"Free Dining" offer cut back even further

rodders · Post by **rodders** » Sep Mon 22, 2008 6:02 am

We have recently returned from the world where we enjoyed the "free" dining offer. Our original plan involved booking POP for 2 weeks but when the offer came out you needed to be in a moderate or deluxe to get the offer so we went for Port Orleans. The offer for next year has been made available here in the UK and now you have to pay rack rate at a deluxe to get the full dining plan. Booking a moderate gets you the quick service dining plan. We are unlikely to go for this so I'll be shopping around to see if I can get a discount on PopC again. My guess is that the same thing will happen when the offer is made available in the US.

sherabby · Post by **sherabby** » Sep Mon 22, 2008 8:42 am

I didn't think that you had to stay in a Moderate but I could be wrong. Many on the DIS boards were staying at the value resorts. Is this a new change for 2009? We are being offered free dining until the end of the year for specific time periods (excluding the holidays). The hotel is a value resort with the offer.

rodders · Post by **rodders** » Sep Mon 22, 2008 11:03 am

In the UK last year it was moderate and deluxe and I believe that it was the same for the US with limited exceptions. One exception was the bounce back deal and I think that there are some other ones too. This time in the UK we have to book rooms for August - September 2009 and place the booking before November 2008. It sounds like the offers differ from each other this time round

sallyporsche · Post by **sallyporsche** » Sep Fri 26, 2008 7:25 am

That's a bummer. They just came out with the unexpected offer of free dining for times in October, November and December. We switched our planned January trip to the December free dining and are staying at Pop Century, a value resort.

sherabby · Post by **sherabby** » Sep Fri 26, 2008 9:10 am

Oh how I wish we could take advantage of that second free dining offer. Unfortunately we can only plan for a trip next August if we are lucky!

spodie · Post by **spodie** » Sep Sat 27, 2008 12:14 am

I had a feeling that at least part of the reason they were starting up a Quick-Service plan that really didn't have too much value to it (check out the extensive conversation we had on the "value of that plan" in the WDW Resort forum I think) was to ultimately replace that as the free Dining Plan offer. It looks like they may be trying to phase out the regular Dining Plan (1 counter service, 1 table service, snack) in favor of this Quick Service Dining Plan.

If this is the case, I would rather use my AP room discount instead.