All About Disney Free Dining

Let’s talk about the world famous “Free Dining” promotion that Disney releases every year. I often get a lot of questions about the free dining promotion such as:

· Is it really free?

· Does it save me any money?

· How hard is it to get this promotion?

· When is free dining released?

· I heard that free dining isn’t going to be available this year is that true?

I’ll try to cover everything I know about free dining as well as answer the common questions I have above. So let’s jump right into it. Now when I say free dining I’m referring to the promotion that Disney release every year to cover the cost of one of the Dining packages for free with some conditions of course. Generally the main requirement is a minimum stay of 4 days and your package must include Park Hopper or Park Hopper Plus.

If you’re staying at a Disney Value or Moderate Resort, you’ll receive the Quick Service Dining plan for free. You can pay the difference and upgrade to the Standard or Deluxe options as well.

If you’re staying at a Deluxe or Deluxe Villa resort, you can receive the Standard dining plan for free. Same as above you can pay the difference and upgrade your dining to the Deluxe option by paying the difference between the packages.

Satu'li Canteen in Disney's Animal Kingdom. Photo Courtesy of Walt Disney World Resort.

Historically Disney has released this promotion at the end of April for the last few years (2016, 2017 and 2018). This year Disney release the promotion early and the promotion start in January and ended it in February. In the past the booking window has been from the beginning of August to the end of December with certain black out dates. As well the promotion had previously been available for 3 months give or take a day or two. This year it was release early, only available for about a month and the booking window was the beginning of July to the end of September. This promotion was used in the past to bring in guest during the slower periods of the year. However this year with the launch of Galaxies edge at the end of August Disney probably felt there wasn’t going to be a need to bring their numbers up with rich promotions during the slower periods this year.

In the past what we have done is look at the dates they typically release free dining and the booking window and we would book our trip during the window. When free dining was released (you generally will get a heads up that it’s coming if you follow awesome blogs like this one) we would wake up early and change our reservation over to free dining. Sometimes this can be done online through the Disney website, other times you may need to call and get a cast members assistance in changing your reservation to receive the free dining promotion. This strategy wouldn’t have really paid off this year as Disney dramatically changed things up and we’ll have to pay close attention to what attractions are coming over the next couple of years to help us predict when free dining will launch going forward.

With all that being said let’s talk about one of the burning questions everyone has. Is free dining really free? In my opinion yes it is free but it depends on your family and what you’re trying to get out of your trip that makes it worth it or not. Some people are in the belief that because you have to upgrade your tickets to one of the Park Hopper options that free dining isn’t actually free. That the cost of upgrading the tickets offsets the cost of free dining. Or that a room discount paired with a ticket discount is a better deal than free dining. If you’re planning on using the dining plan whether it’s out of convenience or because you plan on doing a ton of character dining, the free dining option might be a good one for you. So let’s do the math.

As you can see in my chart at first glance free dining is the better option. I’ve taken a random week in August for 7 days 6 nights Sunday to Saturday. I’m using a family of 5 which consists of 2 adults and 3 kids. The age of the kids I used was 7, 6 and under 2. As you can see from the chart the difference between the room discount and the normal price without any promotion is only $164.98 USD. The difference between the base price and the free dining promotion is much greater at $576.52. Not only are you saving almost $600 but you’re also upgrading your tickets to the Park Hopper option which means you can jump from park to park.

So is the dining plan worth it? In my opinion it’s 100% worth it. It makes it easier to budget your trip if food costs are built in already. Before I knew anything about Disney trips I looked at the dining plan and thought to myself will this be enough food? As someone who loves to eat and has 3 children with hollow legs, I can confidently say this is more than enough food. The Disney Dining plan option (the middle tier) includes plenty of food. With 1 Quick Service, 1 Table Service Meal and 2 snacks per day per person this is a lot of food. On our last trip we would use 1 snack credit each for breakfast at our resort. You can use them to get items such as giant cinnamon buns, bagel with cream cheese, yogurt, fruit, milk and cereal, etc. You don’t really need to worry about beverages because you have your refillable mug. Generally from there we would book 1 table service meal at the park we planned on visiting that day (we did this 180 days in advanced with ADR) and the QS we would just wing it. Sometimes we would use our other snack credit to hold us over until we got back to the resort and we would have our QS meal at the food court. Or we would hit up one of the many amazing QS locations at the various parks. If you use your quick service meal in the food court you could substitute the drink that comes with you meal for desserts. This is easier to do at the resort because you have your refillable drink cup so you don’t need the drink. Also some of the snacks at the various parks are gigantic and can be shared with multiple people For example the giant Mickey head cinnamon bun at Animal Kingdoms Creature Comforts is massive. My daughters and I split one for breakfast one morning and it filled us up for quite a while.

If you plan on doing more than a few character dining experiences the dining plan comes in very handy as these dining experiences can add up very quickly out of pocket. If you use the Disney dining calculator you can see how much food will cost you out of pocket vs the cost of the dining plan. If you don’t plan on eating in the park and packing your own meals then the dining plan wouldn’t make much sense for you. If you’re a smaller group of say 2 people and not big eaters the dining plan might not make much sense for you.

How hard is it to get free dining? The day free dining is released it can be quite difficult to get the promotion especially on your desired date. Generally the day the promotion drops Disney phone cast members are overwhelmed with calls to the point where you might not be able to get through at all for hours. The website goes down frequently from the increase of traffic from people trying to book the promo. So get up early and try to book it online as soon as it becomes live. Last year we got up at 5:00 AM EST and the promo came online around 5:30ish AM. We had all our devices out and ready to go and we got our week, resort and room type we wanted quickly and easily. So be prepared to get up early!!!

Every year there is always a rumor that makes its way around saying free dining will not launch and every year it launches without fail. So take the rumor with a grain of salt because they say it every single year and it always comes out.

Please comment or message me if you have any additional questions!