Free Dining: To Upgrade or Downgrade?
The Free Disney Dining Plan promotion is tiered twice, meaning that as you change Walt Disney World hotel levels, which meal plan you receive also changes. Additionally, you can upgrade your Dining Plan independently of your resort hotel tier by paying for one of the premium offerings.
In this post, we’ll analyze whether making an upgrade–or a downgrade–during the Free Disney Dining Plan promotion might make sense. Like so many of our Free Dining posts, this will include a dreaded component: math. Beyond getting more value out of the promo, the other reason upgrading or downgrading is worth considering is because room inventory is limited at some resorts. This means flexibility is crucial, and you might need to be willing to choose something other than your #1 or #2 hotel.
To that end, we’re going to look at whether it makes sense to upgrade or downgrade your hotel selection. There’s only one resort tier from which both options are possible, and that’s the Moderate Resorts. Moreover, since there’s a change to Free Dining at Moderate Resorts this year, with them only receiving the Quick Service Disney Dining Plan, we think it makes the most sense to analyze this from the perspective of Moderates.
For the sake of this comparison, we’re going to use Coronado Springs Resort as our baseline. It’s an easy pick among Moderates, as neither Port Orleans Resort is available (consistently, at least) for Free Dining, and Caribbean Beach is undergoing extensive refurbishments this summer and fall that make it less appealing.
For the upgrade and downgrade options, we’ll be using Pop Century, which is our top pick for Value Resorts (and really, all resorts) during Free Dining, and Animal Kingdom Lodge. We have a hard time choosing between Animal Kingdom Lodge and Wilderness Lodge, but arbitrarily opted for Animal Kingdom Lodge here.
While I promised math here, we’re going to use fairly loose numbers since prices fluctuate throughout the rate seasons during which Free Dining is offered. With that said, on average, there’s a fairly consistent price premium for Coronado above Pop Century and Animal Kingdom Lodge over both.
The Coronado to Pop Century comparison is an easy one. It boils down to whether, all else being equal, Coronado Springs is worth an extra $50/night to you. This is obviously a personal question that depends upon budget, how much space you need, etc. Assuming that you’re looking for the best value (and I’m guessing that’s the case if you’re reading about Free Dining), I’d probably recommend the downgrade to most people.
Coronado Springs is a nice resort with upgraded amenities and better rooms, but saying that’s all worth an extra $50/night, particularly for those seeking the best value, is a stretch. In my opinion, at least.
I think exceptions to this are for parties of 4 who might value the extra space in their room, and adults traveling without kids who will spend more time at the resort. Additionally, paying even more to upgrade to the new-ish Gran Destino Tower is another way to justify the premium pricing, as that tower is far swankier than any other Moderate Resort.
On the other hand, if you’re planning on spending most of your time in the parks, and your hotel will simply be a place to shower and sleep, a compelling case can be made for Pop Century. Not only is Pop Century cheaper, but the bus situation is better and the food court is more convenient to access for most standard rooms.
Additionally, Pop Century is the cheapest resort with Skyliner access to Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Epcot. Obviously, your mileage may vary. If I were personally in this position, I’d downgrade to Pop Century without a second thought.
The upgrade question is a trickier one. If we were simply going on prices, the $200/night cost to upgrade to Animal Kingdom Lodge is a lot. However, there’s another variable at play here: receiving the standard Disney Dining Plan at Deluxe Resorts.
With an upgrade cost (let’s make it an even $20 for simplicity’s sake) to go from the Quick Service to standard Disney Dining Plan, this could amount to as much as $80 in value if you have 4 people in your room. In that scenario, it becomes a question of whether Animal Kingdom Lodge is worth the $120/night splurge.
If that’s your effective hotel upgrade cost (once offsetting the cost difference between the Dining Plans), I think a strong argument can be made for the upgrade being worth it. This is potentially true even if you’re a bargain hunter–just remember that ‘value’ is the intersection of quality and price, not just whatever’s cheapest!
With Animal Kingdom Lodge, you get considerably nicer accommodations, some of the best amenities at Walt Disney World, and an excellent dining slate at your resort in Jiko, Boma, The Mara, and Sanaa.
That math assumes 4 people in a room, which might not be the case for some parties. If you’re a family of 3, the cost difference is obviously higher. In that case, Animal Kingdom Lodge becomes a tougher sell. (If you’re a party of 2, you’re actually in territory where you should be looking at room-only discounts or renting DVC points, anyway.)
Once again, it’s going to come down to personal preference. If you’re group that will only use the hotel for shower and sleep, Animal Kingdom Lodge might not make sense no matter the price difference. (I will say that even in that case, the value of waking up for a sunrise cup of coffee and watching the animals active on the savanna is close to priceless.)
On the other hand, if you plan on spending a lot of time at your hotel, enjoying the full “resort” experience, and focusing a lot on table service dining, Animal Kingdom Lodge is pretty compelling. If Sarah and I were traveling with a couple of kids and we wanted to splurge, I’d absolutely make this upgrade.
The basic takeaway here is that I probably would not do a Moderate Resort this year during Free Dining. Saving money or splurging make a good amount of sense, to me at least, depending upon your preferences. I have to reiterate that this is incredibly circumstantial–you’re going to have your own unique considerations that might make my generalizations and assumptions inapplicable.
The point here is to offer a starting place for your own planning, not offer a definitive “YES, ABSOLUTELY UPGRADE/DOWNGRADE UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES!” It’s impossible to be that authoritative when it comes to Free Dining (or really, most things Walt Disney World-related).
The next question is whether you should upgrade your tier of Disney Dining Plans. It’s another personal question, but I’m generally in favor of moving from the Quick Service Disney Dining Plan to the standard one. Given the ~$23 upgrade cost, I think this makes sense from a value perspective, too.
Per the calculations in our Disney Dining Plan Tips & Info Guide, the value of a counter service credit is $21 and a table service credit is around $45 (so, a $24 value difference versus the $23 you’ll pay). If you look at our Dining Plan Best Value posts for counter service and table service restaurants, you’ll see it’s easy to squeeze more value than that out of both meals. However, you can squeeze around $10 more per value out of table service credits, whereas $5 more in value out of counter service credits is the best case scenario most places.
Beyond the value considerations when you do the math, table service meals are an essential part of the Walt Disney World experience to me. I think having a mix of sit-down and quick meals enhances the overall vacation. A week of nothing but counter service would get old. Again, at least for me, personally. (Have I added enough “in my opinion/personally” caveats yet? 😉 )
Now, if you have young kids who might not want to sit down for an hour (or more) for a table service meal, or if it’s your first visit to Walt Disney World and you’re trying to do as many attractions as possible, maybe this is poor advice for you.
Another scenario where I think keeping the Quick Service Disney Dining Plan makes sense is during the Epcot Food & Wine Festival, particularly if you’re going to allocate almost all of your snack credits to the Food & Wine Festival Marketplace Kiosks (which is what we recommend).
In that instance, so much of your foodie experience might already be oriented around the Epcot Food & Wine Festival that doing a daily table service meal in addition to that would be overkill or mean allocating an inordinate amount of time to eating.
At the other end of the spectrum, there’s the question of whether you should upgrade to the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan. This is a question I feel like I’ve already answered pretty well in our “How We Saved 50% on the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan” post. Beyond what’s there, I’ll add that with another ~$41 surcharge over the standard Disney Dining Plan (or ~$64 over the Quick Service DDP), it makes sense when looking strictly at the numbers.
That surcharge is less than the value of a table service credit, which makes it an objectively good value. The problem here lies with the fact that, objectively good value or not, most visitors don’t have “objectively” this much stomach space for food on a given day, nor “objectively” this much time in their itineraries.
There are a limited set of circumstances under which the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan makes a lot of sense (most notably doing a character breakfast and nice dinner). When this version of the DDP works for people, it really works. We’ve made it work well for us, and we intend upon using it again later this year. I do think that we’re the exception, rather than the rule, though. I’d be hard-pressed to recommend the Deluxe DDP to first-timers. It simply requires too large of a time commitment to make sense.
Okay, that’s a lot on downgrading and upgrading when it comes to Free Dining at Walt Disney World. If I were to distill this all down to a couple of basic points, they’d be that the Free Dining ‘defaults’ are not the best options for a lot (most) guests, and also that so much of what is best comes down to personal preference and your Walt Disney World itinerary outside of dining.
A sensible approach to this, I think, is to create your Walt Disney World itinerary first (we have 1-day plans to help with that), and then circling back to see what your schedule is like in terms of free time–both for enjoying your resort and allocating time towards meals. From there, determine whether it’s appropriate for you to upgrade or downgrade, and do that as possible. Hope this post helps with that, or is at least interesting food for thought! 😉
Want more dining tips? Check out our 101 Delicious Walt Disney World Dining Tips. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
Your Thoughts
Are you thinking of upgrading or downgrading your Free Dining booking? Do you think any of these moves we recommend are good or poor ideas? Are you skipping Free Dining this year in favor of another discount due to the changes at the Moderate tier? Any other tips or suggestions for leveraging Free Dining to get better ‘value’ out of it? Hearing from you is half the fun, so please share any questions or additional thoughts in the comments below!
My husband is retired military so we are able to book our WDW hotels using military rates. Does anyone have experience with the free dining offer and military rates?
We have stayed at both Caribbean Beach and Coronado during the construction. We loved CB, but agreed we would never go back to CS. We have a reservation for Pop during free dining and we are debating what to do. We have AP’s so the tickets are an additional expense and will force us to get AP’s for next year also. Kind of the debate at our house right now. Is it worth both the upgrade to the dining plan and the addition of tickets we don’t need in order to get the free dining.
My family has an annual pass and for the last four years, we have purchased the minimum ticket to get free dining. When I calculated out what it would cost us to book with our annual pass, get a pass holder room discount (we typically stay at a value resort and the discounts for those room so are normally not great) and pay for the dining plan, we still saved money with free dining. Even while eating the cost of the 2 day park hopper pass, for the three of us. That being said we stay for long stays, never less then 7 days and usually closer to 10. The savings wasn’t huge, I want to say around $300 and that was with us paying to upgrade to the regular dining plan. Still it was cheaper. When it comes to Disney trips, I’ll take whatever savings I can! There are only three of us (2 adults and 1 child) so the cost of our trips, are usually less then our friends with more children to begin with. When we do decided to make a quick long weekend visit because we snag super cheap airfare (yes that actually can happen…lol), we don’t purchase the dining plan. When we’re there for 3 full days, we don’t like to spend a lot of time sitting and eating. So if I were looking at free dining for those short trips, it wouldn’t be worth it for us to eat the cost of a ticket.
I want to tell you Tom that I really appreciate all that you and Sara do to help WDW visitors. Your articles have always been well written, thoroughly researched, open and honest. My wife and I are planning to visit in 2021 and as it has been said before planning cambe very difficult. We will be considering your travel agency.
Thanks again
If you’re like me and happen to be going to WDW when “free dining” is offered, you will of course have booked the resort(s) that are excluded from the promotion.
Wow, I have just stepped into the world of “thinking about doing a trip to wdw” and there is so much to learn. I feel like there should be a one week seminar on how-to-get-the-best-out-of-a-week-at-Disney-world.
We are a couple and thanks to this blog are looking at buying points for a Vaction Club ‘Delux Studio’ Villa at Animal Kingdom (69 points for the the week in September).
My question: If we buy the points what are the option on Free Dining or dining packages in general?
Free dining is not offered with DVC unfortunately 🙁
A regular rack rate room and a ticket package with hopper option is necessary to qualify for FD.
The difference in cost between AKL rack rate and points is more than what a dining package would cost out of pocket tho, so don’t worry.
We rented DVC points for AKL savannah view for next month.
Our cost: $270/nite
Rack Rate: $650 a nite
The difference can easily pay for our food :):):)
I have booked my holidays every year based on anticipation of free dining, then crossed my fingers till it came out. Other than one year when my entire family (6 adult children) came and we stayed at SS we have always done moderate. The food is a big deal to us, but so is a comfortable bed for my 6’4″ husband. The downgrade to quick service feels like a deal breaker to me. The Canadian dollar is low right now, and when I look at park hopper tickets and full room prices it’s frightening. We may have a couple of the kids join us part of the time so a value resort is not gonna cut it. One of my daughters is a cast member this year (Le Cellier) and will likely be able to get a room discount. I’m not sure how big the discount will be or where she will be able to book for my two weeks in early October. She also has a number of “main gates” – guest entries she can use for family and friends. As we are from the Vancouver area not too many of her friends make it there so she thinks she will still have 8-10 of them. It seems like a cheaper room and only buying park entries for a few days means I can overall save enough to eat where I want. Two things worry me – I will only be able to get fast passes for the number of days I buy tickets for. And ADR may be difficult by the time she can get a room booked due to free dining. Does anyone know how much the cast member discount is likely to be?
I can’t say how disappointed I am in the loss of table service in this promotion.
Just want to say that I believe you can make 180 day ADR’s regardless of whether or not you have a WDW hotel booked. The difference is that you’d need to go in and book each day as it becomes 180 days versus being able to book the full trip’s worth of ADR’s all at once.
I booked the Pop Century and purchased tickets last October, 2016. When I modified my reservation to the free quick-service dining, and upgraded to the regular dining, my total amount due was a lot higher than the upgrade amounts (more than $21pp). When I called to ask why I was told the ticket prices were also increased to the current prices. Did this happen to anyone else?
You also must have park hopper on your ticket. That may be the increase?
If you modify your reservation in any way you lose your locked in prices for tickets so if you booked before a ticket increase and then wanted to modify after a ticket increase you will pay the new ticket price. That’s also something to factor in when you’re figuring out if a promo is right for you.
WDW rep really should have warned you that your ticket prices would be updated to current rates before processing that transaction, but how much can you realistically expect from an employee that Disney pays around $11/hr?
we are staying at a moderate resort and are very disappointed with the new change but we did the math to upgrade and it worked out to over 2000 dollars canadian for our party of 4 adults 1 child and a baby for 13 days. waaaayyy too much which we are sad about because we were really looking forward to the restaurants:(
We all know Disney worked their numbers magic to make a profit with the free dining offer – why wouldn’t they? So, my rather silly suggestion to figure out your best deal with sheer numbers is to use Excel. I went on the Disney site in an incognito window (right click on Google icon and click “open new incognito window”) and then I could search all the price options without being tracked or impacting my existing reservation. Then, enter the info in the spreadsheet with all your scenarios (like resort name, price per night, additional discounts like gift card offer, etc.) and let the spreadsheet do the math for you. In my house this was a team effort, hubs did the data entry and I provided the data from my tablet. I was definitely surprised by the results! I even looked up the menus for the places we intend to eat and determined that, with just entree alone, our table service cost would exceed $1500 for 5 people over 10 days, so upgrading for $975 made sense. For us. Good luck, all!
I’ve got two trips in the works, one for our family and another as a blessing trip for a family in need. For our trip, we got the $75 gift cards from Carribean Beach and since only pirate rooms were available during our stay (we checked immediately at 5:28 am when this finally came online!), it didn’t make sense to spend the extra $700. We will be a family of four, two adults, a four year old and an infant so we plan to just eat most of our meals using the gift card allocatiob. My four year old daughter doesn’t like sharing a bed and sleeps great on the little Mickey pull-down plus the kiddie pool area at Carribean Beach makes it worth it for us too.
For the blessing trip, I was holding them at Coronado Springs but with the quick service option and no availability at either Coronado or Carribean Beach (except pirate rooms again), it didn’t make sense to stay in the moderate category. We downgraded them to Pop Century but since all three are Disney first-timers (mom, daughter and grandma) and they are getting the trip for free, we prioritized all of the awesome meals over the room quality. I think they will still love it! I had already setup all of their ADRs and got them some amazing restaurants! We upgraded to the regular dining plan so all will be covered. The downgrade in room also saved us several hundred dollars so less to try and fundraise! Total trip cost, excluding flights is $2800 and we’ve already raised/covered $1200 so only $1600 more to go before end of August! 🙂 Love your blog and all of the advice Tom!
Hi Tom,
I’ve come to reply rely and look forward to your blogs and newsletter. I need you advice now. I am planning (with a TA) a trip for 10 people – 8 adults and 2 boys (ages 9,6). We have 3 rooms – 4 adults in one, my husband and I in another and then the family of 4 with the boys. For the family and two of the adults this is their 1st trip. Back in October, we decided on Riverside. When free dining came up, I advised my TA to look for Riverside, then Coronado and CB last. Of course we got CB – 1 room is a pirate water view (the 4 adults), 1 is a King bed and the family is in a standard. Originally the thought was we could request connecting rooms between the family and 1 other room. I’m not even sure that is possible with the rooms we got. And the 4 adults may be in a completely different building. As I have 1st timers with me I am really, really concerned about the room situation and all the CB construction. The parents of the boys were the ones who originally wanted a moderate over the value as the mom likes to have a more relaxing vacation and hang out at the hotel. The moderates of course are more resort like I feel the only “better” part of CB now is the pool. And not sure how relaxing it will be with construction going on all around you. MY gut tells me to try and switch us to a value. As of 10 minutes ago All Star Sports still had standard rooms. Can I get your and anyone else’s thoughts? How bad is it going to be at CB. Our dates are 9/20/17 to 9/27/17. Stressed out in Columbus, OH:-(
Depending on the size of the family members the value resort hotel beds can be enough of a reason to upgrade to a moderate. We have stayed in both levels– trying a value resort in 2015. The full size beds were a deal breaker for our trip this year. My husband and I each slept with a kiddo last trip. They were 7 and 9 and none of us slept well. We are used to a king size bed at home. If bed size isn’t an issue the value resorts are great deals.
I personally wouldn’t do the pirate rooms, even with free dining. It costs more to stay in those rooms and has little adult appeal. I’d go with the sports resort, but that’s just me. Maybe cancelations will happen in Coronado and you’ll be able to switch again.
We were at CB in June/July of 2017, so there was a lot of the construction going on. Honestly, it really did not impact our stay much. We don’t aim to eat at the hotel very much, but on the one night we did, the dinner buffet was perfect. We had first timers with us as well and the front desk was very understanding. They were at first assigned a room in a different village, but were able to find one in our same village, but a different building. That was most important to me – to be in the same village – because then the small pool, snack area and most importantly, BUS STOP, were the same for all of us. I’d see if you can request that. The rooms really are nice there – that was probably my favorite aspect, plus the main pool and grounds.
Thank you, Tom. You helped our family secure free dining and select our resort. We changed our reservation and decided to upgrade to deluxe villa rather than two rooms at moderate. We need calm after a Disney day, your blog led me to Saratoga. Anyone out there have tips for Saratoga Springs?
I just stayed there this past weekend and my main tip is to really study the map before you go and decide what area you’re ok with. We went with my mom. She had paid for a preferred room, which put her right next to Disney Springs, but pretty far from the Carriage House with Artist’s Palette. It was our first time, so we didn’t know how the bus routes worked or the best ways to get around. She ended up doing a LOT of walking that probably could have been avoided if we’d known how the internal bus stops worked.
When we checked in (we did not pay for a preferred room) they tried to put us in Grandstand, which was on the opposite side of the property from my mom. They were putting us there because the room was available immediately. We did’t need it immediately, so we asked to be moved closer, which they were able to do. It’s a sprawling property, so just be sure you know what route the bus will take, and where on property you want to be (i.e. near pools, near Disney Springs, near the main Carriage House, etc.) Disney will do their best to accommodate you, but you really need to know the lay of the land before you go.
Since we often travel with my parents, who are getting older, we decided that we would definitely rent a car if we ever stay at Saratoga Springs again, but that may just be more for my family’s preferences.
Thank you! Will study map, but I think we would like to be near DS but not for sure I paid for prefer room. Thanks for the heads up. I knew someone out there could help me.
We stayed at OKW (loved it) last trip so I will be able to add to your SS v. OKW soon. No theming for us in the evening. 🙂