Free Dining Coming Tomorrow…
If you’ve been following our Free Dining Plan at Walt Disney World updates, you know tomorrow (April 24, 2017) is the rumored release of this popular discount. For many of you, Free Dining release day is like Christmas morning…except you’re buying something in order to get something “free” instead of receiving a bunch of totally-free* presents (*unless you’re an adult) from Santa Claus. Okay, so maybe it’s more like a cross between Black Friday and Christmas morning, but now you’ve made my whole comparison clumsier.
ANYWAY…the point is that the promotion should be released tomorrow. Again, it’s rumor at this point, and everything is subject to change until Disney officially releases the promo with exact details. Who knows? Maybe we’ve got the rumor all wrong and instead of a ‘Free Disney Dining Plan’ promo, this year it’s a ‘Free Doofus Drake Pin’ promo as part of some convoluted synergy play for the reboot of DuckTales on Disney XD. (Hey, it’s possible!)
Alright, jokes aside, there are a couple of important things to keep in mind as you ‘prepare’ for the release of Free Dining. If this is your first rodeo with Free Dining release day, you need patience and flexibility…
In terms of patience, you need to be prepared for hiccups in Disney’s online booking system, long waits on the phone lines, and who knows what other errors.
If you’ve spent any amount of time on Disney’s websites, you know that Stitch has a penchant for eating random pages. 😉
On the flexibility front, it’s highly likely that room availability–even at resorts that are not excluded–will be minimal to nearly non-existent at some resorts, over some date ranges.
Thanks to Pandora – World of Avatar marketing and strong consumer confidence in the United States right now, fall/winter occupancy rates have been trending above average.
I’m the first to admit when I’m wrong, and I did not see this coming. Last fall, I predicted an increase in Walt Disney World discounts. Now, we’re poised to see the opposite. (Perhaps I should predict just that–we’ll probably all get lucky and I’ll be wrong again!)
Since Walt Disney World only offers the Free Dining promotion to increase occupancy rates (no, it’s not because they are “nice”), higher occupancy means less of a need for the promo to fill rooms. Less of a need means less availability.
What this means to you is that having a backup (or 3-4 backups) plan is essential. If your first choice is unavailable, you need an alternative ready to go. Sometimes this means being open to a different hotel, sometimes it means being willing to upgrade room categories or even tweak your travel dates (if possible).
If you are totally inflexible, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. If you’re using a travel agent, be sure to let them know the ways you’re flexible. I also recommend giving them some leeway to make other tweaks if good options present themselves.
This flexibility is incredibly important if you’re staying at Pop Century or Port Orleans Riverside. Even though the Picnic Burger topped with hot dogs is gone (RIP), Pop Century is still going to be in incredibly high demand. Riverside won’t have availability (at all) for some date ranges, and will be very limited for others.
Other resorts are going to be similarly limited, but those are the big standouts. Other details are covered in our Free Disney Dining Plan at Walt Disney World post; if you’ve been following this stuff, you’ve probably read a lot of this dozens of times, so I’m not going to rehash it all here.
One thing I’m working on is new post ideas covering Free Dining. Our main Free Dining Plan post has over 1,000 comments, with many of those being questions from confused readers. While I think I do a good job of covering frequently asked questions, I find myself updating and refining the text in that post a lot based on recurring questions.
A problem with being ‘too close’ to any topic is that you start to assume knowledge that isn’t so common for newbies. There’s no doubt that has happened with me and the Disney Dining Plan (something with which I have a love/hate relationship). I’m working on a couple of posts right now (including one on whether you should upgrade or downgrade), but if you have ideas for things you’d like to see covered or questions that I could addressed, please share in the comments here. I’m all ears!
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
I think our various Free Dining posts cover almost everything, but are there are lingering questions? As mentioned, we know this can be more overwhelming for Free Dining newbies than it is for seasoned vets, so don’t be afraid to ask any questions! Are you planning on booking Free Dining? Opting for a room-only discount instead? Have any tips for free dining rookies? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Tom, I might have missed this in your blog but is the Free Dining Plan only the Quickservice plan or will they offer it for the next level up? We are a party of 3 and already have reservations and selected the Disney Dining plan bc we love food plus we love the Table Service restaurants. Was this mentioned? I only recal the DQS!?
The rumored free plan for value and moderate resorts will be the quick service plan. You should have the ability, as you have in past years, to upgrade to the other plans by what I think is paying the difference between them.
They offer the upgrade to the regular dining plan.
Will it be available to book online at midnight?
Tom! POST IDEA: How about a weeklong touring plan that focuses exclusively on food? Where would you eat? What would you eat? If you focused specifically on the Dining Plan, how would you use your snack credits (breakfast at the Boulangerie in France)? I’ve been looking around the WDW blogosphere for a while and can’t seem to find anything like this. Sure, maybe it’s not exactly super-useful (debatable?), but there are enough of us out here who look to you as our Official Disney World Trendsetter and Tastemaker that would love to see something like this.
As I think you’ve pointed out before, Tom, it’s important to actually do the math. Yours truly made a spreadsheet this morning (*cough* nerd *cough*) to make sure that the potential Free Dining would actually be advantageous to us. It is–even with upgrading to park hoppers (which we never do; we’ll just plan our vacation a little differently this time) AND upgrading the “free” counter service dining to the standard plan that we want and which works for us AND foregoing any potential room discount (can’t have it both ways as I understand it). We’ll save about $200 over the course of our six night trip, notwithstanding any potential further savings from maximizing our use of the dining plan, but that’s another spreadsheet altogether! 😉
Will the Rooms Discounts come out the same Time as Free Dining
No, room discounts are not released at the same time as free dining. Those are typically released later.
Yes, they will both be released later this morning.
Any idea what deals will be in play in October? We have a reservation oct 18-23 at port orleans French quarter.
If you already have a reservation and want the promotion applied to your existing reservation how do you go about doing that? Is it something that can be done online or do we have to call in? What time do the phone lines usually open to call in if need be?
Thanks so much!!
You can add the promotion via phone or website, but the website allows earlier access. Phone access opens at 7 am.
Does anyone have an idea when phone lines will open? Would like to modify an existing resort reservation to include park hopper tickets and free dining– does that sound like a good plan? Never done this before!
My wife called Disney last week and they said their phone lines open at 7am eastern time. Hope that helps.
Here is the information for the phone lines on WDW website.
“For assistance with your Walt Disney World visit, please call (407) 939-5277.
7:00 AM to 11:00 PM Eastern Time. Guests under 18 years of age must have parent or guardian permission to call.”
However, the phone lines generally give a continuous busy signal and when you are lucky enough to get through you might be waiting on hold for a long period of time. If possible I would poke around your reservation, after the discount is released, at https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/trip/my-vacation/ and see if you could modify your reservation there! I would visit that page now and get everything squared away so there is nothing to do in the morning.
Good luck!
So the actual ability to BOOK will be released tomorrow? I thought just the information would be available with a start date a few days out. I thought that Disney VISA cardholders were supposed to have an opportunity to book before the general public – is that not true anymore?
Last year they didn’t have an early booking period. Instead they included some dates in August that were only available to the Disney VISA cardholders. It appears that something similar will happen this year. We’ll find out soon!
Do you know if a park hopper ticket is required to qualify for free dining this year?
We won’t know what is required until it is released tomorrow morning. Historically the park hopper has been required so it would be unusual for it not to be required.
Do you know if you must purchase a park hopper ticket in order to qualify for free dining this year?
By the way…we will be staying at the CBR
We are newbies to WDW and our first attempt at securing free dinning. We are so excited! Our reservation is for December 2017, we booked early and received an email from Disney saying we were eligilble for a $75.00 per night gift card due to construction that will be taking place. Does anyone know if Disney will allow a “double dip” (gift card and FD) as long as we modify keeping our existing reservation (number) when (if we are lucky enough) adding free dinning?
Call Disney travel co and ask. I did and it sounds like they don’t consider the $75 a promotion so we are eligible for any promo
Hi Tom (or anyone else who can answer!),
I have a 2B villa @ Beach Club booked at the time that it looks like the free dining will come out. If someone wanted to book this room at the same hotel on the same dates as my reservation right now, it is not available. So my question is this; will I be able to get free dining if there is no current availability on the dates and hotel I’m staying at? Or will they set aside a certain number of rooms per date per participating hotels regardless of occupancy? I’ve never tried booking free dining before as it was never available on the dates we went, so this is all new to me! I’m a rookie!! Please help if you can!!
Thanks,
Sue
No rooms are set aside – this promotion is only given to sell out rooms that Disney has not already sold. Popular resort = fewer rooms. Popular dates = blocked out.
Hey Tom,
I’m not sure if you’ve answered this question or not, but I’m curious: can I add the ‘free dining plan’ to an existing reservation online or will that have to be done over the phone? I’m prepared to be up at 4am for the release of the promotion but I’m assuming the phone lines won’t be live until 7am.
You could try to modify your existing reservation, but the easiest way to get free dining is to make a new reservation with free dining and then (AFTER you receive the confirmation from Disney) cancel your current reservation. I did this last year – worked like a charm! 😀 You will have to pay two deposits this way, but the deposit from the former reservation was back on my credit card in only a couple of days. I would not suggest you try to do this over the phone – the lines will be crazy tomorrow. Disney’s home page may also go down, of course… so there are no guarantees.
Thanks! I will try it out.
I purchased travel insurance when I booked my disney vacation package. I plan to book a new room for the free dining and cancel my old reservation rather than trying to call in to modify my reservations via phone. Will my travel insurance carry over? Or do I need to purchase again?
You can only add it to a current reservation by phone. Only way to do it online is to make a new reservation.
The plan is Pop from Dec 9-15….I live in AZ and am a night owl so was planning on staying up till 3 to book. Do you really think I’ll have a problem trying to book pop century? And if for some reason we can’t get it, would you recommend sports as the backup? Has to be value
how will we know what time the promotion will go live? does Disney send out an email saying now available? this will be our first time trying to get the free dining and i have tried my best to have read everything possible so i am well prepared for tomorrow morning!
There is no easy way, and no email from Disney. You just keep hitting refresh on your browser until the promotion is suddenly there on Disney’s home page 😀
Or wait until you read about in the comments here or on other Disney blogs, but by then it may be too late if what you want to get are low capacity dates or resorts.
thank you!
Does the promotion typically go live at a certain time of the morning? I may have to set the alarm 🙂
No, there is no “typical time. Last year was the earliest ever – 4 AM Eastern time…
Free Dining is usually not a good investment for how we tour and eat in WDW..however I am eagerly awaiting tomorrow to see if I can qualify for any Room Only Discounts! Thank you Tom for being on top of it, as always!
We were among the lucky ones last year, getting free dining for the dates we were hoping for. Since we had several character meals planned, this was a great deal for us. Last year the promo went live at exactly 4 AM Eastern time/1 AM Pacific. No problem for us here in Oslo, Norway – it was already 10. But Americans who want to spring for free dining will perhaps have a hard time staying awake at work tomorrow 🙂