Why is Disney not looking after it’s UK guests?

Moved our August reservation to next August yesterday and were told we would be able to cancel and rebook, for a £50 fee if the offer comes and there is still availability. Wanted to be sure of getting the same hotel and dates as I'm sure a lot will be trying to do the same now that the facts about the reopening are known. Would be annoying if it turns out we would have been offered a discount if we'd waited another day but that's life I suppose. Certainly wouldn't want to be going now with the restrictions and no dining without even thinking about travel bans, quarantine and insurance being invalidated if the FCO advice is still in place.

Incidentally just looked at the UK site, they appear to be taking bookings from 1/1/2021 and the option is still there to add dining plans.
 
Firstly, do not believe them when they say the offer can be added on later. The offers that they make available will be dependent upon inventory being available. Offers are there to help fill rooms. If resorts are full, there is no reason to offer free anything. If your rebooking is reliant on free dining, then just get your refund now and wait it out. I suspect there will be better room rates etc once the dust has settled. It is clear that rack rates on the Disney uk website at the mo for next year are HIGH.
Secondly, free dining has always been a fairly hollow offer. There are so few cheaper rooms available during peak season for these deals that it is a way of upselling you to a more expensive rack rate room. We got a much better deal booking standard view yacht club as soon as booking were available for this year, than we would have done waiting it out and booking the free dining deal (2 ads, 1ch) when only water view or club level rooms were available with the offer!
Thirdly, I know it is disappointing, and to be honest I’m surprised that they aren’t honouring the dining packages that people booked, but it might turn out ok. There may be deals available for room rates or other things which work out much better than having the dining plan would if you find that the place is still not fully operational when you go back. For example, it would be better to get a room rate deal if most of the table service restaurants are going to be at significantly reduced capacity for the foreseeable. Who wants a bunch of free credits and nowhere to spend them?
For us, staying at OKW or SSR with 4 Disney adults, having free dining makes a huge difference. It is an expensive holiday even with free dining, but without it probably sadly won't make sense. Our first couple of holidays we booked at shorter notice but prices weren't as steep during the last recession. We have a 3 week booking for July/August - it will be interesting what the reduced price will be and whether it can be moved to next year! Probably not.
 
So we all know Disney has made a free dinning offer to the U.K. market now for many years. It is for bookings made the year before travel.

Disney do this to encourage us to book. They know we tend to stay for longer than their average guest and I understand the average spend per U.K. guest is higher too.

In recent years they have stopped giving us a room discount with the free dining offer.

Before today if we had wished to postpone our 2020 booking to next year they have been allowing the change to take place before final payment (about 2 months before start of stay) without charge. But this is not offering much as the deposit is just £50 per person. But the real kick in the teeth is you lose the free dining.

Many report that they are told if an offer is made later they can add it on ‘subject to availability’ and subject to an amendment fee, which I think might be £150. This is however not quoted in writing anywhere as being the case. In the past some have been able to make such changes and others made to cancel and rebook.

My holiday was something like £7,300 (about $10,000) so it is certainly not cheap. We are booked for 2nd half of August for a family of 4 and paid to upgrade our quick serve to regular dining plan at POFQ, staying for 17 nights. So the the increased cost of having to pay for dining is £4,150. THIS IS AN INCREASE OF SOME 57%. This of course now in effect applies to this years booking too.

of course we still do not even know if we will be allowed to travel to the US this August. Personally I’ve already decided this August is too soon to be sitting in a plane for 9 hours. Our airline Lufthansa will let us use our £3k for another flight next year.

So now is the time for Disney to do the right thing for all the existing clients. These sums of money are way above what I normally pay for an annual holiday. It takes years of saving to be able to afford a holiday to Disney.

What are your thoughts.
I understand the frustration. We booked animal kingdom lodge for 2 weeks this Oct with "free" dining (that isn't really free). The day after the offer ended, I checked prices again and the resort only was over £1,000 cheaper.
Fair enough, I took it that I'd basically paid £1,000+ for "free" dining but we'd get out monies worth.
The issue now because they're cancelling dining plans PURCHASED, the free dining plan bookings are just being entitled to a potential 35% discount (only showing for us guests at the moment). This is for new reservations so I can't even modify my existing booking and ask them to apply this 35% discount.
Oh and on top of this but only a rumour at present, it looks like if you're not in a DVC hotel, you'll be moved to one free of charge.
So value resorts could be moved to deluxe that I've had to pay a lot of money (not to sound snobbish, but I've saved a lot for this like most people) and they're going to have paid ALOT less than I did for the same stay and resort.
I absolutely realise things aren't set in stone and some things are just rumours but we can't even cancel as we're due to get married over there and a requirement is that we are staying in a Disney resort.
Feel totally deflated.
 


Looked into moving my Pop reservation to the exactly the same time next year. Identical in every way, the only difference being it's 15th September 2021 instead of 2020 and it's £1000 more.
It would be nice if Disney also offered UK guests free dining at value resorts the way they do for US guests.
I think Disney will realise how much UK guests bring in revenue soon enough.
 
I understand the frustration. We booked animal kingdom lodge for 2 weeks this Oct with "free" dining (that isn't really free). The day after the offer ended, I checked prices again and the resort only was over £1,000 cheaper.
Fair enough, I took it that I'd basically paid £1,000+ for "free" dining but we'd get out monies worth.
The issue now because they're cancelling dining plans PURCHASED, the free dining plan bookings are just being entitled to a potential 35% discount (only showing for us guests at the moment). This is for new reservations so I can't even modify my existing booking and ask them to apply this 35% discount.
Oh and on top of this but only a rumour at present, it looks like if you're not in a DVC hotel, you'll be moved to one free of charge.
So value resorts could be moved to deluxe that I've had to pay a lot of money (not to sound snobbish, but I've saved a lot for this like most people) and they're going to have paid ALOT less than I did for the same stay and resort.
I absolutely realise things aren't set in stone and some things are just rumours but we can't even cancel as we're due to get married over there and a requirement is that we are staying in a Disney resort.
Feel totally deflated.
I doubt if they'd upgrade value to guest to deluxe resorts, we'd be lucky if they upgraded us to a moderate one.
 
Looked into moving my Pop reservation to the exactly the same time next year. Identical in every way, the only difference being it's 15th September 2021 instead of 2020 and it's £1000 more.
It would be nice if Disney also offered UK guests free dining at value resorts the way they do for US guests.
I think Disney will realise how much UK guests bring in revenue soon enough.
Have you considered requesting a quote for the same package from a US TA? I use Small World Vacations. At least they can apply discounts, if, as and when they are offered and you don’t pay any fee to change or even cancel.
 


Attraction Tickets Direct allow you to change your reservation twice without charge. They have also told me they will apply the free dining offer if one is released for next year. I moved my Coronado Springs reservation to next year, and it was around £300 more expensive which I didn't think was too bad, given that it is the 50th celebrations next year plus prices always go up a bit each year. At first I switched to Pop Century, because CS wasn't available, but CS showed up briefly last week so I was able to swap it, but now it is missing again. I have noticed that the price I had for Pop has gone up since last week though - when I switched it was £188 a night, and it has now gone up to £191 a night. So maybe signs that prices are creeping up for next year which suggests to me that there is lots of demand from UK customers. If that is the case, I highly suspect that free dining might not be offered - why would Disney offer it if they can fill the rooms anyway? Or alternatively they are creeping up the prices, so that when they do offer free dining it makes it look like a good deal - but they will have already raised the prices of rooms to partly offset the cost of the free dining.
 
Have you considered requesting a quote for the same package from a US TA? I use Small World Vacations. At least they can apply discounts, if, as and when they are offered and you don’t pay any fee to change or even cancel.
I used Small World Vacations for a Disneyland trip and they were good, so it may be worth considering. However, the exchange rate plays a part in it as well as local taxes as I have looked at booking WDW myself through the US site. It was cheaper at one point, but, not any more
 
Attraction Tickets Direct allow you to change your reservation twice without charge. They have also told me they will apply the free dining offer if one is released for next year. I moved my Coronado Springs reservation to next year, and it was around £300 more expensive which I didn't think was too bad, given that it is the 50th celebrations next year plus prices always go up a bit each year. At first I switched to Pop Century, because CS wasn't available, but CS showed up briefly last week so I was able to swap it, but now it is missing again. I have noticed that the price I had for Pop has gone up since last week though - when I switched it was £188 a night, and it has now gone up to £191 a night. So maybe signs that prices are creeping up for next year which suggests to me that there is lots of demand from UK customers. If that is the case, I highly suspect that free dining might not be offered - why would Disney offer it if they can fill the rooms anyway? Or alternatively they are creeping up the prices, so that when they do offer free dining it makes it look like a good deal - but they will have already raised the prices of rooms to partly offset the cost of the free dining.
Wow! When I booked Pop last august it was £123 a night for a standard room.
 
Apparently there is going to be a British announcement on Monday, fingers crossed for good news.
I hope so. I'd be really surprised if we didn't get something. I'm just wondering if they're only holding off us at the minute as the borders are still closed so until they open, no-one from the UK will be flying out there.
 
I understand the frustration. We booked animal kingdom lodge for 2 weeks this Oct with "free" dining (that isn't really free). The day after the offer ended, I checked prices again and the resort only was over £1,000 cheaper.
Fair enough, I took it that I'd basically paid £1,000+ for "free" dining but we'd get out monies worth.
The issue now because they're cancelling dining plans PURCHASED, the free dining plan bookings are just being entitled to a potential 35% discount (only showing for us guests at the moment). This is for new reservations so I can't even modify my existing booking and ask them to apply this 35% discount.
Oh and on top of this but only a rumour at present, it looks like if you're not in a DVC hotel, you'll be moved to one free of charge.
So value resorts could be moved to deluxe that I've had to pay a lot of money (not to sound snobbish, but I've saved a lot for this like most people) and they're going to have paid ALOT less than I did for the same stay and resort.
I absolutely realise things aren't set in stone and some things are just rumours but we can't even cancel as we're due to get married over there and a requirement is that we are staying in a Disney resort.
Feel totally deflated.
That would be very annoying
I doubt if they'd upgrade value to guest to deluxe resorts, we'd be lucky if they upgraded us to a moderate one.
they might condense within categories though. I can see a situation where they perhaps move all value bookings into Pop and AoA, or have just one of them open and one All Stars etc I cannot see them having the space to move everyon with a booking into dvc resorts though, even with the many cancellations that they’ve already had in. DVC occupancy is high, and the other resorts work to over 80% average occupancy too.
I don’t know why, but this made me chuckle. Such optimism.😉😂
Me too. But I also died a little inside, as it might be true :( our potential October trip is the only thing getting me through this lockdown!
 
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I don’t know why, but this made me chuckle. Such optimism.😉😂
My humour can be a bit dry sometimes. 😜 I don't think they will, I'm hoping for something positive, we need something to look forward to. I'd be happy with an upgrade to a preferred room and a free refillable mug, I'm easily pleased these days.

I was happy when a CM knocked on my door with some special Ghiradelli chocolates in a little organza bag as a thank you for being a Disney resort guest.
 
of course we still do not even know if we will be allowed to travel to the US this August.
And that is why Disney has been vague/unhelpful/unsupportive, pick a word, towards their international guests.

It really doesn't matter right now what kind of Guest Recovery they do ; if your borders are closed to non-essential travel, there's no active international vacation planning. and you're supposed to quarantine yourself upon arrival to a new location so you'd need about a month of self-isolation on either side of the border before enjoying your holiday.
Don't feel alone, all the Canadians and Europeans are also feeling the uncertainty of it all...
 

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