By the co-author of The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit 2020, the best-reviewed Disney World guidebook series ever.

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Free Disney World Dining and Military Families



By Dave Shute

FREE WALT DISNEY WORLD DINING: A GOOD DEAL FOR MILITARY FAMILIES?

(Updated to reflect Shades of Green’s new 40% discount.)

Inspired by this post on MilitaryDisneyTips.com, what follows tries to guide military families intending to travel to Walt Disney World to the best deal possible during the period that free dining is available.

It’s a tricky question because there’s a bunch of other deals also available during this period, some of which can be combined

  • Disney’s offer of heavily discounted Military Salute 4 day tickets
  • Its Military Salute offer of discounts of 30-40% off of Disney World resort hotels
  • Shades of Green, which is always a deal compared to Disney deluxe resorts, and usually one compared to its moderates (and where you can combine lower-cost hotel rooms with the discounted Military Salute tickets). Shades now has discounts of 40% off during the free dining period, making it an even better deal

Here’s the basics:

  • The discounted tickets are $138/person for 4 days.  That’s almost half price.  But they can’t have days added to them, so for longer trips, there quickly becomes no savings. The discounted tickets plus a regularly priced day is still a small bargain, but a normal Disney 6 day ticket is cheaper than a military salute ticket plus 2 regular days.  So longer trips yield less or no savings
  • The room rate discount percentage is higher for deluxes (40%) than for moderates (35%), and higher for moderates than for values (30%).  Since deluxe prices are much higher, savings are much greater the more expensive the room.  A $400 a night deluxe room saves $160 a night at 40%, while a $125 a night value saves only $38 a night at 30%.  These savings occur for every night of your trip, so longer trips increase savings
  • Dining plan savings also happen for every night of your trip, and are the same if you stay in a deluxe or a moderate.  They are less if you stay in a value, as what you get for free in a value is the “quick service” plan, not the regular dining plan. You save more per night with a larger family, and less the more of your family is under 10.
  • Shades of Green gives you value for money every night, but is dull compared to alternatives.  At its 40% discount, it is a remarkable deal

Sadly, you really do have to do the math for your own family, because of savings differences in both the ticket deal and the dining plan based on how large your family is and how many are younger than ten at the time of your visit, differences in the length of your stay, and the specific prices of the resort types you are aimed at. 

But if your family looks like my example family of two adults and two kids, one younger than ten and one older, and is taking either a three night or an eight night trip, I can give you an exact answer:

  • For shorter trips, staying at Shades of Green and using the salute tickets is the cheapest option.  If you don’t want to stay at Shades, answers vary.
  • For longer trips, Shades is the cheapest option if you’d otherwise stay at a deluxe resort, but free dining is the better deal if values or moderates is your alternative

THE BEST DEAL FOR A FOUR DAY, THREE NIGHT TRIP

Military families taking a trip that exactly matches the length of a Military Salute ticket should follow different approaches depending on what hotel type they are targeting.

In all cases, for a three night trip, Shades of Green combined with the Military Salute ticket is the least expensive option. (Assumes a discounted Category 2 room rate at Shades.)  But since Shades is dull for kids, I also ran the numbers for Disney resorts:

Deluxe Resorts:

  • While free dining is the best deal after Shades, its savings are close to those you get using either the Military Salute tickets or the Military Salute room rate discount.  Using BoardWalk Inn standard view rooms for modeling (because it is mid-priced among the deluxes) there’s only $40 or so difference among the three options, and all are on the order of $950 more than Shades plus military salute tickets.
  • More expensive deluxes will yield a better deal on the room rate discount, and less expensive ones will push you more towards free dining or the military tickets.

Moderate Resorts:

  • Using Port Orleans Riverside for comparison, Shades and the Military Salute tickets is still the least expensive option. While free dining is the next best deal,  using the Military Salute tickets is very close–within about $40
  • Either option is on the order of $325 more expensive than discounted Shades and the Salute tickets
  • This conclusion doesn’t vary much by moderate resort or if you have 4 or 5 in your family

Value Resorts:

  • Using All-Star Music as the comparator, the Shades/Salute option is still best.  Staying at All-Star Music with the Salute tickets is around 160 bucks more.
  • Neither the room rate discount nor free dining is as good a deal at the values.  For free dining, for comparability I’ve charged the cost of upgrading the “quick service” plan you get for free at the values to the basic dining plan, which limits the quality of this deal, and the room rate discount has less effect because room rates are so low to start with.
  • The answer is about the same whichever value you target; if your family is 5 people and not 4 then Shades is the deal, as the values won’t fit five.

THE BEST MILITARY FAMILY DEAL FOR AN EIGHT NIGHT TRIP

The itineraries on this site are for eight night trips, with 7 days of tickets. 

Modeling these yields different results, with the Shades/Salute option not looking as universally good (because seven days of tickets are so much more expensive than four that you end up with no savings) and free dining looking better.

For deluxe resorts, Shades is still the best answer, and free dining and the room rate discount are close to one another and about $1300 more expensive than Shades.

For moderate resorts, free dining is the best deal by far–about $400 less expensive than Shades of Green.

For value resorts, the results are similar: free dining is the best deal–even after buying up to the basic dining plan.  Shades is about $680 more expensive.

See the image for the details behind all this.

LINKS FOR MILITARY FAMILIES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

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