

Virgin Atlantic are offering free Dining Plan and free nights accomodation (check the link) - but I didn't go into the child / adult ages.

 

[meryll83]

And as an added bonus with Virgin, you fly into MCO, Orlando International, whereas the charter companies fly into SFB, Sanford, which is further away. Just another thing to think about.....

BTW, also included in my package I got booked were 3 free nights at Pop (Virgin is offering this here and on another hotel I think, can't remeber which), only totalled £81 pounds discount, but nonetheless.......

 

[CAPTAIN HOOK]

3 free nights at Pop (Virgin is offering this here and on another hotel I think, can't remeber which)

Coronado Springs Resort and The Yacht And Beach Club Resort

 

[meryll83]

Thanks! Unfortunately they were a little over my budget

 

[barnum42]

a 17 year old can stay in a room with a person 18 or over and not pay to stay there.

The British tour operators may try to fiddle the totals to make it look like you are getting a deal, but in America you pay for the Hotel Room regardless of how many will be in it. It does not matter if there are one, two, three or four people in it.

 

[shoppingnut]

And as an added bonus with Virgin, you fly into MCO, Orlando International, whereas the charter companies fly into SFB, Sanford, which is further away. Just another thing to think about.....

Flying into MCO you can use DME to transfer to/from the hotel at WDW which is free.

 

[barnum42]

And as an added bonus with Virgin, you fly into MCO, Orlando International, whereas the charter companies fly into SFB, Sanford, which is further away.

I'll not knock Virgin as they are a favourite airline of mine. However, Sanford can still get you to Disney quicker than MCO due to the poor luggage handling methods they employ at MCO and the large distances between everything.

At Sanford you get off the plane, clear immigration, pick up your luggage leave via customs out the door, hook a right and pick up your rental car.

MCO you get off the plane, clear immigration then wait a sodding age for your luggage, clear customs then, and this is the really dumb thing, give you luggage back to the same bunch of morons that spent an age getting it to you in the first place. After which you hop on the monorail and have to wait another eternity at another baggage carousel to get your luggage back. Now the fun of walking a mile or two to find the car rental desk to get your documents, find the car (actually I quite liked this bit as they said pick one in the category you like and take it, rather than being assigned one) and head out of the car park. By which time the Sandord passengers may have spent an extra forty minutes driving but they are already taking a dip in the hotel pool.



I'd not object to flying into MCO again, but if I can save over £100 going to Sanford, then that is cash I can spend in the parks

 

[gingerbuzz]

thanks for all the help. i think my best bet is booking it seperatley. I'd be flying from glasgow and so we can fly on flyglobespan.com and returns are from £380 pp. it would be much easier to fly into MCO but ive been to sanford and used to it.

annoyingly all the companies mentioned are the ones that i have previously tried and were way above teh budget of those on part time after school jobs.

we would never have looked at it if not for free dining.

 

[barnum42]

One way you will save a shed load of cash - stay off site. I don't know when you plan to go, but if you have flexibility and can book within a couple of months some great bargains can be had. A couple of years ago I paid £350 for flights to Sanford and two weeks in a Kissimme hotel a ten minute drive from the parks.