Originally Posted By CuriousConstance Does anyone know or care to make a guess if the WDW resort will be offering the free dining plan again this year? When was that offered last year? Was that late year during the off season? And does anyone know how much it cost to upgrade to the Plus Dining option rather than the free quick service dining option they offered?
Originally Posted By trekkeruss I'm certain they will offer the free dining plan again; they've been doing it since 2005. Not sure if you can upgrade the dining plan.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I don't know much of the dining plan details, but if you check out their site when you're planning your trip, you can usually find pretty good deals during the off season. Last spring, they ran a promotion for hotel/ticket combos, which was buy 4 get 3 free (or 7 days/nights in WDW for the price of 4). Yah, we spent money on food since it didn't include a dining plan, but I still feel like we came out ahead. Right now, it looks like the only special they're running is a gift card upto $750 if you book 6-7 days at a deluxe hotel, which just doesn't seem like as good of a deal. If you were planning on staying in one of the fancy hotels anyway, it's great, but I would be shocked if you could even make up the difference between a Value and Deluxe hotel with the giftcard. Keep an eye on the official WDW page, as well as allears.net, which is one of the best planning sites out there. It compiles all the info out there (which can be difficult/slow to find on the official site), and makes it easy to understand. Do you know yet when you're planning your trip for? Sometime this fall?
Originally Posted By trekkeruss The other site to check, which is all about saving money, is <a href="http://mousesavers.com" target="_blank">http://mousesavers.com</a>
Originally Posted By FerretAfros If you're planning on visiting before June (which it sounds like you're probably not, but it's never too early to get started), the gift card option works at the value hotels too. If you spend at least 5 nights, you get a $300 giftcard, which should be enough to cover a sizeable chunk of the food for the trip (with 4 of you, right?). I think the value hotels are pretty reasonable prices, and are good if you're planning on being out and about all day. If you're more likely to spend a significant ammount of time lounging around the hotel (keeping in mind that you can't just walk across the street from the parks like DLR, it will be a 20 minute wait/bus ride), then maybe a moderate would be better, but that is a more difficult technique to work out in WDW than DL. I know that you're still in the very earliest stages of planning a trip (it sounded like you just came up with the idea to do WDW instead of DL a few hours ago in another thread), but you seem to be on the right track so far. Unlike DL, WDW is huge, so there's a lot of planning to figure out long before you get there.
Originally Posted By mousermerf Giftcard is $500 for moderates - have a friend from the area going and she got that deal.
Originally Posted By mousermerf And don't neglect AAA - my friend got the AAA discount and the giftcard deal both on a package with tickets and room and dining.
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance Thanks guy, I am just beginning to plan, and I'm not even sure when it would work out for us, my husband will be graduating sometime this summer, so it's hard to say what he's going to be up to this fall, but I would definitely want to go in the off season when it's not so hot out. None of us can stand the heat. Yes it would be 4 of us, possibly 5 if my brother could go. I've read a lot about WDW and preplanned so, I know quite a bit about the resort/hotels/dining etc. I just want to get the best deal, and free dining sounds so awesome because then I could take the kids to a character dining once per day! We would stay at a value hotel most likely. I should look into AAA. They never offered free dining and free night stay together did they? I don't think so.
Originally Posted By danyoung I'm not so sure that they'll continue to offer the same discounts as they have in past years. With the economy (slowly) coming back up, Disney might just decide that they have enough visitors without the added incentive of a free dining plan. We'll just have to wait & see.
