Is UK Free Dining 2021 coming?

Dreams&wishes

DIS Veteran
Joined
Nov 22, 2019
Hello I was wondering if you reckon that free dining 2021 is still coming after all that is happening?!
 
My gut will be yes too. Only real question will be if they feel need to go all the way and go back to room discount and free dining!
 
They usually release free dining offers for the coming year in April so it would be due out now, but apparently this promo has been pulled for the moment so who knows when/if we will see one for 2021. They may decide not to offer one in consideration 2021 will be their 50th Anniversary so people are likely to go regardless of whether they offer free dining or not, and Disney will need to re-coup monies lost during this time.
 


probably, they need park/hotel attendance now more than ever

Realistically? They aren't going to have a problem filling rooms and parks once they are able to reopen. Many thousands of people had planned vacations between March-June that needed to be rescheduled.

The big variable in any 2021 discounts is going to be WHEN they can actually reopen to capacity. If they are still doing phased openings toward the end of this year/beginning of next year and aren't open to capacity by February, it's going to push a LOT of vacations forward on the timeline. They won't need to offer any discounts for new bookings if they are still playing catch-up with people who had to cancel this year. If they start the phased openings sooner, and are back to full capacity before or close to the beginning of the year, we might see a need for discounts later in the year once they've caught up with all the cancel/rebooks.

TL : DR there's no way to know when/if discounts will be offered until we see how park reopening is happening. Things with the coronavirus change on a daily basis and until they make some official announcements about the plan to reopen, everything is up in the air.
 
Realistically? They aren't going to have a problem filling rooms and parks once they are able to reopen. Many thousands of people had planned vacations between March-June that needed to be rescheduled.

The big variable in any 2021 discounts is going to be WHEN they can actually reopen to capacity. If they are still doing phased openings toward the end of this year/beginning of next year and aren't open to capacity by February, it's going to push a LOT of vacations forward on the timeline. They won't need to offer any discounts for new bookings if they are still playing catch-up with people who had to cancel this year. If they start the phased openings sooner, and are back to full capacity before or close to the beginning of the year, we might see a need for discounts later in the year once they've caught up with all the cancel/rebooks.

TL : DR there's no way to know when/if discounts will be offered until we see how park reopening is happening. Things with the coronavirus change on a daily basis and until they make some official announcements about the plan to reopen, everything is up in the air.
Just because people had booked trips does not mean they will still wish to go. They may well be scared to go. You might be right but there is as much chance you could be wrong. Personally I do not think Disney will wish to risk losing the British 14 days holiday bookings for the sake of throwing in a bit of food.
 
Just because people had booked trips does not mean they will still wish to go. They may well be scared to go. You might be right but there is as much chance you could be wrong. Personally I do not think Disney will wish to risk losing the British 14 days holiday bookings for the sake of throwing in a bit of food.

Most who are too scared to go in the beginning of opening will book their trips for 2021 to give things time to play out (in fact I have heard this to be true from several friends that are travel agents). Again, a lot depends on when and how they decide to open the parks....but I wouldn't assume they are even allowing international travelers until they make an official announcement, and we've all learned never to assume anything about discounts and Disney LOL.
 


I hope so! Will be cancelling our June trip tomorrow (can’t postpone as would have liked due to changes in school academic year - both teachers) so my hopes are on free dining in 2021 or we won’t be going 🤞🏻
 
I hope so! Will be cancelling our June trip tomorrow (can’t postpone as would have liked due to changes in school academic year - both teachers) so my hopes are on free dining in 2021 or we won’t be going 🤞🏻
Yes we have cancelled our May trip so I needed some hope to start planning our next trip...
 
My partner is a travel agent. He got an alert on the 21st to say planned launch of free dining offer has been (officially) postponed. However it was very clear it is not certain this offer will ever go live.
 
Will we even be allowed into the USA in 2021? I'm not sure normal is that soon
While that may be true, we’ve got to hope. I’m going to plan on it being ok by the. Partly as my £1k Universal tickets will still be valid!

if Disney don’t do Free dining I will stay offsite and they will not get as much of my money. Which is just why I think they will do it when they have the staff to deal with it.
 
I don’t think we will see any discounts for new bookings at WDW in the near future, but once they are phasing reopening they may release small numbers of room only discounts if they find they need to to fill specific room blocks.
I suspect that the first Disney brand to offer new discounts in 2021 will be the cruise line. I think a lot of people are going to steer clear of the ships for a some time, and they may therefore need to fill up ships with more GTY discounts than have been available in recent years.
 
I know I should be grateful that my family are healthy; my grandad died pre coronavirus by 2 months and was the only one with chronic illness; BF and I are still earning full pay - Gas Engineer and HS advisor so very busy tbh; and we have an adequate amount of savings in these uncertain times.... but I am honestly getting so down about this - we were supposed to be going a three week cruise, disney and universal trip in september - free dining so was able to upgrade. Was 95 percent sure I was going to get engaged..first trip.

Now we are looking at cancelling with OF loosing our deposit, if we rebook we cannot reschedule our travel insurance post january so wont be covered for corona. Hence why we would cancel with OF as disney has much better cancellation dates and fees. The lack of discounts means we will either have to cut back or pay £2000 (counting the 800 loss) for a week less, with no cruise.

As i said I am grateful.. our situation could be a lot worse. I just cant help but feel really down about it. I know why disney cannot offer the discounts..they just do not have the capacity to deal with the volume of bookings.

But it is a lot of money on the table and I just have this sick pit in my stomach every time I think about it.
 
I'm due to go in August but have no intention of going due to not being relaxed enough to fully enjoy my disney experience and not being convinced that lots of the disney experiences that make going so special will be available, so I need to rearrange my holiday. I have free dining for this year and when I change it to next summer I want the same benefits, although I have absolutely no doubt that organising this will be far from straight froward due to needing TUI to sort things out for me and the signs from all the twitter and other public forums are that they're not making things easy for their customers. The holiday itself is already hundreds of pounds more or the same time next year, I'm a teaching assistant so have to travel in school holidays.
 
I'm due to go in August but have no intention of going due to not being relaxed enough to fully enjoy my disney experience and not being convinced that lots of the disney experiences that make going so special will be available, so I need to rearrange my holiday. I have free dining for this year and when I change it to next summer I want the same benefits, although I have absolutely no doubt that organising this will be far from straight froward due to needing TUI to sort things out for me and the signs from all the twitter and other public forums are that they're not making things easy for their customers. The holiday itself is already hundreds of pounds more or the same time next year, I'm a teaching assistant so have to travel in school holidays.
They will not be able to now move it and give free dining as at the moment Disney is not offering this deal for next year. As you can read many, as always, say they won’t need it. This time for different reasons but I disagree even more than previous years. We will be in a massive recession and they just will not want to assume pent up demand will fill the resorts. The reality is with the 50th likely starting in October they will have even more need To have the early 2 week plus U.K. bookings ‘in the bag’. I’ve heard one person suggest Disney suggest out in June, let’s hope so.

if it doesn’t I will be staying offsite.
 
We were planning on May 2021 based on free dining being available then but we have now decided to wait and will probably book for our usual time in September/October just to give things a chance to settle down - again, though, waiting to see if free dining gets announced.
 

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!










Top