Confirm my free dining stratagy?

[popriv]

Last two trips we were able to score free dining, trying again for November.
The difference now is my DD and her family of 4 is coming. last trip it was just my DD and DGD. so I booked everything and made all plans, including their input of course...
This trip, we are each booking our own trip, staying at pop with connected rooms.

arrive sat. 11/10/18 depart sat. 11/17/18. pretty much locked into these dates.

So, Each morning we are looking for fall offers to be released.
Here are the scenerios I anticipate:

1. If our arrival date is included in an offer ( not expecting this ) we should be able to modify to the new offer online. ( this is best case )

2. if offer starts during our stay but not on our arrival date, ( this is more likely ) I would want to rebook a trip starting on the day the offer starts. But, Online date changes say to call.... gonna be busy getting through.?

3. I could just book a NEW reservation starting on the offer date, say if the offer is Monday thru Saturday. then cancel my original booking. then book a 2nd stay for the saturday and sunday that is not part of the offer. then that would become a split stay with the 2nd stay having free dining.

DD will be doing these calls from her house while I try from my house...
We will be online and on the phone at the same time. If one of use gets through on the phone, will they let one of us make changes to both reservations over the phone?

So if an offer applies, should I try to call and make the change ? or just book a new package with the new dates and then proceed with the split stay plan...

Any suggestions appreciated..
Gonna have 2 phones and 2 computers ready to go.... LOL


TIA


Steve

 

[bigbabyblues]

2. The phone lines will be VERY busy. Be prepared to wait a long time and count it as pixie dust if you don't have to. I would be ready with a list of other resorts you are willing to take to get the "free" dining discount.

 

[Huff]

There is no benefit to already having a reservation when trying to get free dining. Disney sets a fixed number of rooms at selected resorts for free dining. For instance, say there are 300 rooms available at your resort for free dining. When you call to add free dining to your existing reservation you can do so only if the 300 free dining spots were not already taken. Pre-booking may cause Disney to release fewer free dining rooms since rooms are filled without it.

 

[BrookieM2001]

The best idea, obviously if you can’t just add it to your existing room, would be to rebook a new res. Dining usually drops in the middle of the night. When we got it last, it was 3:50ish am. So you will have that long, if you are awake when it drops, to add a new res and snatch up that room availability before the phones open. Calling will likely lead you to a several hour wait, even if you call right as the phones switch over to open. That being said, you obviously must call if nothing else works. My best suggestion is to be up when it opens, and then book a new stay and have your DD do the same, or do it for her. That way you HAVE the promo and nobody else can get it, and then if you need to call for some reason, you won’t lose out. Obviously, though, this is for the insane people like me who pull an all nighter to save the money. I acknowledge that most people aren’t as crazy as I am....

 

[jimjenkids]

The best idea, obviously if you can’t just add it to your existing room, would be to rebook a new res. Dining usually drops in the middle of the night. When we got it last, it was 3:50ish am. So you will have that long, if you are awake when it drops, to add a new res and snatch up that room availability before the phones open. Calling will likely lead you to a several hour wait, even if you call right as the phones switch over to open. That being said, you obviously must call if nothing else works. My best suggestion is to be up when it opens, and then book a new stay and have your DD do the same, or do it for her. That way you HAVE the promo and nobody else can get it, and then if you need to call for some reason, you won’t lose out. Obviously, though, this is for the insane people like me who pull an all nighter to save the money. I acknowledge that most people aren’t as crazy as I am....

was that EST? trying to see how much sleep i will get. last time i was lucky and only on hold for 1 hour 40 min....im also going to try the computer, hoping that i can actually get through there(I never have good luck-always shows the "ate your page") hoping that IF I do this during the night i won't get that page, but if i have to i will be up and on the phone lines early-may even use 2 phones-i know i did that the last time just so i dint lose the call....oh how this time of year stresses me out--note to self, if the BBoffer has free dining ALWAYS book it, i can always cancel it later if i need to!

 

[scard192]

these are the rumored FD dates

Free Dining Eligible arrival dates:

• 8/2 to 9/29/18 (8/2 seems awfully early to me, and may be for just the Brazilian market; other rumors suggest a start much later in August)
• 11/24 to 11/27/18
• 12/7 to 12/23/18

not likely FD will be offered that early in November, especially as that is Veteran's Day weekend. 2016 and 2017 FD has been blacked out until Mid November.

this is the official 2018 FD thread https://www.disboards.com/threads/2018-free-dining-watch-thread-v3.3677466/

it is possible there will be a RO discount for your dates

 

[BrookieM2001]

was that EST? trying to see how much sleep i will get. last time i was lucky and only on hold for 1 hour 40 min....im also going to try the computer, hoping that i can actually get through there(I never have good luck-always shows the "ate your page") hoping that IF I do this during the night i won't get that page, but if i have to i will be up and on the phone lines early-may even use 2 phones-i know i did that the last time just so i dint lose the call....oh how this time of year stresses me out--note to self, if the BBoffer has free dining ALWAYS book it, i can always cancel it later if i need to!

Sorry, i forgot everybody doesn't live where i do, LOL! It was 3:50ish central time. We never had an issue with seeing Stitch during the night that night, though we weren't able to add the promo to our booking nor were we able to make a new res, so we HAD to call. When we called, we called the IT number that they had given us earlier for a tech issue. When we got someone after only a couple minutes on that line, they were happy to transfer us to booking and it only took about 20 minutes. On our other phone that we had called the normal booking number, the wait ended up being more than 3 hours (we just let it sit while we talked on the other phone just in case we got disconnected and lost our spot.) But the people on the DIS were all talking to each other all night so it didn't seem to take that long for it to drop, and then LOTS of people were able to immediately add it to their res or book new ones and were back in bed within 15 minutes. I was bummed it didn't work that way for us, but eventually we DID get the promo and all was well. Just took a chat with Guest Services to get everything straightened out.

 

[HopperFan]

these are the rumored FD dates

Free Dining Eligible arrival dates:

• 8/2 to 9/29/18 (8/2 seems awfully early to me, and may be for just the Brazilian market; other rumors suggest a start much later in August)
• 11/24 to 11/27/18
• 12/7 to 12/23/18

not likely FD will be offered that early in November, especially as that is Veteran's Day weekend. 2016 and 2017 FD has been blacked out until Mid November.

this is the official 2018 FD thread https://www.disboards.com/threads/2018-free-dining-watch-thread-v3.3677466/

it is possible there will be a RO discount for your dates

Yes I have seen the same dates other than the Aug 2 .... and notes that it will likely be the end of August for the start.

Yup, early November in addition to Veterans Day also has Jersey Week, last two weeks of Food & Wine (I loved using all our snack credits there), Wine & Dine Half Marathon ... and I can see that time frame being left out.

 

[popriv]

Thanks all for the input.... We're set with what we have... just playing the game, see what we can do..