The problem is you need to purchase the Canadian discount tickets by Feb 7th. And if they don't announce Free Dining by then, then you are taking a gamble that that they'll offer it.
They give an example of a five night stay, but you can actually stay for four nights with fd with four day tickets.
we are Canadian also and have always found FD to be a better deal even when combining the CDN ticket discount because we go for 7+ nights on average. A shorter trip would be closer in savings for sure.
My husband discovered the awesomeness of using up our spare snack credits on Girhadelli (sp?) chocolates. He had so much fun choosing for us and for gifts. We would have brought back gifts anyway, so even though they weren’t used for us, they still saved us money we would have spent.we are Canadian also and have always found FD to be a better deal even when combining the CDN ticket discount because we go for 7+ nights on average. A shorter trip would be closer in savings for sure.
Bottom line, be sure to run the numbers for your family and the trip you are planning to take. While my dd and I are happy to share QS meals 95% time, I love that I’m not looking at the price of those meals and choosing what we want to eat as opposed to what is less expensive. Some wouldn’t struggle with that but we live every single day of our lives on a budget and our week at Disney is the 1 week all year when I don’t have to look at prices. What a treat that is!!
Also, the times that we’ve had extra credits we just can’t use, it’s been a treat to offer some Disney magic to other guests and offer to purchase a snack for them. It doesn’t happen each trip but when it does, what a treat it is to do something special for someone else!
Pool is open until 10pm.
Thank you so much for this information!
I agree that being without a dining plan is freeing -- though since we eat almost all QS meals anyway (we occasionally do a TS meal -- but not every trip), having the QS plan for free doesn't really change how or what we eat. And saving an additional $500-600+ over what the room only/package discount offer is at the Value resorts makes it worth it for us -- especially since it doesn't really change anything for us. The only thing that changes is when we share a meal that means we have an extra free meal to use towards a breakfast. We usually eat breakfast in the room every day since we're not big breakfast eaters, but we do enjoy a breakfast "out" occasionally.
Now, if we were staying at a resort that offered the regular dining plan for free, we would absolutely take the room discount instead. We would never eat that much food and have no desire to have a sit-down meal every day. And if a specific dining plan didn't suit our eating style, I would never take free dining over the room discount.
I miss the days when the room only/package discount at Pop was high enough that I didn't even have to think about whether free dining was the better deal.
I so understand you. I also kinda feel stressed with the meal plan. I hate wasting food! I like the freedom of just eating whatever we want.Last May we also did a trip w/o a meal plan and LOVED it! We always do a weird combination of table service and quick service, so the dining plan never fits us all that well either way (we eat a ts about every other day, more or less), but we had it for our first two trips (free dining) and always ended with tons of leftover credits. So yeah, for our last trip in May, we had 3 rooms at Pop with 5 adults (17+) and 2 tweens. It was so nice to just let everyone eat whatever they wanted. When one of our group got sick for a couple days, I wasn't stressing out over all that wasted food or anything. We definitely spent way less and felt less stressed. Due to that, we probably would forego free dining as well in the future. I don't do well fitting into boxes, even Disney boxes.
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I was mistaken, pool is open until 9. It was probably mid 50's last night and the pools were still open at 8:55. No one was in them but there were lifeguards out there still.
Yeah, there were menu changes made earlier this year that were not for the better, especially at AofA. Sadly, they got rid of the make your own pasta.
Sadly as @Disneylover99 mentioned, many of the resort menus were redone in the summer and personally we are not happy with the changes at all! All of the unique things that made resorts special (AoA's 'Design your own pasta', etc) are gone and the menus are pretty generic. We visited in September and only ate at Pop a couple of times over 11 days as the food was downright boring.We stayed at Pop 11/17-11/25 and had a great stay!
Despite marking our location request during online check in and calling, we didn’t receive our request. I called and asked to be switched and they very kindly did (we had to wait for the room to be ready, but that was fine with us).
We loved the renovated rooms! They were designed so well. We loved all of the storage areas in the bathroom, the laminate flooring, the regular door instead of a curtain dividing the room from the bathroom, an actual shower door instead of a curtain...
There were 3 of us (1 adults and 2 teens) and we had the Murphy bed down the whole time and felt like we had plenty of space. Being able to store our suitcases under the bed made a big difference.
We loved the Skyliner!
All of the CMs were extremely kind and accommodating (minus a few grumpy food court cashiers....I swear those same grumpy food court cashiers are at every Disney hotel food court!
My only real gripe is about the food court itself. The food just wasn’t great. We stayed at Pop in 2017 and the food was much better then. We even thought of running over to AoA for something different, but when I looked at the menu, it was the same ol’ stuff. I though AoA was known for its eclectic menu?
All in all, we had a great week and would gladly return again!
It was worth it to us to travel to Disney Springs for some of the Quick Service options available there. Sure hope they change the resort menus again soon!
@scrappinginontario, just curious - with the Skyliner in operation, do you think you might also ride over to Epcot for QS options there? (Assuming you have Hopper passes, of course)Sadly as @Disneylover99 mentioned, many of the resort menus were redone in the summer and personally we are not happy with the changes at all! All of the unique things that made resorts special (AoA's 'Design your own pasta', etc) are gone and the menus are pretty generic. We visited in September and only ate at Pop a couple of times over 11 days as the food was downright boring.
Oooo, I hadn't thought about it but I LOVE this idea!!! We were at Disney a couple of weeks before the Skyliner opened so that wasn't an option. We buy park passes for each day of our trip so that will totally be an option next year! Great idea!!
Yeah, when DH and I were staying offsite in early November we did the DHS - Epcot RT several times, and I pretty quickly realized that the Skyliner will make hopping from one to the other just to eat much more feasible! We don’t care much for DHS QS, but we love the Tangierine Cafe!
we were thinking of taking the Skyliner over to CBR to try their QS options. I know it's a big resort, need to do some research to see how far it is from the Skyliner station.
