Is free Dining a thing of the past?

[mitchk]

I was checking out the promos they had out for last year, as well as this year, and it looks like they have not offered free QS for over a year now. I'm going in Nov. and was hoping to get free QS, but it looks like all they do now is a certain % off your room rate. So are we never gonna see free dining again?

 

[GoofGoof]

Free Dining is to fill expected rooms and restaurants at a time when they are historically not at 100% capacity.

At my sons school, we give tuition assistance. It's better to have a kid paying half price than have an empty chair in the class room.
For Disney It's better to have someone at the park and the resort with Free Dining than one less person at WDW.

This is definitely true. Even when the economy was at its worst free dining was only offered in less popular times not necessarily year round. The real question is how much does Disney think they need it. We have heard numerous senior executives talk about rolling back discounts in the past few years during earnings calls and in various news clips. If Disney really feels they can still sell most of the rooms without discounts they are going to try. The interesting thing to watch will be if they can pull it off. It's still my opinion that if they reduce or eliminate discounts the numbers will drop too much and they will be forced to reinstate at least some of them. No clue if it will be free dining or something else, but they are going to need to offer something to entice people.

 

[draybook]

The problem with the rebuttal of Disney not needing Free Dining because of increased attendance is that they've still been offering room discounts during the busy times. Sure, there's a big difference in how much FD costs them as opposed to RO, but if attendance was up so high then they wouldn't need discounts during the busy times to fill the rooms. At least that's how I'm seeing it.