Dining Plan or Save on Room?

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Tue, 04/05/2016 - 20:38

FutureMrsHurst

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Dining Plan or Save on Room?

So deals, if any, will be coming out soon for the fall season. I hear that the free dining plan is also offered for that time of year although not confirmed. I am wondering with the two of us and our dining selections whether it would be better to get the free dining plan or to take the room discount since we can't do both deals.
Here is our ADR's that I have set up.

September 9th
QS Lunch Epcot
California Grill 7:40

September 10th
Rainforest Cafe 2:00pm
Boatwright's Dining Hall 7:30pm

September 11th
QS Hollywood Studios
Garden Grill 5:15

September 12th
QS Magic Kingdom
Hoop Dee Doo Review, already paid for

September 13th
Snack Erin McKenna's Bakery
Raglan Road 2:00pm
QS or snack at MK for Halloween Party that night

September 14th
First day of Food and Wine lots of snacks
Dinner Mama Melrose for 3:55 for Fantasmic Dinner Package

September 15th
(no set food options at this time)

September 16th
(no set dinner options at this time)

September 17th
Be our Guest 2:25 trying to get in for a dinner time. Proving difficult but not giving up!

So do you think it would be more cost saving worth getting the dining plan or taking the room discount? I have been to WDW 22 times but never used the dining plan so I am TOTALLY clueless about it!

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Wed, 04/06/2016 - 00:21

TinkASL

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The only way to determine it is to price it out both ways and go with the cheaper route.

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Wed, 04/06/2016 - 13:54

FutureMrsHurst

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Ok, I wasn't sure if anyone had experience with it before or tips with the dining plan. I know California Grill is two dinner points per person but wasn't sure on the rest.

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Wed, 04/06/2016 - 15:22

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Brinbunny

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This was my fall back, but I had free dining and no choice of room discount:

http://www.distripplanner.com/

It was also good to work out where to pay off of plan if required.

Wed, 04/06/2016 - 16:04

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Kristen K.

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FutureMrsHurst wrote:

Ok, I wasn't sure if anyone had experience with it before or tips with the dining plan. I know California Grill is two dinner points per person but wasn't sure on the rest.

This is a really trip specific question, and the "right" answer will vary greatly from person to person. Are you only interested in money saving potential, or do you factor in other things as well?

In general, unless you are buying the Deluxe Dining Plan, you're not actually going to save any money with it. If you can get a great room discount and pay for food out of pocket you should come out ahead. However, the room only discounts tend to be proportionate to the category of resort you're staying in - such as 30% at a Deluxe, 20% at a Moderate, and 10% at a Value Resort. Getting a room 30% discount on a Deluxe room could save you $150 a night and will tend to give you a greater benefit than the dining plan. Iff you weren't going to stay at a Deluxe to begin with though, the extra money you put out on the room may not make a difference.

I wouldn't hold my breath on the idea of free dining this year, the spring special was sort of odd, providing only one free meal a day. There is never any guarantee that a particular promotion will be available, and with all of the price increases so far this year I have my doubts.

Wed, 04/06/2016 - 17:58

FutureMrsHurst

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Brinbunny wrote:

This was my fall back, but I had free dining and no choice of room discount:

http://www.distripplanner.com/

It was also good to work out where to pay off of plan if required.

Thank you! I didn't know this existed! Even with the expensive places it is still cheaper to pay out of pocket so then if we do the free dining plan it would really be a waste for us. So looks like a room discount it is.

Kristen K. wrote:

FutureMrsHurst wrote:
Ok, I wasn't sure if anyone had experience with it before or tips with the dining plan. I know California Grill is two dinner points per person but wasn't sure on the rest.

This is a really trip specific question, and the "right" answer will vary greatly from person to person. Are you only interested in money saving potential, or do you factor in other things as well?

In general, unless you are buying the Deluxe Dining Plan, you're not actually going to save any money with it. If you can get a great room discount and pay for food out of pocket you should come out ahead. However, the room only discounts tend to be proportionate to the category of resort you're staying in - such as 30% at a Deluxe, 20% at a Moderate, and 10% at a Value Resort. Getting a room 30% discount on a Deluxe room could save you $150 a night and will tend to give you a greater benefit than the dining plan. Iff you weren't going to stay at a Deluxe to begin with though, the extra money you put out on the room may not make a difference.

I wouldn't hold my breath on the idea of free dining this year, the spring special was sort of odd, providing only one free meal a day. There is never any guarantee that a particular promotion will be available, and with all of the price increases so far this year I have my doubts.

I priced it out for POR when the Spring deal came out and it was a savings of about $600 on the rooms. I think the only way I would change resort now is if one of the Monorail resorts or Wilderness went under $200 a night for deals, but I don't think they ever get that low.

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Sat, 04/16/2016 - 02:56

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Kristen K.

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Some possible free dining dates were leaked out this week,

http://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2016/04/14/news-disney-world-free-dining-plan-offer-may-be-coming-soon/

Mon, 04/18/2016 - 13:32

FutureMrsHurst

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Kristen K. wrote:

Some possible free dining dates were leaked out this week,

http://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2016/04/14/news-disney-world-free-dining-plan-offer-may-be-coming-soon/

I say these and we are there during the dates so its awesome. I actually went back in and did the dining calculator that Brinbunny posted and figured out I did it wrong the first time and with the reservations I have booked currently I punched them in and we would be saving about 1200 and we still had 8 QS meals to use up and there are plenty of great QS places to have meals at, and I already paid for the Hoop Dee Doo review so if I dont' take a refund with that, that's two more table services we get to use. So I think, if it is offered. We are going to take the free dining. And I am going to try to save the snack credits for Food and Wine too.

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Tue, 04/19/2016 - 18:53

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Allie

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Generally for two adults the room discount will save you more. But like Kristen said, it varies from person to person depending on how you eat. When there were four adults in our room at a moderate resort we saved A LOT more by going with free dining over the room discount.

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Tue, 04/26/2016 - 13:18

FutureMrsHurst

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We did not get the free dining apparently it was super super limited because by 6am I couldn't get it. So instead I changed our room at POR from a King Room to a Garden View room and ended up saving almost $600 with the "back to school" room discount! So it still worked out great for us! We would have ended up having to pay even more for the room because I booked two months ago and rates went up just before free dining, so in that case we wouldn't have been saving as much and I really didn't want to move as I had my heart now set on POR and have already checked everything out and liked picked my food out and everything! lol. Now just waiting for MNSSHP to be released, rumor is May 5th, and I will be done until July 12th for fast passes and early check in! I am going to call back and again and room request an Alligator Bayou room and also see if we can request a king bed. But no biggy if we don't we sleep on a queen at home. Adam says we can push the two queens together and have a HUGE bed, but I don't think they move like that lol.

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Tue, 04/26/2016 - 18:16

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Kristen K.

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FutureMrsHurst wrote:

saving almost $600 with the "back to school" room discount!

$600 is a great big chunk-o-cash! How fantastic is that! Nice work.

Wed, 04/27/2016 - 14:10

FutureMrsHurst

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Yes, it is! Now since we saved that our trip is nearly paid off, and we still have all our wedding "gifts" which we requested Disney gifts cards, or cash, as well as having a Disney Honeymoon registry set up. So all that is bonus cash! Super excited we saved so much! I wasn't expecting POR to be 20% for the fall deals I have been watching and only ever seen it get to about 10%

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Thu, 04/28/2016 - 02:10

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Magic Mirror

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Glad you got a nice chunk of change off!

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Fri, 05/06/2016 - 13:59

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Allie

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Congrats on the awesome discount!

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