******Official 2017 Free Dining Plan Watch, Wait, and Dream

[ashleyteira77]

Booked FD end of August at Pop! Just purchased airfare-4 round trip tickets for $480 total!! It's real now! Going to be hot but we are going to make the best of it!

 

[Marianm]

Curious what are you asking the supervisor to do? I was under the impression that if there were no rooms available there wasn't anything they could do. I have standard room at Poly but those aren't available. I'd love to know if the supervisor can help you.

Just keep checking for availability

 

[robinb]

It is not stupid and regardless of when you book, nobody is entitled to it. I understand that you are disappointed, I get that, but the purpose is for Disney to fill empty rooms.

Frankly, I don't think that people who book months in advance counting on the fact that they can modify to FD are doing themselves any favors. Disney will offer resorts and room types that are underbooked and if enough people have certain rooms booked there is no reason for Disney to offer them at a discount.

 

[Kelly014]

Just reading through last nights thread now so I don't know if anyone mentioned this yet but last year they had 2 Fall Room only release dates. They did a 2nd Room Discount release for most of November and December in August.

Mousesavers says that the RO discount for most of fall came out 4/25 last year...a little ways down the list there was another nov/dec discount though, which must be the one that came out in August. Really hoping I don't have to wait until August to see RO discounts for the rest of October, I'm ready to get my final cost figured out!

 

[Jellybass]

So I tried to upgrade our POP summer meal to the free dining but nothing was available? Do bookings reopen after a while when people cancel?

 

[DiaryofaDisneyKid]

FWIW I would do exactly the same as you are doing. We just can't swing the extra for POR this year considering the exchange rate and two Orlando trips in 3 months. But POR is our favourite, and you will have the better dining plan!

Thank-you! It is so hard not to jump in and get FD but it's actually cheaper for us to stay at POR. I agree the exchange rate is horrible right now. 2 Orlando trips sounds fun!

 

[Lothlórien]

Frankly, I don't think that people who book months in advance counting on the fact that they can modify to FD are doing themselves any favors. Disney will offer resorts and room types that are underbooked and if enough people have certain rooms booked there is no reason for Disney to offer them at a discount.

Exactly.

 

[BlueStarryHat]

If you upgrade and pay $200 more for your stay, but food would cost you $600 out of pocket, it is still a win.

I forgot to add in my message, I already have the DP, which I'm currently paying for. That's why I need for the package to be cheaper. If it's the same or more expensive I'll just stand pat and keep what I already have.

 

[GeorgiaHoo]

There's no FD at all anywhere in October. And the first FD day in November is the 14th.

Yep. Glad I had my room at Yacht Club booked - there's currently no availability of any sort at YC during the first 11 days of November except lagoon view club level, and that's a bit rich for me ($812 a night).

 

[Srbright]

No, they DON'T get food for that $134. Follow the math. I subtracted the cost of the QSDP from the rack rate.

Yeah, that's how the plan works. You take the rack rate (which you did) and subtracted the cost of the dining plan (QS only, which is correct) and came up with $1334. The RO (no dining plan) cost was $1200. To add the dining plan to the room only you would need to add the cost of the dining plan (the same $96/ night)

Rack rate + QS FD = $1334
RO = 1200
RO + QS = 1200 + 768 = $1968

So for the extra $134 you're paying over the RO discount you get 2 meals and 2 snacks a day. With your quote of Rack rate being 264/night, to save $96/night would be a discount of over 35%.

Stacy

 

[Avalon_toon]

I was able to get POP standard pool view for our dates at the end of August... I'm very happy! Told my husband and he was super happy too; told my kids and they are like 'oh.' I think the dread of going back to school after their 11 day Easter break overwhelmed their ability to be happy this morning

 

[pigletto]

I feel sick to my stomach! I called my TA at 9 a.m. and she wasn't in the office yet, finally got her at 9:20. She's not as hyped up over FD as me, understandably. She tried to modify online and it wouldn't let her, so now she's on hold with the TA line and there's a 45 minute wait. I think it's going to be close, if I get FD at all. She asked if we were willing to upgrade from Value to a Moderate and I said go ahead, so long as it comes in under our original package price. No sense paying for FD if it makes the trip more expensive. My Zen approach from last night is not working anymore-I'm officially freaking out.

I haven't followed your posts so this may already be answered. But why allow this woman to make money off your reservation when she is doing basically NOTHING to get you the discount? Go online, book what you want and cancel with her IMO. She rolled in at 9 on the biggest promo day of the year?! She's not doing you a favour.. she's supposed to be working for your business.

 

[shruley]

I feel sick to my stomach! I called my TA at 9 a.m. and she wasn't in the office yet, finally got her at 9:20. She's not as hyped up over FD as me, understandably. She tried to modify online and it wouldn't let her, so now she's on hold with the TA line and there's a 45 minute wait. I think it's going to be close, if I get FD at all. She asked if we were willing to upgrade from Value to a Moderate and I said go ahead, so long as it comes in under our original package price. No sense paying for FD if it makes the trip more expensive. My Zen approach from last night is not working anymore-I'm officially freaking out.

Wow. That isn't a TA I would use again. When the summer RO discounts came out awhile back by 8:30 I had an email from my TA letting me know she had checked and there wasn't anything available for us at that time (which I was expecting after reading on here). It was a mass email with lots of names, meaning she'd checked basically everyone by 8:30 in the morning and was now circling back to send the emails. I don't know what time she was up today, but my reservation with free dining added was there at 7:30 and I had already gotten a warning before today of "I have lots of clients to check for" so I highly doubt I was the first reservation she made. They know Free Dining and RO discounts are dropping, I can't imagine just sauntering in after 9!?!

 

[amarti1]

Thought I would share my experience . . .
Set alarms for 1:00am, 2:00am, 3:00am, and 3:30am. Just stayed up at 3:30am since speculation was it would drop at 4:00am. Waited patiently like the rest of you for the drop and when it showed up, had AKL in my cart (not my first choice, but best I could do at the time) and when I went to check out, it would not let me select the 4th member of my party, giving an error message of "At least two or more attending guests have the same name. Guests must have unique names." I continued to get this message despite talking with 3 different CMs on chat (everytime I went to my F&F list as they suggested I lost the chat). Then, when they suggested I just choose a random person from my list that I could go back and change later, every time I hit "checkout," it just reloaded my cart page. Fought with this for over an hour and a half. Waited til I got to work to try again, and its doing the same thing. Of course, by now, the first room I had in my cart is gone, and the 2nd and 3rd rooms I put in my cart are gone. Did anyone else have a similar experience?

I had the same thing happen to me!!! I ended up having to just do chose the "Add new guest" option for ALL of my family members and re-add their names in order to get it to continue on....and it took me a few tries to get that to go through. All my choices were also booked up so I had to go with a list minute option. Now when I go in and look at my friends and family list, they are there multiple times. I figure that I can call in a few days to get it all straightened out, but at least I've got my reservations now!!

 

[Jchoma]

So I made my changes 2 hours ago and MDE is still not updated. At what point should I worry? I have an email from Disney confirming the change (I changed my existing reservation), so I should be ok, right?

What's weird is, my previous reservation was a split stay: CBR 11/26-11/30, CSR 11/30-12/3. I had DDP linked to both. This morning I changed the CBR reservation to free dining, which we'll get the first leg of our trip. But the site isn't giving me the option to change my CSR reservation and still shows the DDP linked to both reservations. Ugh this is complicated.

 

[DiaryofaDisneyKid]

Mousesavers says that the RO discount for most of fall came out 4/25 last year...a little ways down the list there was another nov/dec discount though, which must be the one that came out in August. Really hoping I don't have to wait until August to see RO discounts for the rest of October, I'm ready to get my final cost figured out!

Hopefully it will be released earlier this year!

 

[PIannello]

Ok...I received a confirmation email with the new updates. Still not sure why they aren't showing up under my reservations though.

I was having the same issue. It took my reservation about 4 hours to update to reflect the free dining plan. If you have the e-mail confirmation then you are good.

 

[pigletto]

I was able to get POP standard pool view for our dates at the end of August... I'm very happy! Told my husband and he was super happy too; told my kids and they are like 'oh.' I think the dread of going back to school after their 11 day Easter break overwhelmed their ability to be happy this morning

My kids are the same. The closer the trip gets , they get more and more excited . But it takes awhile for it to settle in their heads. So I get a smile and "That's great" but they won't be super pumped up until it gets closer.
Mom and Dad get to be happy today because we saved money .

 

[monorailrabbit]

sorry if this has been asked already - there is no way I'm going to catch up from last night - is there a number to call for the Disney visa? I have no availability so I'm hoping to get lucky with them. I'm pretty crushed right now.

 

[PIannello]

So I made my changes 2 hours ago and MDE is still not updated. At what point should I worry? I have an email from Disney confirming the change (I changed my existing reservation), so I should be ok, right?

What's weird is, my previous reservation was a split stay: CBR 11/26-11/30, CSR 11/30-12/3. I had DDP linked to both. This morning I changed the CBR reservation to free dining, which we'll get the first leg of our trip. But the site isn't giving me the option to change my CSR reservation and still shows the DDP linked to both reservations. Ugh this is complicated.

I was having the same issue. Mine to 4 hours to finally update to reflect my changes. If you have the e-mail confirmation you should be good.