2015 FREE DINING THREAD _ All Questions HERE!!

[amberlina29307]

FINALLY!!!! after waiting all day on my TA she finally got threw and even though we had to move from POP Nov1-7 to All Star Sports Oct 31 -6..we got free dining and will save a few dollars. HOwever when I went to MDE I noticed only one room reservation showed up and not 3. Now she has to call back and find out what is up. Any thoughts?

 

[tolyfaro]

Thank you Halloweenqueen! I'm going to try to stop obsessing and walk away for the evening

 

[Disneygurl84]

My dad finally got through and we got the free dining

Only problem was that they didn't have available free dining (and we had a room booked already) for 9/27 - 10/4 in POR or CBR. So we upgraded to wilderness lodge. Good luck everyone!! °o°

 

[Starwind]

Before I attempt a 2+ hour long distance phone call from Canada can someone who knows more than I do confirm that a vacation from august 23-29 with 5 day park hopper tickets for 2 adults (although I'm going to be adding a 3rd adult) at all-star music in a 'standard view' room should qualify?? (we booked the summer offer but we're going to drop that in favour of free dinning).

Thanks!

I just checked right now:

the late summer room only offer is available for your dates for a standard room.

it does not look like there is FD availability for those dates

 

[ziravan]

I want to put my conspiracy theorist tin hat on for a minute.

Last year, Disney delayed their own planned release just to trip up Black's predictions. Yes, it caused tons of grief and probably was the catalyst for all the emotions that made him decide not to champion FD here again this year. (You were missed, Black and thanks for chiming in last night).

But. That move caught Disney's business partner, DV Chase, by surprise and led to a total disaster last year where DV had outdated release info.

My guess is that has a lot to do with why DV didn't have an early release this year and it went straight to GP.

Fast forward to this year. Disney waited to release FD until 4:15am Eastern, 15 minutes after Disboards goes into its nightly 90 minute maintenance cycle. I really do think this was a purposeful snub at this board and this thread for arming so many people with the information to act in their best interests.

But. By releasing it in the dark of night, most people found out at 7-8 am, and that led to a huge crash of the system this morning.

IF Disney has released at midnight, there would have been hundreds (instead of dozens) to take advantage overnight and that would have let the steam off the pressure cooker for today,

In both cases, I believe Disney has acted with some measure of spite, towards social media in general, and Disboards and Black in particular. In both cases, the result was to hurt Disney more.

Whomever is making decisions about FD at the corporate level is purposefully working against social media, and the result is that they are also working against Disney.

Disney: It's time to treat social media as a potential ally instead of a threat. We have every reason to be excellent allies. You should rethink this strategy and/or the person in charge of it.

 

[jbrest]

Now that I know I will not be getting FD for this trip, I am hoping for a room discount. My check-in date is October 1, and the room discounts released today only go to October 2 or 3. Since I have always gotten FD in the past, I've never paid much attention to the room discounts. My question is....I know that you can get FD if your check-in dates fall within the promotional period, but what about room discounts? Are the dates listed in the promo check-in dates, or would I only qualify for a room discount from October 1-3? Hopefully I explained that right and my question makes sense to someone.

 

[casiemay07]

Anyone else waiting on a UOC?? I am having fun reading everyone's post about getting FD... Our dates are not included and we already booked Airline, so we r not flexible.

I booked free dinging package at pop last year only 3 months in advance, and we still even got in at CRT and BOG.

Maybe the crowds will not be as heavy... We are going 11/29-12/6.

 

[smitch425]

I want to put my conspiracy theorist tin hat on for a minute.

Last year, Disney delayed their own planned release just to trip up Black's predictions. Yes, it caused tons of grief and probably was the catalyst for all the emotions that made him decide not to champion FD here again this year. (You were missed, Black and thanks for chiming in last night).

But. That move caught Disney's business partner, DV Chase, by surprise and led to a total disaster last year where DV had outdated release info.

My guess is that has a lot to do with why DV didn't have an early release this year and it went straight to GP.

Fast forward to this year. Disney waited to release FD until 4:15am Eastern, 15 minutes after Disboards goes into its nightly 90 minute maintenance cycle. I really do think this was a purposeful snub at this board and this thread for arming so many people with the information to act in their best interests.

But. By releasing it in the dark of night, most people found out at 7-8 am, and that led to a huge crash of the system this morning.

IF Disney has released at midnight, there would have been hundreds (instead of dozens) to take advantage overnight and that would have let the steam off the pressure cooker for today,

In both cases, I believe Disney has acted with some measure of spite, towards social media in general, and Disboards and Black in particular. In both cases, the result was to hurt Disney more.

Whomever is making decisions about FD at the corporate level is purposefully working against social media, and the result is that they are also working against Disney.

Disney: It's time to treat social media as a potential ally instead of a threat. We have every reason to be excellent allies. You should rethink this strategy and/or the person in charge of it.

That is an interesting theory, which could very well be true. My thoughts are that they knew they didn't have many rooms to offer, and having two blocks of rooms would have made things even more frustrating.

 

[vicarrieous]

I want to put my conspiracy theorist tin hat on for a minute.

Last year, Disney delayed their own planned release just to trip up Black's predictions. Yes, it caused tons of grief and probably was the catalyst for all the emotions that made him decide not to champion FD here again this year. (You were missed, Black and thanks for chiming in last night).

But. That move caught Disney's business partner, DV Chase, by surprise and led to a total disaster last year where DV had outdated release info.

My guess is that has a lot to do with why DV didn't have an early release this year and it went straight to GP.

Fast forward to this year. Disney waited to release FD until 4:15am Eastern, 15 minutes after Disboards goes into its nightly 90 minute maintenance cycle. I really do think this was a purposeful snub at this board and this thread for arming so many people with the information to act in their best interests.

But. By releasing it in the dark of night, most people found out at 7-8 am, and that led to a huge crash of the system this morning.

IF Disney has released at midnight, there would have been hundreds (instead of dozens) to take advantage overnight and that would have let the steam off the pressure cooker for today,

In both cases, I believe Disney has acted with some measure of spite, towards social media in general, and Disboards and Black in particular. In both cases, the result was to hurt Disney more.

Whomever is making decisions about FD at the corporate level is purposefully working against social media, and the result is that they are also working against Disney.

Disney: It's time to treat social media as a potential ally instead of a threat. We have every reason to be excellent allies. You should rethink this strategy and/or the person in charge of it.

And here I took a more positive approach. Knowing that their site can oftentimes not handle the pure volume of Disney addicts, they opted to put the offer live in the dead of the night so it wouldn't crash over night. They also then could staff at better capacity in the morning with CM's and have IT onhand for computer glitches.

But then again, let's be real, no matter how they did it, it was going to be chaos, the site was going to crash, people were going to have obscene wait times and some people were going to be let down.

I tend to think they skipped the Visa release date because options were so low.

 

[jeepwreck]

Question for anyone who have used a TA. My TA has not been able to get through to add free dining to our reservation. I understand that I can't change it online, but is there anything I can do? I'm so frustrated right now. I can see online that POP has free dining rooms available for our dates, so I'm not sure what the problem is with the TA getting it changed. Any suggestions?

same here my TA has not been able to get through too. However when I go onine I can see rooms available and I know I cant call Disney my self to change my reservations

 

[vicarrieous]

Now we wait and see if PINS/UOCS come out for free dining or not!

 

[nym4588]

Finally got through on the phone, and it only took 8.5 hours. Granted, it's saying I'll be on hold for 60+ minutes, but it's better than a busy signal. Fingers crossed that I don't get disconnected again!

 

[stitchfan75]

Well I just stepped in it.
Messing with the website I found a POP standard with the free dining package. Now i have two reservations, one mine, one the TA booked. TA says they can't take it over since I booked it. Trying to save some money because after the initial excitement wore off and I saw the sticker price I nearly passed out. UGH.
Now my poor TA is having to clean up my mess.

 

[THEDISNEYTHREE]

Also, keep in mind that Typhoon Lagoon will be closed for all of November and December (and some of October).

Thanks for telling us, I did not know this. This may change our minds of choosing water parks and more option. Forgive me if this has already been asked, but I assume you can call ( obviously not today) and switch to park hopper instead. Is it as easy as I am thinking it will be? TIA

 

[disney fan4]

Got free dining for pop in December. Had to do a room only for the first day and free dining for the 15th through the 20th. The cm told me I couldn't pick up my tickets early but I know I have seen it on this thread several time that I can pick up package tickets three days early right?

 

[minerva78]

Just for the heck of it decided to check my dates I booked ( Dec. 15-21st) first thing online at CBR..only pirate rooms available now. I had booked Water/Pool view. Thank you insomnia..
When I booked all categories were available at 3:00am PDT so now I am curious if the rooms just went THAT quickly or there were less to offer. Will be interesting to hear more as more people report back.

I booked Pop this morning at around 6:00 a.m. EST but was seriously considering CBR for Dec 17 - 23. At that time, only preferred and pirate rooms were available for those dates and I didn't want to pay the extra $300 for preferred. I looked a couple of hours later and the preferred rooms were gone. I think they purposefully did not include a lot of rooms at CBR because now that they sleep 5, they didn't want too many families of 5 getting FD. However the pirate rooms are more expensive AND only sleep 4 (I think?) so they made more of those rooms available. This way, they didn't have to exclude CBR, just severely limit the number of FD rooms. Just an hour or so ago there was still full availability at CSR for FD for my dates.

 

[stitchfan75]

Yes, and your ADRs are not affected.

See I'm getting conflicted information about this. I thought I was mistaken before but the big drama right now is that I might lose my ADR's due to booking myself. My TA is currently trying to find the deal I got and apply it to my existing reservation and then I will cancel the one I just made.
I don't get this at all. Everyone said "if you see something grab it because the TA can fix it in the back ground" Now I'm finding out that's not so easy and may have completely FUBAR'd my reservation

 

[MinnieLovesMickey]

Yay, I was able to get Pop Century for Nov 10-24! When I first went to price the trip and put in my dates and Pop Century, I got the same message that a lot of you did today that reservation system was unavailable, try again later. Well, I went back and edited my resort choice, instead of choosing Pop, I chose "All Resorts" lo and behold, Pop came up and I was able to book a standard room with no problems! Sorry, this thread has jumped about 50 pages since I was last able to look at it so I'm not sure if this info had been mentioned.

 

[LouFapp]

Last year I waited 3hrs on hold to modify my reservation (I dialed in right at 7:00 am on Disney Visa release day) this year I thought it might be better to go for a new reservation than modify an existing. The theory worked out - I got through immediately this morning (I was shocked especially as I learned it wasn't just DV offer today).
I could be totally wrong but I'm thinking if you already had a reservation number "modification" is prioritized behind that of "new bookings"?

Also have to mention the CM I had (wish I remembered his name but I was so stunned to get him right away) - was fantastic. I was trying to covertly book this trip as I got my kids (all 4 of them ready for the day). I had to steal away from them at times but most was done right in front of them and he caught onto me perfectly.
I was ready to take the time on the survey to give him a glowing review but as I waited for the survey I was cut off! I'm lucky it wasn't before I booked - but felt bad nonetheless and want to find a way to acknowledge this CM.
Do you think an email to guest relations would funnel to him eventually if I referenced my reservation number??

I got cut off before the survey came up too. They probably did it to reduce bandwidth

 

[ziravan]

See I'm getting conflicted information about this. I thought I was mistaken before but the big drama right now is that I might lose my ADR's due to booking myself. My TA is currently trying to find the deal I got and apply it to my existing reservation and then I will cancel the one I just made.
I don't get this at all. Everyone said "if you see something grab it because the TA can fix it in the back ground" Now I'm finding out that's not so easy and may have completely FUBAR'd my reservation

ADRs are linked to your name not the reservation. Nothing you do to your resort reservation will change your ADRs.

Think about it like this: Disney wants the locals to eat at Disney as well. The 180 day ADR reservation window is designed for them too. They wouldn't need a resort just ADR reservation.

Even if you canceled your resort altogether your ADRs would be intact.