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Lost our free dining :( How much it really to add it back?
- Thread starter TERRILYNN
- Start date
Yes, I'm finding that out the hard way. One bad employee can really mess things up. Thankfully I dealt with 2 really good people who helped me add a dining plan back to our package. We had to pay for it *gulp* which was very pricey, but it would have been worse paying out of pocket. It only ending up costing us about 300.00 more than the original package we bought with the 'free' dining, and this one is the table service dining, so I still feel like we did okay. The reps at the Dining dept were very helpful, and now our daughter will be able to go to several character meals instead of just 1 so it's actually working out, now i'm just scrambling trying to find dining reservations! Thank you all for the help!
DisneyWall-E
Well-Known Member
Im glad to hear that things "kind of" worked out for you.
sweetpee_1993
Well-Known Member
We booked back in April for the last week in August, and were lucky enough to get free dining along with (I think) a discount on our room (All Star Music). 2 days ago I called to make changes to the number of tickets we had gotten, we were arriving on a Saturday and leaving the Following Friday and had 7 tickets total, but it will be late Saturday night and early Friday morning when we arrive/leave and since I've learned we can't 'park hop' with the extra days tickets, I wanted to get 5 days instead of 7. Well when the arrangements were changed, our package was totally canceled and I got a new conf number, but it LOST THE DINING. I've called customer service and they wont give it back saying there was a "code" back in April that was no longer valid. They also werent clear about the cost of adding it to our package (2 adults 1 child... 6 night stay). Does anyone know how much this will cost? I'm thinking it's total crap (excuse my French!) that the guy would not give me a number because "he didn't know until it was added how much it would be". I spoke to 3 different people about this, 1 very nice lady who apologized profusely and said they would add it back, then she transferred me to someone who barely spoke English and kept repeating why did you cancel why did you cancel. Then on from there to the man who gave me no specific answers at all. If we hadn't already told our 4 year old we were going, I would have just canceled the whole thing (and lost 200.00 in the process)Adding insult to injury, BOTH packages were paid in full and BOTH are showing on our credit card still... they've never refunded the first one and have up to 2 months to do so according to the lady I couldn't understand.
Aaaaand this is why I book with a TA now. They can handle the details. Had a somewhat similar situation with our last cruise booking when I upgraded room categories. When my trusty TA did the upgrade for me it generated a surprisingly low upgrade price. Score for me, right? Well, not exactly. She found out Disney's booking system took my prepaid gratuities and applied that to the upgrade which wasn't supposed to be possible but that's what happened. At first Disney said "Oh well, you'll just need to repay the gratuities." My TA went to bat, made the phone calls, and Disney decided to put my prepaid gratuities back and accept the reduced upgrade price as an uh-oh on their part.
coltow
Well-Known Member
I use a TA now too. We had booked rooms at AS Movies for my family and in-laws. Then in-laws needed to cancel and a girlfriend wanted to come. WDW was supposed to change in-laws reservation to girlfiends name. Was told everything was fine. When I called to secure ME 2 weeks before I found out all they did was cancel in-laws reservation and never made one for my friend. Needless to say Movies was sold out. We ended up at Pop which actually worked out better.
TA's are great because they give you a PERSON to call/email with your problems and ?s. I LOVE not having to call WDW any more
lebeau
Well-Known Member
You know, those phone calls are recorded. Ask someone to review the call. Someone should have done this already. I wouldn't settle for anything less than free dining at this point. If you raise enough of a stink and you are actually in the right, they will give it to you eventually. Or something of equal or higher value. It's all a matter of showing them you will not be satisfied with anything less. Unfortunately, this usually means sitting on hold and jumping through hoops. Up to you whether it's worth it or not.
Thank you!
Me too!
I wondered if they were.. I'll have to think about that, we are almost coming out better because of all the character dining we have with the different dining plan. There's no way we could have added 5 more character meals for 300.00. At this point I'm kind of thankful for the screw up now.
copcarguyp71
Well-Known Member
Holy cow that stinks. Disney should definitely take ownership of this and make it right for you! I truly do not understand why they will not fix this if you have all of the documentation of the original reservation. I would hope that the system would show which operator did this even if they will not say that it does.
Like another post said I would keep calling back and offering to send over original reservation documents as proof. So sorry for your headache my friend.
Like another post said I would keep calling back and offering to send over original reservation documents as proof. So sorry for your headache my friend.
crispy
Well-Known Member
I wondered if they were.. I'll have to think about that, we are almost coming out better because of all the character dining we have with the different dining plan. There's no way we could have added 5 more character meals for 300.00. At this point I'm kind of thankful for the screw up now.
I am still confused about the plan you currently have. Are you sure you don't have free quick service plan with an upgrade to the regular dining plan? I have never heard of a code for reduced dining plan unless it's free dining. Depending on how many nights you are there, that could cost around $300.00.
gccgrad1996
Active Member
I am so sorry about this. I am sick to my stomach for you that this happened. It makes me even happier that I used Kingdom Konsultants to handle my reservation this year. I used to do all of this on my own, but never again after what happened to you. I am very saddened that Disney could not do something for you and get you back your original reservation. I hope that you and your family still have a wonderful time, but I know I would have a bad taste in my mouth while there.
disneykidathart
New Member
Do you have AAA. I book through AAA every time and they're great. If not I would try calling Kingdom Konsultants or another travel agent that specializes in Disney. I've heard great things about Kingdom Konsultants on other web sites. If there is any way you could still get free dining I'm sure they would know.
We do have AAA, I didn't even think of calling them, wow I wish I had of now! Thanks for the tips for Kingdom Konsultants, I've always booked our vacations myself but this our first time to Disney, if there is a trip in our future I'm not going to do this myself again after all that's happened. I honestly don't know what plan they used. She gave me 2 codes 1 for quick service and 1 for the table service (1 step above quick service) because I had to call back after talking to hubby about all of this. The first vacation we booked was 1417.59 for 6 nights at All star music plus free dining. This one was 1979.17 for the same hotel with the table service dining. We had paid a total of 1665.46 for the vacation +character dining, now it's 313.71 more but we have 5 character dining meals instead of 2 (CRT counts as 2 so we have 5 instead of 6 we should have gotten). Out of pocket the character dining would have been over 300.00 alone, so I feel like we are still somewhat getting a good deal because we still get the q/s meals and snacks. I'm sure hubby wouldn't have forked out the extra for more character dining and DD will LOVE it so the 300 is worth it to me. I doubt we will ever be back again. The ones I chose this time CRT, Garden Grove, Garden Grill, 1900 Park Fare and Akershus. Luckily I was able to get times that worked because it seems like nearly everything was full. She is all about the princesses so this should give her lots of Princess time and some other characters also. I think the buffets will satisfy the husband as well so we should all be happy. *I hope*