Okay, Disney World Vacationers… IT’S HERE. Today brings the much-awaited news that Walt Disney World’s Free Dining Offer will be offered to guests for select dates in late August, September, October, November, and December 2016!
Disney World Free Dining 2016 Travel Dates
Free Dining is being offered to guests ARRIVING during the dates listed below. A minimum stay of 3 nights is required and your package may not be booked for longer than 14 nights.
August 23* – October 1, 2016
November 15 – November 21, 2016
November 26 – November 28, 2016
December 10 – December 21, 2016
You must book by July 8th to get the offer.
(Please note that the offer excludes: Campsites, Bungalows at Polynesian Village, Grand Floridian Villas, Bay Lake Tower, 3-bedroom Villas, Port Orleans French Quarter, and Little Mermaid rooms at Art of Animation. Port Orleans Riverside is only available through October 1st. )
Disney Resorts
If you stay at a Value Resort, you’ll receive the Quick Service Dining plan for FREE. (Note that you can upgrade to the standard or deluxe dining plans by paying the difference in cost per night.)
If you reserve a Moderate, Deluxe, or Deluxe Villa Resort, you will receive the standard Dining plan for FREE. (You can upgrade to the deluxe dining plan by paying the difference in cost per night).
Minimum/Maximum Days
You must book a minimum stay of 3 nights/ maximum stay of 14 nights
at a Disney-owned resort. You may also need to purchase AT LEAST a 2-day Magic Your Way Disney World ticket with a Park Hopper AND/OR the Water Park Fun & More Option. Use this link to book!
Note — while Disney often uses the rhetoric “5-night, 6-day” in its promotional materials, that’s only sales language. You do NOT have to book 5 nights to have access to free dining!
Will Free Dining Save You Money?
Since Disney World’s Free Dining offer generally can’t be combined with other discounts, it’s often difficult to determine whether or not your family will save more money with a Disney World hotel room discount or with the free dining offer.
We break down and compare the costs and options for several Disney World discounts, including the Free Dining offer, in our fully updated DFB Guide to Walt Disney World® Dining 2016 e-Book to help you save the most money possible.
Along with over 530 pages of great Disney World dining advice, full color photos, and details, this book is a great deal.
Get your DFB Guide to WDW Dining here, and speaking of saving money — use code “20sale” to get 20% off today! With a full, money-back guarantee, there’s nothing to lose!
Are you excited for Free Dining? Please let us know with a comment!
Our handy (and portable!) ebook guides make sure you get the best deals and can plan a vacation of a lifetime.
Where do I go on the site if I already have an existing reservation to add free dining?
Just checking if I understand how it works. So if I’m arriving on the 9th Dec and staying for 8 nights I can’t get this because I’m not arriving on or after the 10th Dec? 🙁
Does this still apply if you are a vacation club member?
Can’t get thru to Disney. Is the offier just for disney visa cardholders at this time?
Thank you so much for the email message- it helped us book our dream vacation for August!
Also, FYI it looks like All-Star Movies is blocked out as well (or at least extremely limited).
We booked the contemporary resort with the armed forces salute discount, would we still be able to get the free dining plan?
We booked Boardwalk Villas through David’s Vacation Club, and got tickets through Undercover Tourist. Safe to assume we don’t qualify? 🙂
Is this offered to DVC members as well??
I am a vacation club member and had booked a stay in September the qualifies for the “Free Dining”.
How do I add that to my reservation?
Just booked yesterday for sept 18-23 , 2016. Can I still add the free dining plan and if so how do I go about doing it?
Thanks
Hello Disney Food Blog! 🙂
I am on hold right now for the Free Dining, but this is the second time I am calling them today. Earlier I called and accidentally went to dining reservations who then patched me over to Resort Reservations. After confirming things I asked the lady if we could add the free dining plan, she said yes, then I asked if we could upgrade it and pay the difference. She said yes, then goes, “oh wait, you don’t qualify for it because you are staying at the All Stars Movie Resort.”
At first I was crushed, I can’t believe we don’t get to get the free dining. I thanked her, and then hung up. Then I reread your email and I see NO WHERE that says the All Star Movie Resort is excluded from the free dining plan.
So here I am now, I called back and am on hold for 90 mins to ask why the heck she told me I couldn’t get it. I am very sad, and upset and confused. Does anyone know why she said this???
Very few rooms available. I was online at 3:30 this morning trying to book Carribean beach mid September by 6:00 only pirate rooms were left and our whole party is split between room types. Two rooms got water views and one got standard. It’s a zoo out there
@ Patricia – Since you’re a DVC member (we are, too), you have to buy a package and not use your DVC membership. It’s not fair to those that are APs/DVC members that we miss out on great offers such as this.
If I book using rci to stay at animal kingdom does this apply?
Booked! Had to be very flexible with my dates and we got free dining. I have to say the prices for these packages keep going up several hundred dollars every year, but I guess you gotta pay to play…and dine 😉
Thanks Disney food blog, you were a great help to us in our planning!
Hi, is this just for US residents? Thanks in advance
on hold for 2 1/2 hrs finally got through and after 45 min with guest service ALL sold out for nov 15-21 dates. holding for supervisor now. and i had previous reservations already booked waitting for free dining to be released!!!!
Ok so I got off of hold finally, and they said that No the All Star Movie Resort is not included in the free dining. Disney Food Blogs, please change your info to reflect this. This has been very disappointing and upsetting. The whole reason I made these reservations was for the free dining, and now they wont give it to us unless we change hotels which won’t give us the same cost. Very frustrating.
Sarah…You’re right…that doesn’t seem fair at all. Before all choices are gone, try to figure what you would pay for meals and what the resort change would cost and see what would work best for you. Then try to be excited and do have a wonderful time. Good Luck.
@ Sarah – I was able to book All Star Resort with the free dining option for December 10-21. Maybe it’s just not available for your dates? Not sure, but wanted to let you know it is in fact available for some dates. Good luck!
We are not arriving until 10/2 (flights are not flexible) I figure it would be financially worth it for me to pay the extra $200 to book the room 10/1 and take advantage of Free Dining, but would they do that knowing I won’t arrive until 10/2? AND…would that mess up my Magic Express from the airport? I’ve been trying to get through since 4amPST…no luck at all, all circuits busy…
Called at 6:04am Central time and was on hold for technical difficulties for 20 minutes then have the automated system. Was on hold for 2 more hours and finally picked got a representative. (she was one of the best Cast members I have spoken to when it comes to reservations) We were originally going to stay at Contemporary, but there were no more rooms available for free dining. Luckily, the cast member said that there were rooms at the Grand Floridian and Polynesian for super cheap. We get to stay at the Grand Floridian, where we never imagined being able to stay!
@ Chrissy — thanks and hi neighbor! I figured it wouldn’t count for us (nothing ever does, amirite?)…ALTHOUGH, I have to say that the discount we got this year on our park tickets for the DVC 25th anniversary was really good. Since we’re 6 people, and we’ll be there for 7 nights (going in Sept), we basically got one person’s park hopper + water park pass for the ENTIRE WEEK for free. Regardless, I’ll take a discount wherever I can, but pretty much nothing will get me to give up my DVC membership. Best investment we ever made. Thanks again for the info!!
This roll out of free dining has been a glitchy nightmare. The travel agents are waiting more than two hours on the phone and finding limited availability for many clients. Luckily I had flexible dates so we were able to get booked at AS Music with free dining (thanks to my patient TA), but I am seeing a lot of frustration and misinformation.
Sarah, as Joy suggests, if your dates are flexible like mine, and you are willing to accept a different resort from your first choice, it may be possible to get FD. I played on Disney’s site while waiting to hear from my TA yesterday, and found availability at AS Sports for some of my dates. If you click on where it says “Use this link to book” you will be taken to Disney’s site. The drop-down menus on the resort classes will show which ones are participating in the free dining promotion.
I was on the phone for 2 1/2 to modify my reservation. I ended up having to change my resort from pop century to all star music. what a disaster on hold for 2 1/2 hours and TRYING to call for three hours.
I never posted a comment on these sites before, but I have never had an issue with booking anything in the past with Disney and this was just that horrible! I was online bright and early as well as phoning in as soon as the lines were open and nothing all day. I was trying to get a reservation in November, but it seemed like there was very little if anything at all available for the 11/15 window. I am hoping at this point that it is indicative of the very limited number of rooms available for the discount and not how busy the resort will be. I am also hoping this is not a sign of things to come for the Disney company as the stepping down of Tom Staggs makes me nervous about the direction the company is heading. There’s my two cents for the day.
This is a bait and switch scam. I’m a life long Disney fan…honeymooned there in 1978, visited with all 4 children more than 50 times over a course of 35 years, my daughter was married at the GF wedding pavilion, I bleed Disney… First time ever tried to take advantage of a Disney promotion. After waiting on hold for 2 hours I was told that if I upgraded my Polynesian theme park view room to club level for an extra $1000 I would be granted the free dining plan. How is that free?? Clearly bait and switch. I guess the High standards of Walt and Mickey no longer exist. I am so disallusioned and disappointed.
I think a lot of the comments about disappointment and frustration here show why Disney should discontinue the “free dining” promotion and just focus on good old-fashioned lower rates to deal with lower demand periods.
“Free Dining” is a cluster.
With the addition of having folks purchase the park hopper passes, taking days away from previous free dining offers and only offering a portion of the rooms to get the offer has really made this difficult fir our sept trip. We booked our trip in March prior to the announcement. It took four days and wait times up to an hour to finally add the free dining to our trip. This took a lot of fighting with customer service.
We are frequents of the Walt Disney resort and this was the first occasion we had experienced cast members being rude and even hanging up. Was a bit of a cluster.
But in the end free dining is a great option especially if you are staying at a moderate resort and getting one free sit down a day. This is a great way to experience the many different food options at WDW
This was our forth year In a row booking the free dining plan. I knew I needed to have some research done in advance – I knew the resorts that historically had offered the meal plans (since we started booking the free meal plans 4 years ago – All Star Movies has never been part of the deal), the rough timeframe when the promotion would start and then of course the dates that were “accidentally leaked”. We have stayed at Pop Century, All Star Sports and All Star Music but this time I wanted one of the moderate resorts. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy since only the Caribbean Beach, Coronado Springs and the cabins were available when we wanted to go. I had also read that there were activities at ESPN around the same time and Caribbean Beach often booked up quickly because of that. I gave our agent two possible date windows (really they only varied by one day on either end of the trip), and our preferred room levels and price points weewere ok with. Around lunch the day the promotion started we confirmed what we wanted and she got it within 30 minutes.
It was a lot crazier than in the past, it was amazing watching the different resorts sale out of the dining packages for the November dates.
I am going to stay in Disney this month for my daughter’s birthday and have the Quick Dining – we are yearly WDW pass holders, is there every a time we qualify for free dining plan with resort stay?
Also I had a question regarding the dining plan and ages. She is 9 for the first 2 days of the vacation and turns 10 on the last day so I bought her a kids dining plan? Is this wrong?
Also, I have bought the deluxe but this is my first time getting the Quick Service…I read somewhere you can use the kids credits for adult menu items? Before I show up there with my four hungry kids I would like to confirm if this is true. Thanks 🙂