Disney Specials, Deals and Discounts - 6/39

2018 DISNEY WORLD FREE DINING DEAL RELEASED

This morning Disney World’s fall 2018 free dining deal came out.

For 2018, Disney World Free Dining covers arrival dates of

8/20* to 9/29/2018
11/24 to 11/27/2018
12/7 to 12/23/2018

*Disney visa cardholders can also book arrival dates of 8/2 to 8/19/2018

Book by August 1. A four night stay is required, and four days of tickets, with one of the extra cost Park Hopper or Park Hopper Plus ticket add-on options.

Eligible value and moderate resorts offer the Quick-Service plan for free, and deluxe resorts and DVC spaces offer the Regular Dining Plan for free.

Excluded resorts:

Value resorts excluded: Little Mermaid rooms at Art of Animation and All Star Movies
Moderate resorts excluded: Port Orleans French Quarter and Port Orleans Riverside
Deluxe resorts excluded: Polynesian Village, Contemporary, Grand Floridian
DVC resorts excluded: Copper Creek and Boulder Ridge at the Wilderness Lodge, Bay Lake Tower, Polynesian Villas and Bungalows, and Grand Floridian Villas

In addition, campsites (but not Cabins) at Fort Wilderness are excluded.

The Disney page on Free Dining is here; the Visa offer is here.

For more on Free Dining, see this, and to have Kelly, my travel agent partner, try to book the deal for you (depending on availability), contact her using the form below:

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“We’ve announced that already, right?”

–Bob Iger, Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, 2/26/18

Free Dining may drop as early as Monday April 23, later that week, or as late as Monday April 30. The earlier dates (that is, the 23rd or 24th) are widely believed to be the most likely.

Update 4/23: No free dining today. Many rumors that it will come out tomorrow! Rumors also that the first eligible check in date for the general public will be 8/20.

The rumor I posted about last week had it coming out April 27. The source of that rumor—a post from a Brazilian travel agent—has been taken down.

There’s a couple of ways you can check to see if it’s out and what the details are.

I’ll have it on the list of new posts on the home page of this site as soon as I can (my day job may get in the way)
You can also go to Disney World’s special offers page (refresh it, just in case), or
Go to your favorite high-volume Disney World forum. I’d suggest Josh’s forum but the earliest mentions are likely to be on this thread on Disboards*.

However, I can think of one reason why Free Dining might come out later than the common view of April 23 or 24th. Recall that when Disney raised ticket prices in February, it noted that “later this year” it would be shifting multi-day tickets to seasonal pricing—in effect, a ticket price increase, at least for certain dates.

I’ve thought since that announcement that one of the most sensible times for Disney to move to seasonal multi-day ticket prices would be after the Toy Story Land mania started, but before Free Dining was announced. That way, the new ticket prices would be in effect for many free dining packages.

Well, with the announcement of FastPass+ tiers at Toy Story Land earlier this week , I think we are in that period. So I would not be surprised to see the new set of multi-day ticket prices come out on Sunday April 22 or early next week, and Free Dining to come out in turn a few days after that—so that folks have some time to calibrate their free dining plans in the context of the new ticket prices.

I am posting this as speculation—it’s based neither on a rumor nor a leak. The Walt Disney Company has been—with one exception—pretty tight-lipped about its timing plans for the new ticket pricing other than “later this year.”

The exception was a comment by Bob Iger in late February at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference that “we have talked about putting into place flex pricing on the multi-day pass, and that’s coming sometime towards the end of the year.”

The bald words make an introduction of multi-day pricing in April perhaps look unlikely, but there were a couple of times during this conference when Iger seemed not fully in command of his memory (see the quote at the head of this page). So it is at least conceivable to me that he misspoke…or that seasonal multi-day ticket pricing would go into effect for visits after, say, August 31, still “towards the end of the year,” but announced in April…

If something else happens, which I suppose is likely, you can complain to me in person on April 28 at Epcot.

*Note by the way that you can no longer link to this site from Disboards, because an inadvertent, but totally real and totally my fault, violation of its terms of service has led to my site being censored on it until the Second Coming. And don’t try to get around the filters, or the entire thread you are posting on might be removed—there’s a reason why the free dining thread there is now on its third iteration…

You can still refer to “Dave Shute’s site” with no link.

However, I’ve not yet been banned from Josh’s forum, so there’s that…

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DISNEY WORLD DEALS FOR SUMMER 2018

Today a Disney World room rate deal covering most nights from June 11 through August 1 2018 came out.

Discounts vary by booking date, with generally better deals if booked before May 22, and by resort and resort class.

Overall savings range from 10% to 25%, with the most popular hotels seeing lower savings rates.

Other, more complicated, deals came out today as well. The best way to sort through your savings and choose the best is to work with my travel agent, Kelly B–she will do all the math for you.

Kelly B. has been the travel agent partner of this site for years. To book your vacation through her, contact her at KellyB@DestinationsInFlorida.com or 980-429-4499. (Tell her Dave sent you…and she may take a bit to get back to you, as she’s busy this morning trying to get the best deal for the clients she’s already serving!)

VALUE RESORT SAVINGS

At the Disney World values resorts, Little Mermaid Rooms at Art of Animation are excluded. The other value resort options are 15% to 20%, depending on booking date.

MODERATE RESORT SAVINGS

At the moderates, Port Orleans French Quarter and Riverside offer only 10% off. Other moderate options offer savings of 15% to 20%, depending on when you book and where you stay.

DELUXE RESORT SAVINGS

At the deluxes, the Beach Club, Contemporary, Polynesian Village, and Wilderness Lodge have lower savings than the rest. Note that pre-discount deluxe prices are (for them) already low in the summer, and drop even lower on July 6.

DISNEY VACATION CLUB RESORT SAVINGS

At the DVC resorts, Bay Lake Tower, the Villas at the Grand Floridian, Bungalows at the Polynesian, and Cascade Cabins at Copper Creek are excluded. Old Key West, Saratoga Springs, the Animal Kingdom Villas, and the BoardWalk Villas are 20% to 25% off. The other DVC resorts are 10% to 15% off.

The deal needs to be booked by either May 22 (for the best savings) or August 1. Reviews of all these resorts are linked to on this page.

Disney’s page on this deal is here, and you can reach Kelly at KellyB@DestinationsInFlorida.com or 980-429-4499, or by using the quote form below.

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Disney World ticket prices went up on Sunday, and at the same time Disney announced that later this year it would begin charging different seasonal prices for multi-day tickets—no details on that yet, but I have some speculation below.

I’ve finally had time to analyze the correct prices (they are all here; incorrect prices were all over the place earlier, including on this site, as the leaked prices included the $21.30 extra charge for not getting tickets in advance).

Here’s the short version:

Shorter tickets went up substantially
The longer tickets that I would recommend for most went up hardly at all
My guess is that—particularly because of this last point—that what we are seeing now is the lowest level of ticket prices in the new seasonal price scheme

Details follow.

SHORTER DISNEY WORLD TICKETS INCREASE BY $11 TO $32

Here’s the scoop on shorter tickets for those ten and older. (Tickets for those younger than ten went up by the same dollar amount, but off a slightly lower base, so saw slightly higher percentage increases.)

2 day tickets: up $10.65 or 5.0%
3 day tickets: up $17.04 or 5.5%
4 day tickets: up $31.95 or 8.6%
5 day tickets: up $26.63 or 6.8%

The obvious observation is that all these are substantially higher than inflation, so Disney seems to be extracting value—especially at the 4 and 5 day levels—to get returns on its investments in the Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios, which many still prioritize after Epcot and Magic Kingdom.

LONGER DISNEY WORLD TICKETS MOSTLY INCREASE BY $5.33

Longer tickets show a remarkably different pricing pattern, with all but 6 day tickets showing an increase of less than inflation.

6 day tickets: up $15.98 or 3.8%
7 day tickets: up $5.33 or 1.2%%
8 day tickets: up $5.33 or 1.2%%
9 day tickets: up $5.33 or 1.2%%
10 day tickets: up $5.33 or 1.1%%

The combination of changes also means that its costs the same to add a day–$10.65—for all tickets 6 days or longer. This returns Disney largely to the pricing pattern it had before 2016. The combination of these two factors—lower prices to add a day, and price increases of less than inflation (that means in real terms ticket prices went down) suggests an enhanced emphasis by Disney on guests staying of longer.

Or at least during the times when these tickets are valid….

THOUGHTS ON SEASONAL TICKET PRICING

Those who buy at the current price can use these tickets at the price they paid until 12/31/2019. (Unless you change the tickets–e.g. add a day.)

Those who buy their tickets after the seasonal pricing structure comes out will, I believe, have to pay more. I believe this because the low increases on longer-day tickets leave little room for less-expensive tickets, which makes me think the pricing level we are seeing now will be the lowest level offered in 2018.

There’s two different reasons for seasonal pricing. One is to incent those with flexible dates to attend during lower-crowd periods. This can yield better experiences both for those who shift away from crowded times, and for those who remain in them (because crowds will be lower from those who did change their dates). The second is to extract more value from those who cannot change their dates but who are going during more popular periods. All of Disney World recent strategic language is about the first reason.

Unclear is what the seasons will be and when they will be announced—and the new prices come in. Disney currently has a calendar for the seasonal pricing of one day tickets for which it has been charging seasonal rates for a couple of years now. Go here, click 1 day tickets, and a calendar will show up of lowest “Value,” middle “Regular,” and highest “Peak” price days.

If you play with this you’ll discover there are no value priced days from May 4 through August 26. While Disney may not exactly follow this one day calendar for its multi-day tickets, surely it is relevant. So I would expect the new price levels to kick in for visits in May or—maybe–June, and to be announced shortly after the opening date for Toy Story Land is announced.

I may be wrong about the current set of tickets being the lowest prices we’ll see in 2018–I’m wrong 20 times before breakfast. But if I am right, it can’t hurt to buy your tickets now, as, especially if your dates are out of the current “Value” ticket season, you might save some coin.

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DISNEY WORLD DEALS FOR EARLY 2018

Today a Disney World room rate deal covering most nights from February 18 through June 10 2018 came out.

Discounts can vary by booking date, stay date, resort and resort class, and are not available in all booking categories. The deal structure in some instance is complicated, with as many as three different savings rates for the same room depending on when you book and when you stay.

Overall savings are so-so, ranging from 10% to 20%, but at the deluxe hotels in particular that range from $500 to almost $1000 a night, 20% is not a bad thing!

Other, more complicated, deals came out today as well. The best way to sort through your savings and choose the best is to work with my travel agent, Kelly B–she will do all the math for you.

Kelly B. has been the travel agent partner of this site for years. To book your vacation through her, contact her at KellyB@DestinationsInFlorida.com or 980-429-4499. (She may take a bit to get back to you, as she’s busy this morning trying to get the best deal for the clients she’s already serving!)