Category — e. What to Budget for Walt Disney World

FREE DINING AND ROOM RATE DEALS AT DISNEY WORLD

As predicted, Walt Disney World has released fall 2013 deals for free dining and for room-only discount rates.

Disney’s page on the free dining deal at Disney World is here, and its page on the room-only discount is here.

The specifics are pretty much as predicted, but I don’t have all the details yet.  I’ll add to and correct this page as they emerge.

FREE DISNEY WORLD DINING DEAL SPECIFICS

Free Dining is available only for limited dates:

• September 29 to October 2, 2013
• October 18 to November 2, 2013
• November 11 to November 23, 2013
• December 12 to December 22, 2013

…and excluded from the deal are the following resorts:

• Campsites
• 3-Bedroom Villas
• Disney’s Art of Animation Resort
• Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort
• Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – French Quarter
• The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa

Value resort guests are eligible for the “quick-service” dining plan for free, and moderate and deluxe resorts guests for the regular dining plan for free.

While this deal needs to be booked by September 15, availability is limited. So act now!

ROOM ONLY DISCOUNTS AT DISNEY WORLD DEAL SPECIFICS

There’s two room only deals, one covering stays from September 29 through November 9, and the second covering stays from November 10 through 22 (November 25th at the deluxes and DVC properties) , and then November 30 through December 23.  The first needs to be booked by September 15, and the second by November 3.

Moreover, beyond the slightly different deluxe dates noted above, Family Suites at Art of Animation are included only September 29 to October 5, 2013, October 20 to November 2, 2013, November 10 to November 22, 2013 and December 15 to December 23, 2013.

Exclusion details are still coming out, but Campsites, Standard Little Mermaid Rooms at Art of Animation, and DVC at the Grand Floridian are excluded.

Typically, eligible deluxe and DVC rooms will see 30% discounts, moderates 20% discounts and values 15% discounts.

It’s been widely rumored that free dining would open up today for Disney Visa cardholders.

No dice.

I am however sticking to both my forecast here (note the words “typically” and “might” and “early August”) and to the warning here.

Update July 21, 2014: the Armed Forces Salute has been renewed for another year!

GREAT DEALS FOR MILITARY FAMILIES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

As reported by my friend Steve, Disney World has launched a new version of the Armed Forces Salute for most nights from September 29, 2013 through September 27, 2014.

As in past versions of this offering, there’s two parts–you can use either or both.  One is highly discounted four day tickets, and the other is discounts of 20% to 40% off of Disney World hotels.

There’s a lot of complexities and fine print to this offer (and the fine print varies between Disney World and Disneyland), of which the following are most important for Walt Disney World visitors:

• The offers, are for active duty members, reservists, National Guard members, and career retirees. Almost all vets who don’t also fit into one of those categories aren’t eligible
• You can get a maximum of 6 tickets–unless your immediate family–think member, spouse and kids–is larger
• The member or spouse with proper military ID needs to be there in person to either check in to the room or activate the tickets (both if you are using both)
• So long as the deal is activated by the right person, the other people benefiting from it can be anyone–your non-military family can use tix which your eligible uncle buys for you, so long as he is at Disney World in person to activate them
• There are ineligible dates both for the room deal and for the tickets.

You can book the room discounts for eligible dates now, but the tickets won’t be available until mid-August–and of course can’t be used until September 29.

Disney’s similar FY13 deal is still available for use until late September 2013.  See this.

For much more detail on the offers and their specifics and rules, see Steve’s stuff and its links beginning here.

For more on military families at Walt Disney World, see this.

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WALT DISNEY WORLD DEALS NEED TO BE BOOKED BY JULY 31

There’s currently two Walt Disney World deals available to the general public that have book-by dates of July 31:

• One offers room rate discounts of 15-30% for most nights from August 15 through September 28. See this for more
• Another offers free dining for most nights September 2 through September 25.  The details are here

If you want one of these deals, book it soon, because July is disappearing on us!

It’s widely expected that deals for after September will come out soon–see this for free dining and this for a room-rate deal.

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DISNEY WORLD DEAL FOR 9/29 TO 12/23/2013

The “Mysterious J” forwarded me the following info about a Fall Disney World room-only discount that will go live in South America and Europe on August 1.

This deal will likely open to the worldwide general public then or shortly after, perhaps with slightly different details.

The discount covers stays from September 29 through December 23, 2013, and needs to be booked by November 15.

The deal is unavailable November 23-November 29, and as usual in recent discounts, Art of Animation Little Mermaid rooms and Grand Villas are excluded.

Discount levels off standard (“rack”) rates are as follows:

• Value Resorts: 25% off
• Moderate Resorts: 30% off
• Deluxe Resorts: 35% off
• Disney Vacation Club Resorts: 35% off

Offers like these have been pretty close to general public offers available to US residents, although the specifics, exclusions and fine print may be different…for example, several resorts like POFQ are often only nominally in these deals, with savings of 5% or so.

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Last week I saw a somewhat comic set of posts flying by on Facebook—I’m not gonna link to the posts because their author is otherwise often reliable, and I’ve been known to write rather knuckleheaded stuff myself…so I won’t throw stones!

They were related to the prospect of free dining dates for later 2013 being released next week, and included the following (paraphrased) claims:

• “If you haven’t booked a trip and want free dining, book your room and then your dining now and then call to have free dining applied to your package”
• “People traveling after December should not expect to see free dining. It’s only happened once”
• “People staying in deluxes often/usually save more by using a room-only discount instead of free dining”

The first point is foolish, and the second two mostly wrong, so I thought I’d better post on the three things you need to know about free dining in 2013 after September!

3 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT FREE DINING

1. Forecasts are forecasts, not facts, and are sometimes wrong—either because the info they were based on was wrong, over-interpreted, or misunderstood, or because things just change.

One of the ways things just change is that the capacity meant to be allocated to a deal—either in the restaurants or in the Disney World hotels—gets booked up.  So don’t book your dates now unless you are committed to those weeks whether or not free dining shows up!

The more people who book those dates in the restaurants and hotels before the deal, the more likely those dates will come off the free dining list!  That’s what I suspect happened to early December—which was eligible on the free dining pin codes, but is not part of the current rumored dates…

“But we’re targeting a low-crowd week,” you protest. Doesn’t matter.

Hotel occupancy rates are not crowd calendars–the Disney hotels routinely sell out in low-crowd periods, if both prices are seasonally low (as they are for most of the rumored arrival dates for the free dining deal) and also a deal is offered on top of these low prices.  That’s why they offer the deals…

So don’t book now…or we may lose those dates/resorts to free dining! Rather, get on the phone at 7a the day the deal comes out…

2. Don’t read too much into past patterns of discounts that have been shaped in response to the recession, especially if you read the past patterns wrong!

Disney’s discounting behavior changes in response to a changed environment… which is why there were no August weeks in this year’s hurricane season free dining.

Disney has done January-March free dining not, as claimed in the Facebook stream, once, but rather twice in the past few years (see this), but did not offer it in 2013.

This makes it less likely that Disney will offer free dining in early 2014—but not certain that it won’t!

3. If you plan to get the dining plan deal or no deal, room rate discounts at the deluxes will be a better deal than free dining not “often/usually” but rather sometimes, based on specific family and hotel circumstances.

You have to do the math, as your party size, ages, and the cost of your room are key variables that will drive which is better for you.

For example, standard rooms at the Polynesian, this site’s top-ranked deluxe and one of the three most expensive hotels at Walt Disney World, during the fall season are $501 per night on weekdays and $564 on weekends.  A five night trip with two weekend nights would average $526.20 per night, and a 35% off room-only discount would then average $184.17.

At $58.66 per person ten or older as the cost of the dining plan, if there’s just two people in the Polynesian room ten or older, the room rate deal is better–even if there’s three kids younger than ten.  But a family with three people ten or older and just one more kid will do better with the dining plan.

A five person family, with two kids ten or older, and one younger, would save almost $70/night by taking free dining…

The differences are starker at the less expensive deluxes. At the Wilderness Lodge, this site’s second mostly highly rated deluxe, and Disney World’s cheapest, nightly savings from the room only deal would be $131.81 (again at 35% off a standard room over the fall season, for a five night stay including two weekend nights).

Just two people 10 or older plus one younger kid would save more with free dining. Two parents, one kid ten or older, and one younger, would save on the order of $60 per night on free dining as opposed to the room rate deal.

A few years ago—when we routinely saw deluxe discounts of 40%, and free dining was about $20 less expensive per night for those ten and older, the room rate deals were often better. The combination of those two factors could add on the order of $75/night more to the spread between the two offers.

But those days are gone…

So those are my “three things you need to know about free dining.”  What do you think people need to know?

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