does free DDP actually make a cheaper holiday

[kennycapes]

It might sound like a silly question but there are lots of deals throughout the year, such as free nights, 7 park ticket days for 14 etc...

I cant believe Disney simply run a campaign from April to November losing £1000's per family and then for the rest of they year make it back when charging.

Is it actually 1000's saved when booking or if i book later perhaps i get a cheaper hotel deal and so not actually getting that saving?

I'm sure people have priced it up with all the other deals Disney put on through the year.

Any thoughts people

Cheers

[loldis]

If you are comparing a like for like holiday, i.e. staying on-site and paying for dining vs staying at the same hotel on the same dates with free dining... yes, you will typically save money - especially if there are 3+ adults. One exception would be if you're staying in a DVC property and trying to compare booking through WDTC and renting points, since renting is usually much cheaper than the hotel rates.

The way the pricing model currently works is that nightly rates are set for each year and don't change, and are not increased to cover any of the offers, including free dining. The only other offer they run is free nights which is heavily restricted (must be 7/14/21 nights, only 4 resorts qualify for best offer, etc) when compared to free dining which is offered on most of the property.

I know Vickie (loves2plan) keeps a spreadsheet of the costs of the various offers through the year so will be able to give you specifics. But I do know I actually lose money on free nights compared to free dining because I have to stay an extra night to qualify for a "free" one, but then pay for my food.

[loves2plan]

As Loldis says, if you're comparing an onsite holiday with free dining, to an onsite holiday without it, rather than an off-site holiday, then free dining definitely makes an onsite stay cheaper. There are basically 3 prices with Disney:
1. Rack rate with no offers
2. Rack rates with free dining, gift card and 14 day for price of 7 tickets
3. Rack rates with 1-4 nights free and reduce price tickets

The more people going, the bigger the saving as obviously it would cost more to buy food oop for 4 people than it would for 2. If you're planning to stay onsite and eat onsite, then you could easily spend a small fortune on food for a 2 week stay.

The free nights offer isn't as good as it used to be either. Now it's just 2 free nights for a 14 night stay at most resorts, with just a couple offering 4 nights free. If you're looking at the resorts that only offer 2 nights for free, you'd be hard pushed to feed a family for 2 weeks on those savings, especially with the poor exchange rate.

14 nights for the price of 7 tickets are on at the same time as free dining too. Ticket prices do normally reduce a bit with free nights, but if you book free dining and get the $200 gift card, they pretty much offset each other.

I've got historical figures, but haven't been able to do it this year as the free nights offer isn't available for my holiday dates, and it just my dates that I normally keep records of.

DVC rental really only saves if you're looking to stay in a higher catgeory resort anyway. For the price of 2 weeks in a deluxe renting points, I can get 2 weeks in a moderate, all our food, drinks and snacks (we're happy with the qsdp) and a $200 gift card. So, from a DVC points of view it would depend on where you want to stay and what your budget is really.

[sammykitten]

Free Dining presents a major draw to stay onsite and lots of people wouldn't stay onsite without it.

I've not yet stayed onsite at Disney with a Dining Plan, but have stayed onsite at Disney using free nights. This was back in 2015 when I did get one free night in a value for staying a total of 5 nights.

If free QS dining is included in a moderate (or a value even) in 3 or 4 years time when we're planning on our next trip to WDW, we will go for that deal, no question. This is because, after 2 trips split-stay and then fully offsite, we have realised we are "Disney bubble" people at heart, and so if we're going to be spending time every day in a Disney park (very likely) crunching the numbers, taking into account food costs and transport costs if staying offsite but nearby, free dining works out good value for us and is worth it. We will be 3 adults. I probably wouldn't go for it if we were 2 adults to be honest, as the room cost is the same for 2-4 guests generally, so there is less value in 2 adults staying onsite with a free dining plan (in my opinion). I would probably go for free nights instead, and it would be in a value resort.

[kennycapes]

Originally Posted by loves2plan

As Loldis says, if you're comparing an onsite holiday with free dining, to an onsite holiday without it, rather than an off-site holiday, then free dining definitely makes an onsite stay cheaper. There are basically 3 prices with Disney:
1. Rack rate with no offers
2. Rack rates with free dining, gift card and 14 day for price of 7 tickets
3. Rack rates with 1-4 nights free and reduce price tickets

The more people going, the bigger the saving as obviously it would cost more to buy food oop for 4 people than it would for 2. If you're planning to stay onsite and eat onsite, then you could easily spend a small fortune on food for a 2 week stay.

The free nights offer isn't as good as it used to be either. Now it's just 2 free nights for a 14 night stay at most resorts, with just a couple offering 4 nights free. If you're looking at the resorts that only offer 2 nights for free, you'd be hard pushed to feed a family for 2 weeks on those savings, especially with the poor exchange rate.

14 nights for the price of 7 tickets are on at the same time as free dining too. Ticket prices do normally reduce a bit with free nights, but if you book free dining and get the $200 gift card, they pretty much offset each other.

I've got historical figures, but haven't been able to do it this year as the free nights offer isn't available for my holiday dates, and it just my dates that I normally keep records of.

DVC rental really only saves if you're looking to stay in a higher catgeory resort anyway. For the price of 2 weeks in a deluxe renting points, I can get 2 weeks in a moderate, all our food, drinks and snacks (we're happy with the qsdp) and a $200 gift card. So, from a DVC points of view it would depend on where you want to stay and what your budget is really.

See more...

Many thanks for the feed back

I am trying to compare like for like. Staying on-site with the plan or the other deals they put on throughout the year.

Great info and many thanks

[sha9]

Originally Posted by kennycapes

Many thanks for the feed back

I am trying to compare like for like. Staying on-site with the plan or the other deals they put on throughout the year.

Great info and many thanks

See more...

To give an example, we booked during free nights for AKL last year having missed free dining (our preferred offer). At that time DDP for a week would have been around £700, QSDP £500. We saved £476 with the 2 free nights we got. We spent around £700 on food just because we ate where we wanted and didn’t really spend too much time trying to budget. That’s for 2 adults.

So you can see free dining would have been better for us, even free QSDP and we do prefer it as we feel better having food taken care of.

[loves2plan]

You can do a rough comparison yourself with the current free nights offer. Price up your stay doing a hotel only search on the Disney site. Go though to the end of the process and you'll see 2 prices: the price before the free nights discount and the price with the free nights discount. The price before the free nights discount will be around the cost you'd have paid for the room with free dining. Then you can see if you think you'd be able to feed your family for a 2 week stay for the savings that you get with the free nights offer.

Like I said before, the gift card and reduced ticket prices pretty much cancel each other out, which is why I said to leave them out if the equation and just do a hotel only search.

The other thing I'd add is that free nights comes out about a month after free dining has finished, but there's no guarantee that it will be offered, or if the offer will be the same. So, if free dining is released for 2020 holidays, you'll need to decide if you book a guaranteed offer, or wait to see what offer comes afterwards and hope that it's better for you. Of course, you could always book free dining, then change if you're happy to lose the deposit and the new offer is worth it. Booking free dining doesn't necessarily mean that you're stuck with it if something better appears

[GezzasGem]

I recently priced up our same holiday with the free nights offer instead of free DDP - we have ended up 'saving' about one thousand pounds so am more than happy with that! I do think though it also depends on your eating patterns as I appreciate some do not get full value from their DDP, but we enjoy a sit down dinner each day along with breakfast and lunch 👍

[Guest]

We have two free dining stays booked this year. I had wondered if it would work out cheaper to change the second stay to free nights and get annual passes with our DVC membership. The free nights deal for this year is really restricted compared to free dining, and there’s no discount available for either of our stays.
Our second stay is only 5 nights and I plan to use all of our table service credits on ridiculously expensive character meals.

[Gill H]

They tend to offer free dining to the Brits for a lot longer, because we book early and stay for a long time. It helps Disney because it encourages people to stay onsite and spen more time (and money) in the parks and resorts.

By contrast the Americans get very limited free dining periods.

It’s essential for us!