*The dining plan discussed in this post is from 2018 and is not the same as the new 2023 promotion.

With rumors circulating that the free dining offer is going to be released any day now I though I would share my thoughts on this popular promotion.

In case you aren’t familiar with the Disney Dining Plan it’s purpose is for guest to have a way to basically pay for meals in advance with the possibility of saving $$$. There are 3 different dining plans available:

• Quick service plan- The least expensive plan offers 2 quick service (fast food) meals and 2 snacks per person per day.
• Dining plan- This plan allows 1 quick service meal, 1 table service meal and 2 snacks per person per day.
• Deluxe dining plan-The most expensive of these offers 3 meals either quick service or table service and 2 snacks per person per day. Some table service restaurants require 2 meal service credits.

All the dining plans also come with refillable mugs good to use throughout your stay at your resort hotel. Also new for 2018 you have the option of ordering specialty drinks or alcoholic beverages (for those over 21) which was previously not an option.

These plans can be added on to your Disney vacation if you are staying at a Disney World resort hotel but they are pricey and depending what you order you may save money by not buy them. But over the past decade or so Disney has offer “free dining” to help drum up business during the slower months. This promotion has previously been released in the spring and is available for trips taken in the fall or winter. There are lots of black out dates but in the past as long as the first day of your vacation falls on one of the open dates they will honor the free dining for your entire stay. The number of meal credits is based per night of your stay and expire at midnight on your checkout day.

Now onto how this free dining will actually end up costing you.

First the free dining offer requires you to book a package that includes both hotel room stay and theme park tickets. Usually at least 3 days or more. Since Disney will only let you use one promotion at a time this means your going to pay the full price for your room and tickets. A lot of times the room discount promotions are a better deal. The past free dining promotions require not only a park ticket purchase but it has to have the park hopper or park hopper and more option added which will cost more than just purchasing the 1 park per day option.

If you dine at a table service restaurant while you won’t have a bill for your meal you are expected to pay the servers gratuities based on the cost what your meal would have been. For our family we average between $20-$40 per meal depending on where we eat. This needs to be planned for and added to your budget. Not all the restaurants participate, while most do if there is a particular restaurant you are wanting to eat at you would end up paying out of pocket for that meal.

If you are an Annual pass holder the only way you’d be able to take advantage of this offer if you bought park tickets when you booked your room. This could be worth it if you plan to eat at a lot of signature restaurants otherwise you would just be wasting money on tickets you don’t need.

For guests staying at a Value or Moderate resort usually only the quick service plan is offered and Deluxe resorts get the regular dining plan. You do have the option to “upgrade” to a better plan but that will end up costing extra this is usually the difference in price between the 2 plans. Also every person saying in the room will have to get the same plan. Disney Vacation Club owners/renters are excluded from this promotion and there are usually a handful of resorts that are excluded like Art of Animation and Port Orleans. If you are staying at DVC resort but not using points you can still get free dining as long as your specific resort is not listed as excluded.

If you already have a resort reservation in place and your dates fall within the free dining promotion you can always call to have it added on. However if you already had a different promotion like room rate discount that would be removed and you will owe the difference. We had booked a trip one year before the yearly ticket price increase and to add free dining we had to pay the difference on our tickets to get the free dining promotion.

If you get a plan that has table service credits you will need to book Advance dining reservations and they book up fast during the free dining promo. You can book these 180 days before your trip and a credit card is required to hold your place and there is a fee for no shows. Read more about ADR’s over here.

For the record it’s a lot of food! The portions at many of the quick service is enough to split between 2 people. We have gotten the dining plan on all but 1 of our trips and only once we paid for it the rest was the free dining promotion. Some how we always end up with extra snack credits at the end of the trip even during the Food and Wine festival. Now free dining could work in your favor if you get the quick service plan, you won’t have to worry about paying for tips or having to make dining reservations. We like getting the dining plan because then we can just enjoy our trip and not have to worry about how much something on the menu cost. We love the free dining promotion and it’s always been offered when we travel in the fall so we enjoy this promotion as we do like to do a lot of character dining and it adds up. Just be aware that you may have additional cost to work into the budget.