? about guests arriving on different dates

[princessariel]

I'm working over time on trying to get my sister and friend to go again this fall. The problem is my sister would either have to come a day later or leave a day earlier than the two of us. It is possible for her to do? We would be doing the WYW w/ the DP and a park hopper pass.

[McDisney]

From my understanding, with MYW everyone has to be on the same plan. In other words, she would have to be listed as staying the same number of nights in the resort, have the same number of nights on the Dining Plan, and have identical tickets to everyone else in the party. She could certainly come late and leave early, she would just have to pay the price of being there for the entire trip.

I might be wrong, and if I am, I'm sure someone will let you know.

[princessariel]

=( ok thanks...I hat the fact of her having to pay more....however would we have her meals to use?

[BamaJenn]

She'd still have her own meals. The dining plan is essentially credits per person. You can use all your credits in one day if you really wanted to. So, just because she'd be a day or two late, doesn't mean she'd have less credits, just get to use them in less time.

[CleveRocks]

The Disney Dining Plan credits are PER ROOM, not per person!!!

So yes, you will be able to use her DDP credits.

There is no way for DIsney to know who ate what. When you "pay" for a meal, it's not like there are separate checks and the server takes each person's Key to the World card. One person gives the server one card, and the number of credits that the meal cost are deducted from the room's DDP credit pool. Trust me on this one.

As far as park tickets. There will be very little price difference, but if you want to save a few bucks, please follow the instructions that follow.

It is true that when you book a package, everyone in the room must book the same package. However, once the reservation is "exploded" (Disney-speak for after you check-in at the front desk), everyone is free to upgrade their park tickets ... each individual can add things to thei own individual park ticket.

So my advice is book the package with tickets to cover the least number of park days anyone in the party will need. Then, anytime after checking-in, just add days to the tickets that need days added to them. There will be ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE IN PRICE between buying a large ticket at one time or buying a smaller ticket and later upgrading it to a larger ticket.

I hope that makes sense. Please post again if you have any questions about this.

[BamaJenn]

Thanks for that clarification Eric (though a few less exclamation points would've been nice LOL). I can only assume the person I spoke to when I booked our package who explained to me that the credits were per night per person failed to mention that it's all in one bunch. Every trip we've had in the past, we each got our own "room key/card" so I assumed that the credits were placed on each and that yes we did need to give them each card when dining. Alas this being our first real "trip" (since in the past we went for weekends and day trips as passholders etc.) it is also our first use of the dining plan so please forgive me for misstating how it works Ariel.

Regardless... why would you want to take her meals? Let her use the credits when she gets there. FOOD STEELER! LOL! Kidddddding.

[mritty]

There's one more caveat here that should be taken into consideration. Last year, during the Free Dining promotion, Disney was requiring ALL people on the reservation to be present at check-in. The reason being that some unscrupulous people were adding phantom people onto their reservations in order to increase the total number of meal credits their reservation had. I've never heard of Disney making this requirement during any other time of the year. Since you said you're going "this fall", however, it's worth mentioning that if you book a Free Dining package (which was just released to the public yesterday or today), you might have an issue trying to check in someone who's not there...

[princessariel]

Because she's my little sister so I can She'd still keep her snacks...I'd have to fight her for those....we always get the Mickey Mouse rice krispe ears.

We'd be going in Nov so we'd miss the free dining.

Thanks for the answers!