Voice of Travel

My favorite time of the year is “Free Disney Dining!”

For my past 6 trips to Disney World, I’ve purposely gone during free dining.

Why? It works out extremely well for us.

If you and your family don’t eat a lot, and don’t like going to table service restaurants, and don’t like getting desserts, you probably won’t benefit from free dining. In fact, I’d suggest you go when you can get a discount on your room instead, since that would be a better offer for you.

But if you like being able to try different foods that you might not have otherwise gotten because of the price, and love having dessert with your lunch and dinner, you have to take advantage of free Disney dining.

Each year it’s usually around the same time, but check to make sure it’s happening when you want to go.

For 2015, here are the dates free dining is available:

• August 28th – October 2nd, 2015
• October 25th – October 31st, 2015
• November 8th – November 19th, 2015
• December 15th – December 21st, 2015

Depending on what resort you stay at, you’ll get a different plan, but you can always pay to upgrade to the next level.

If you stay at a value resort, you’ll get the quick-service dining plan for free.

If you stay at any of the other resorts – moderate, deluxe, or deluxe villa, you’ll get the regular Disney dining plan for free.

(Note:  I usually stay at the value resorts, but always upgrade my dining plan to the regular Disney dining Plan instead of using the quick service dining plan.)

Let’s start off with the basics.

What do you get?

Disney Quick Service Dining Plan (if you stay at a value resort) (Per Person):

• 2 quick service meals per night of your stay
• 1 snack per night of your stay
• 1 resort refillable mug

Disney Dining Plan (if you stay at any other Disney resort) (Per Person):

• 1 quick service meal per night of your stay
• 1 table service meal per night of your stay
• 1 snack per night of your stay
• 1 resort refillable mug

This means if you go for 1 week, (Saturday to Saturday) as a family of 4 adults, you’d end up with 28 quick service meals, 28 table service meals, 28 snacks, and 4 resort refillable mugs if you had the regular Disney dining plan.  Since they’re just credits, you can use them however you want.  If you want to use 2 table services in one day, you can.  If you wanted to use 5 of your snack credits at one time, you can do that too.

This is a LOT of food.  While you can use these meals at any time of the day for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, I like using them for lunch and dinner.  I usually do one of two things for breakfast. I’ll either bring food (something like Poptarts, breakfast bars, etc…) or I’ll use a snack credit to get a nice bakery item (my favorite is the chocolate croissant.)

Each meal comes with a non-alcoholic drink and dessert. So when I say it is a lot of food, I really mean it!

How do you know if it’s right for you?

What I’d do (and have done in the past) is choose what restaurants I’d probably end up eating at if I was booking my trip. I’d add up the cost of the food I would buy (and if I wouldn’t eat dessert, I wouldn’t count it even though it’s included in the plan.) I’d price out a trip for when they didn’t have free dining but that I was considering going during, and then add the cost of food to that trip.

I’d then go through the Disney website again looking at the cost of my trip if I went during free dining.  Since food is included, I wouldn’t have to add anything to the price I got.

If the number for the trip + food is more than you’d spend on free dining, then you’re better off doing free dining. If it’s less, then you probably shouldn’t do free dining.

Another thing I like about free dining is the time of the year. Those are (mostly) pretty slow times for Disney World, so not only will you be enjoying free food, but you’ll see that there are a lot less people there than other times of the year.  That makes my whole trip so much more fun and relaxing.

I will give you a warning though. If you do book free dining, make sure you book all of your table service reservations months in advance! If you think you’ll be able to just go up to a restaurant and get in, you’ll be sadly disappointed. Right now you can book restaurant reservations 6 months in advance. Take advantage of that and you’ll be eating when and where you want to!

I love free dining, and always try some new foods while I’m there…as well as eating some of my favorites each trip! It’s great to be able to order any entree and dessert on the menu and only have  pay the tip!

If you’d like to see other tips as they become available, check out 365 Days of Disney World Tips!

Enjoy,