Free Dining Watch 2009 - Dates Released!! Update post 1

[PrincessTiffany]

I think it will be crowded. I have been trying to make ADR's for our trip in August and EVERYTHING I wanted was already booked up.

I agree I still think it's going to be fairly crowded. We went in 2007 and were expecting "dead" and "empty" parks from all the crowd posts on here, but it was neither "dead" nor "empty" it would say the crowds were more medium-ish. That's what I'm going in expecting this year - medium crowds. If it's low great, but I don't want to be disappointed this time so I guess I'm going in expecting the worst and hoping for the best.

 

[cater00]

Hi my DH, DD(5), DD(8), and myself are going Sept. 7-12th with free dining(our 1st trip ever). I am trying to decide if we should upgrade to Deluxe dining, is it worth it? Or should we just pay OOP for any extra meals we may want? Also trying to decide if we should get the Park Hopper tickets or not. If we decided to pass on the Park Hopper tickets then we could add an extra day. What would you all suggest?

 

[PrincessTiffany]

Hi my DH, DD(5), DD(8), and myself are going Sept. 7-12th with free dining(our 1st trip ever). I am trying to decide if we should upgrade to Deluxe dining, is it worth it? Or should we just pay OOP for any extra meals we may want? Also trying to decide if we should get the Park Hopper tickets or not. If we decided to pass on the Park Hopper tickets then we could add an extra day. What would you all suggest?

There is no way I would recommend the Deluxe dining for first time visitors. It takes up a lot of time to eat that many table service meals. We always get the basic dining plan - free or not - and it is plenty of food. We eat a quick bit like donuts and juice for breakfast in the room then we eat a counter service lunch at about 11:30 a.m in the parks, we use our snack credit for an afternoon snack and we usually have dinner between 6 and 7:00 p.m. We rarely ever have to pay out of pocket for extra food.

As for hopper, we usually get hopper, but we've been to WDW many times. I don't think they are particularly necessary for first time visitors.

 

[DISNEYNY]

Also, would not reccommend Deluxe plan to 1st time visitors. It would take up too much time. We don't like to park hop...also takes too much time for us. Too much waiting around for buses. We decide what park we will spend the day in and make our ressies in that park or a nearby resort.

 

[ZeroToHero]

Hi my DH, DD(5), DD(8), and myself are going Sept. 7-12th with free dining(our 1st trip ever). I am trying to decide if we should upgrade to Deluxe dining, is it worth it? Or should we just pay OOP for any extra meals we may want? Also trying to decide if we should get the Park Hopper tickets or not. If we decided to pass on the Park Hopper tickets then we could add an extra day. What would you all suggest?

As long as your restaurant(s) of the day are either in the same park you're going to, or are at resorts, then you do not need park hoppers. Sometimes they're handy to have if it's really busy, but since you're going in September you shouldn't find it to be as bad as other times that you could have gone. Congratulations on your first trip!

 

[LorilieMarie]

Hi my DH, DD(5), DD(8), and myself are going Sept. 7-12th with free dining(our 1st trip ever). I am trying to decide if we should upgrade to Deluxe dining, is it worth it? Or should we just pay OOP for any extra meals we may want? Also trying to decide if we should get the Park Hopper tickets or not. If we decided to pass on the Park Hopper tickets then we could add an extra day. What would you all suggest?

I agree with Princess Tiffany. NO on the deluxe meal plan. First timer's don't realize the snacks you can get. Don't spend those on water bottles, etc. You can get a lot of items that are close to $5. You can get a huge muffin, something from the bakery, etc. You can use your snack credits for breakfast.
If it were my first trip, I would rather have an extra day than a hopper. With a hopper you can skip things and go to your favorite attractions in another park. As a fist timer you can easily spend the whole day at one park. The only thing is that on the last day you could use it to go back to certain things in each park that you missed.

 

[cater00]

Thank you all for the helpful help. We have decided to do basic dining plan and no park hopper and we added 2 more days to our trip for what we would have spent on park hopper tickets. I think we will enjoy the 2 extra days. Thanks again!

Also where can I find the menus for the restaurants?

 

[PrincessTiffany]

Thank you all for the helpful help. We have decided to do basic dining plan and no park hopper and we added 2 more days to our trip for what we would have spent on park hopper tickets. I think we will enjoy the 2 extra days. Thanks again!

Also where can I find the menus for the restaurants?

www.allearsnet.com

 

[Tomh]

Well, I'm a bit late on this, but I think that everyone pointed you in the right direction. We had the basic dining plan last summer. I'm a pretty hardy eater, and I was plenty satisfied with the food on the dining plan. We had breakfast in our room most days. We did have a kitchen, so breakfast was English Muffins, and Eggs. Most days, lunch was counter service, with an afternoon snack, and then table service for supper. I would be surprised if the basic free dining plan isn't enough food for you.

I also agree that two extra days will be much better than the park hopper tickets. We did seven days last year without park hoppers, and it worked out fine. There is plenty enough to do in each park to keep you busy for the day. If you should happen to finish a park before the day is over (perhaps DHS, or AK) then you'll appreciate a bit of downtime at the resort to recharge the batteries anyway. For this year, we skipped the park hoppers again, and went with 10 day tickets, plus MNSSHP on the 11th day.

 

[hardingk]

Has anyone heard anything about free dining in November for Disney Visa Card holders?

 

[PrincessTiffany]

Has anyone heard anything about free dining in November for Disney Visa Card holders?

Last September Disney Visa released a few select dates in November for their Visa Card holders for free dining, but there hasn't been anything put out for this year yet.

 

[hardingk]

Last September Disney Visa released a few select dates in November for their Visa Card holders for free dining, but there hasn't been anything put out for this year yet.

How do you find out about it? I never get any emails from Chase, just bills!

 

[PrincessTiffany]

How do you find out about it? I never get any emails from Chase, just bills!

You will see it here on the DIS or mousesavers.com before you see anything from Chase. Half the time I don't get any notice from them. When I have gotten the notice, it's usually after it's been out for a few days and it's already been all over the internet.

 

[DISNEYNY]

You will see it here on the DIS or mousesavers.com before you see anything from Chase. Half the time I don't get any notice from them. When I have gotten the notice, it's usually after it's been out for a few days and it's already been all over the internet.

Same here, I find out on the DIS. I have gotten an email from Chase with offers 2x and have been a cardholder since they started Disney Visa.

 

[Tomh]

I didn't get any notice from Chase. I knew from last year that Free Dining is usually announced sometime around the beginning of April. I started keeping an eye on the DIS in March. That is the best way to know when it is going to be announced.

 

[sunshine0698]

Due to numerous comments on this thread I did not read all of them and this might have already been asked/answered but I had a question about the Free Dining Plan. Does anyone know if the Free Dining Plan will be extended through November? If I'm not mistaken last year it was extended at least through mid November. Thanks!

 

[PrincessTiffany]

Due to numerous comments on this thread I did not read all of them and this might have already been asked/answered but I had a question about the Free Dining Plan. Does anyone know if the Free Dining Plan will be extended through November? If I'm not mistaken last year it was extended at least through mid November. Thanks!

Last September Disney Destinations sent out some emails that offered free dining pin codes for select dates in October, November and December. These emails were random, not for the general public, and the codes were non-transferrable. About two weeks after that Disney Visa sent out a free dining code for their card holders for the same select dates in October, November and December. The fall free dining promo was not "extended" and those pin codes were not part of the regular Fall Dining promotion and there was no general public fd code offered for any of those dates.

 

[Tomh]

When I was in Disney in the middle of August, I got all excited when I saw an advertisement on the table in our room for a bounceback free dining offer. I thought it was going to be for this summer. I was all ready to pick up the phone, and call when I actually read it a little bit more carefully, and realized that the dates were for Oct, Nov, and Dec, so apparently, those dates were also offered to some guests as a bounceback offer.

 

[DisneyMom5]

Does anyone think this year's FD will be less crowded than in years past? This is my first time going for it but back when we were all waiting for FD to be announced, people were saying that POP would sell out in a day...there is still availability left there and other resorts. Is this typical?

My guess, based on having to change my ressie from Sept. 20 to August 30 [yesterday!] is that it will be crowded the first week it's offered, then less and less until the end of Sept., when the Food and Wine festival might affect attendance, at Epcot anyway.

When I called [again, yesterday], there were no Free Dining rooms available at ANY value OR moderate for the week of the 16th. The 23rd only had AS Sports, the 30th only AS Sports and Movies. So take it for what it's worth.

This is what i am afraid of. I call this saturday.

My window just opened up, and I got everthing I wanted (including Chef Mickey's and Le Cellier). Be flexible on dates and times.

As long as your restaurant(s) of the day are either in the same park you're going to, or are at resorts, then you do not need park hoppers. Sometimes they're handy to have if it's really busy, but since you're going in September you shouldn't find it to be as bad as other times that you could have gone. Congratulations on your first trip!

I agree you can get by,
but if you find that all the restaurants you want to try are in one park [Epcot for example - in our case anyway], the parkhoppers come in handy. Otherwise, we'd be spending 4 of our 8 days at Epcot, OR having to not go to the restaurants we want.

But it's definately do-able.

 

[ZeroToHero]

I agree you can get by,
but if you find that all the restaurants you want to try are in one park [Epcot for example - in our case anyway], the parkhoppers come in handy. Otherwise, we'd be spending 4 of our 8 days at Epcot, OR having to not go to the restaurants we want.

But it's definately do-able.

Yeah, we got park hoppers for that reason... I didn't find anything at AK that I wanted, but I love Epcot, so we're hopping over there one night for dinner. To me, it's worth the 100$ for that one time we're using them since we're eating for free.