2020 Disney World Hotel Discounts & Free Dining for Kids!
In addition to the 40% off deal for Visa cardholders, Walt Disney World has released more new discounts today! One is a room-only discount at select resort hotels for early 2020, while the other is the free Disney Dining Plan for kids. In this post, we’ll share the details of these discounts, and share some analysis as to how much money you’ll actually save with each.
We’ll start with the latter of these offers, which is probably what caught your attention anyway, as “FREE DINING!” is unquestionably the most popular term in the Disney Discount Dictionary. (It’s a thing…or at least, it should be.) Although it should be apparent, this is not the normal Free Disney Dining Plan promotion; this is a “kids eat free” deal. If you’re looking for the full offer, there’s a Free Dining Bounceback Deal for May – Christmas 2020, but only current resort guests are eligible (meaning it’s not available to the general public).
However, we expect Free Dining to be released again at some point in Spring 2020. If you want to be notified immediately about any “real” Free Dining news, sign up here for our FREE Disney newsletter here. We monitor drop date rumors and for the last several years have consistently given our subscribers an early heads up when Free Dining goes live. (Ask anyone who has waited on hold over the phone with Disney for 3+ hours just how important this can be!)
Anyway, with the “Kid-Sized Package Offer,” you get a free Disney Dining Plan for kids ages 3 to 9 when you purchase a non-discounted vacation package that includes a Value Resort room, theme park tickets, and the Disney Dining Plan for all adults in your party.
The Kid-Sized Package Offer is valid for arrivals most nights from January 1, 2020 until March 7, 2020. This Walt Disney World discount must be booked by January 1, 2020.
The Kid-Sized Package Offer is only valid for All Star Sports, All Star Music, All Star Movies, Pop Century, and the Art of Animation family suites. No other resort tiers are eligible, nor are the Little Mermaid rooms at Art of Animation. As with all Walt Disney World special offers, some room types and dates won’t be available. Flexibility is the name of the game when it comes to deals like this.
All 3 tiers of Disney Dining Plans are eligible for this offer, and the kids receive the same DDP as the adults purchase. Meaning that if the adults buy the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan, that’s what the kids receive. Same goes for the Quick-Service Dining Plan or standard Disney Dining Plan, meaning the amounts you’ll save depend upon both the number of kids in your party and the Dining Plan you choose.
In addition to kids eating free, you’ll receive the Frozen Welcome Pack. This includes a voucher for one stroller rental for the length of your stay, one in-park 5×7 photo print per room, and one merchandise bag per room including a plush, book, and two treats.
We’ve never been a fan of any of these discounts that take advantage of the goodwill and hype surrounding the “Free Dining” term, but instead offer what amounts to “Free Dining Light.” This version is among the worst offenders, as you’re paying full price for the most expensive components of the WDW vacation package.
However, this is potentially a good deal for parents (or a single parent) wrangling several kids. If you have, for instance, one adult and three children in a room, the math could work out in your favor. Similarly, a larger and more diverse party could strategically ‘stack’ one of their rooms with one adult and all of the kids and book a second, separate reservation with another room and the below resort-only discount.
As with all Walt Disney World discounts, there are potentially ways to leverage this offer to your advantage if your party fits certain narrow parameters or you can hack it. By and large, the “average” family isn’t going to find worthwhile savings with the “Kid-Sized Package Offer,” though.
Next up is the “Give the Gift of a Magical Stay” room-only discount. Although it’s being released in October, the name and verbiage suggest that this is Walt Disney World’s “Christmas present” discount.
With this offer, you can save up to 25% on rooms at select Walt Disney World Resort hotels for stays most nights January 1, 2020 through April 25, 2020. You’ll either need to book this by January 1, 2020 for the earlier travel dates or March 7, 2020 for the later travel dates offered under this promo.
In addition, you’ll receive a $30 Disney Gift Card per person (ages 3 and up) on the reservation when you upgrade to a package by adding 6-day or longer theme park tickets. (Pro tip: keep this as a room-only discount and purchase from one of the options in our Discount Walt Disney World Ticket Tips post–you’ll save more money and come out ahead that way!)
Here’s a chart showing the discount rates for each tier and resort:
This offer excludes the following resorts and room types: all 3-bedroom villas, Fort Wilderness Campsites, Cabins at Copper Creek Villas, and Bungalows at Disney’s Polynesian Villas & Bungalows.
Pretty much the exact same offer is available for Florida residents and Annual Passholders, but with an additional 5% or 10% off, respectively. (For this reason, it’s always worth crunching the numbers to see if one person in your party should buy an AP to take advantage of the better promos and other discount offers.)
As with most discount release days, Walt Disney World’s phone lines are already jammed and the online system is moving at a glacial pace–when Stitch isn’t eating the pages. If you’re at all flexible about your resort choice or room preferences, consider waiting until later this evening or tomorrow when things calm down a bit. You’ll save yourself a lot of headache and frustration!
In reviewing historical Walt Disney World discount numbers and dates, this is almost identical to this year’s room-only discount, with a release date about a week later and an end date two days earlier. Aside from minor differences among resorts and exclusions, the percentages are identical.
Overall, some of these room only rates are attractive, especially on the AP and Florida resident end of the spectrum. Savings at Value Resorts are more meager, to the point that anyone with multiple kids might be more inclined to take a harder look at the kids eat free offer that was also released. Nevertheless, it’s all pretty standard.
With that said, there were fears that the debut of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge would cause Walt Disney World discounts to dry up or become non-existent, and clearly that’s not the case. Identical offers for 2020 as this year is probably about the best-case scenario anyone could’ve predicted earlier this year, especially given that these deals start only a month after Rise of the Resistance opens and continue through the likely opening of Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway. All of this bodes well for future 2020 Walt Disney World discounts, especially Free Dining…
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
Your Thoughts
Do you agree or disagree with our assessment of these 2020 Walt Disney World discounts? Which, if any, will you book? Have any trouble with availability for your travel dates or preferred resort? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
It’s been 6 hours since your post and when I just called they told me the only 25% off standard rooms left were at Animal Kingdom Lodge or Grand Floridian. Super bummed.
My family of four is staying in a standard room at the Polynesian for 5 nights in March. When I went online to change my reservation to the 10% off Gift of Magic Room offer, only the Lagoon View is eligible. The other room types say “This room type is unavailable for the dates, party size or offer selected”.
Do you think the “limited number of offers” filled up already, even with it being posted this morning? Or a website glitch? We didn’t book under any other offers so I don’t think we’re ineligible in that regard. Odd that only Lagoon View is listed. Thanks for any help!
Update: I called and found out that only the Lagoon View and Theme Park views for the Polynesian are eligible. I went ahead and switched to the Grand Floridian which was now cheaper and includes the $30 gift cards.
This deal is probably a direct result of UK Travel Company Thomas Cook’s collapse last week when they went into liquidation nearly a couple of weeks ago now. I was due to fly to Orlando from the UK 1 week today – sadly my dream holiday staying at Disneyworld I have been paying for for the past 1.5 yrs is now cancelled …. although at least I will get a full refund, Disney now has lots of extra spaces to suddenly fill ….
Don’t forget Canadians! Stays from Jan 1 to April 25, 2020, get 10-25% off, which is almost offering dollar parity to Canadian residents. Sunday they also dropped 20% off tickets for Canadian residents. I booked both, and lopped off $400 from Undercover Tourist’s ticket prices and saved $682 on my split stay at Art of Animation (10%) and Boardwalk Club Level (20%) for early January!
To clarify, we got 3 adult and 2 child 8-day PHs to achieve the $400 savings.
The “kids dine free” offer is a joke. Every and any other package beats it–though I might rue not having a free stroller rental when my 5yo gets tired!
Canuck info:
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/en_CA/special-offers/gift-magic-room-offer/
Waited on hold for about 40 minutes, but totally worth it to save $200 on my April stay at Coronado Springs! Was super excited to see this offered!
GE is nothing more than a glorified overpriced shopping mall. Smugglers Run in only semi-fun in the front row and back 2 rows are not that fun. Star Tours is more fun. The film used is also substandard compared to Star Tours . Dis really blew this one
Happy to see this! I have WL booked for May in hopes for a discount. I noticed on the room only discounts that were just released BR can get a 25% room discount vs. WL only at 10%. Is this the norm? Should I switch my current booking to BR? That seems like a big savings for basically the same resort!
I called at 8 am this morning and went online and it seems that the offers for CBR are only for pirate rooms 🙁 big bummer.
I have reservations for early February and because I have a preferred room (because of a walking difficulty due to brain/back surgery) I am not eligible for a room discount. I don’t feel this is fair.
Wanted to take a quick trip over Presidents weekend so my kid doesn’t miss any school. The room only discount for Pop compared to what I saw last week basically covered the cost of the park hopper and memory maker. However, the cost of airfare from Philly to Orlando kills the whole deal. I refuse to pay $1700 for three people and that doesn’t even include our baggage fees. I know it’s a holiday weekend but that’s just ridiculous when we paid less to fly to San Fran over the summer!
I checked the website just now, and these offers aren’t showing up? Cleared my cache and am trying again, but still not seeing the offers. I’m especially interested in the Disney Visa cardholder offer. Am I missing something obvious?
How and when do I receive the 30 dollar gift card per person? We are going for eight days and have a six day park hopper ticket. Staying at yacht club. Just rebooked with the room discount.
They told me the gift cards were digital and would show up on MDE upon check-in.
If you’ve already booked a room that is now eligible for a discount, is there a way to call and get it applied to an existing booking?
I’m interested in the answer as well!
Yes. We did it for this yearback in March. Saved a good chunk of money.
I just did it for the room-only offer, there was a “change reservation” button in the My Disney Experience part of the website next to the hotel check in, and the deal popped right up. Didn’t even have to call in at all!
I’m super disappointed in the discounts as well, and I don’t want to go off topic, but I’m a Disney Shareholder and I can assure you that Disney Shareholders have no say in price setting at the parks or anywhere else in the Disney Universe. I want my 401k to go up, and in that regard, I’m totally greedy, but Galaxy’s Edge, Pandora, Pixar Place, The Riviera, The Gondola, and all the renovations (The Coronado)… that’s what’s driving the price increases. I like the improvements at the park, it’s much better than it staying stale and becoming a blight.
We are booked Feb. 21 – March 1 at Pop. My travel agent checked this morning & told me that she got the same price as the one we already have even though she selected the sale. She thinks it may not be available for our dates?
Do you have any idea is there will any free dining offers in May 2020? Has there ever been discounts in the past?
They heyday of discounts from 4+ years ago definitely seem to be gone. The kids dining plan offer (forcing adults to but the DP to get the kids “free” plan) seems like it would probably cost more money than it saves for an average family of 4 (and heaven forbid if one of the 2 kids is 10+). And 10% of the current rack rates of the values during winter seems uninspiring.
I’d append a “for now” onto that first sentence.
That heyday started during both a recession and one of the leanest times in WDW history in terms of new additions. For the last 3-4 years, the economy has been going strong and consumer confidence is at record highs.
That’ll undoubtedly change once things go south and consumers can’t take on more debt to pay for vacations. (Of course, you probably already knew this would be my stock response–it’s more for anyone new reading this, rather than you!)
You can’t book via the web site and the phone lines are saying all circuits are busy right now.
“Sorry, but we are unable to complete your purchase online at this time. Please call (407) W-DISNEY or (407) 934-7639 for assistance, or try again later.”
Personally, I’d just wait until late tonight or early tomorrow if you have any degree of flexibility.
This isn’t Free Dining–availability isn’t going to evaporate immediately. Save the headache and just wait a bit. (At least, that’s what I’d do–YMMV.)
I have been watching for Passholder discounts for months and it was released today. I was on hold for over an hour and did not get the discount because their system/website was down. Big surprise. This happens every time a discount is released. Disney may want to work on the website BEFORE they release the discount. I wasted my whole morning today and did not get anything resolved. Nothing. And I cannot modify on-line because in the MDE site it says to call to modify. Won’t work anyway because the website isn’t working.
So very frustrating. Good luck.
By the time I got through to a Passholder cast member there were no rooms at the passholder rate. She said I had a better deal than rack rate, but my current price IS rack rate. Very frustrating.
I have a rack rate too for February and the website/ cast member says nothing available with the discount. The website shows the rack rate the same as the passholder rate. I think it’s better to just wait until Disney fixes the website. Getting too frustrating. Like I said above it would be a good idea for Disney to fix/update the website before releasing discounts. Disney does this EVERY time! Why is it so difficult to do?
I remember when january discounts were much higher…..10% at Wilderness Lodge? 1/2 what it used to be. Considering how much everything has increased at the parks (resorts, tickets, food,and parking) and the things they keep taking away, I’m not sure its value even with these discounts. It’s become a pkayground for the rich. No wonder attendance is down. Greedy shareholders are destroying Disney.
Attendance going down? TEA estimate Magic Kingdom attendance:
2018 – 20.9 million
2017 – 20.5 million
2016 – 20.4 million
2015 – 20.5 million
2014 – 19.3 million
2013 – 18.6 million
2012 – 17.5 million
Attendance seems to be doing just fine, in spite of the massive yearly price increases (which is why they get away with doing them).
For 2019, especially this past summer and September, the rumor is that attendance has gone down. GE also did not bring the mass of people that were expected at either WDW or DL.