Walt Disney World has released the Free Dining Plan discount for arrival dates from June through December 2025, including Independence Day, Halloween, and the Christmas season. Here are dates & details, tips & tricks, everything you need to know about booking this discount.
This is one of a growing shrinking number of discounts that has been released/removed for 2025 Walt Disney World vacations. This number has decreased due to several special offers expiring or being cut short, most notably the “Stay Longer & Save More” Room-Only Discount losing its fall dates, without replacement promos. That deal still has partially overlapping date ranges with Free Dining, so you might want to do the math on both if you’re traveling during the summer.
For a rundown of available discounts, see All Current Walt Disney World Discounts for 2025. There are promos available for most dates between now and September July 2025, plus bouncebacks and PIN codes that run through Christmas 2025. So that’s worth checking out if you’re debating when to travel and which deals to book…
Per Walt Disney World, here are the deal details: Disney Visa Cardmembers can Enjoy a FREE Disney Dining Plan when you use your Disney Visa Card to purchase a non-discounted 4-night, 4-day Walt Disney Travel Company package that includes a room at a select Disney Resort hotel and a theme park ticket with a Park Hopper option—for arrivals most nights from:
- June 29 to September 30, 2025
- October 20 to November 1, 2025
- December 6 to December 22, 2025
Packages may be available for longer lengths of stay.
With this offer, you can discover the convenience and flexibility of dining plans—which include a certain number of meals and snacks during your stay. And with more than 200 participating dining locations, there’s something to delight nearly every taste!
Disney Visa Cardmembers have exclusive access to this new Free Dining deal and can book now through March 26, 2025. You read that correctly–it ends in only 6 days, so act fast to get in on this Free Dining deal! (More on this brief booking window below in the commentary.)
The Disney Dining Plan included in this special offer depends on the tier of Walt Disney World Resort hotel you select. The regular Disney Dining Plan is included when you choose a stay at a Disney Deluxe or Disney Deluxe Villa Resort hotel.
Here are those eligible resorts:
- Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort
- Boulder Ridge Villas at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge
- The Cabins at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort (Disney Vacation Club)
- Copper Creek Villas & Cabins at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge
- Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge
- Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas – Jambo House
- Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas – Kidani Village
- Disney’s Beach Club Resort
- Disney’s Beach Club Villas
- Disney’s BoardWalk Inn
- Disney’s BoardWalk Villas
- Disney’s Contemporary Resort
- Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa
- Disney’s Old Key West Resort
- Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort
- Disney’s Polynesian Villas & Bungalows
- Disney’s Riviera Resort
- Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa
- Disney’s Wilderness Lodge
- Disney’s Yacht Club Resort
- The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa
The Quick-Service Disney Dining Plan is included when you choose a stay at a Disney Moderate or Value Resort hotel. The following resorts receive the QSDDP as part of the promotion:
- Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort
- Disney’s All-Star Music Resort
- Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort
- Disney’s Art of Animation Resort
- Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort
- Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort
- Disney’s Pop Century Resort
- Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – French Quarter
- Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – Riverside
There are a bunch of terms and conditions, all of which are common for Free Dining. The big one is always room category exclusions: Campsites, 3-Bedroom Grand Villas, Cabins at Copper Creek Villas & Cabins at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge, Bungalows and 2-Bedroom Penthouses at Disney’s Polynesian Villas & Bungalows, Deluxe Rooms at Disney’s Beach Club Resort, and Suites at Disney Deluxe Resort hotels.
Additional per-adult charges may apply if more than 2 adults per room at Disney Value, Moderate, Deluxe and Deluxe Villa Resorts. Table service restaurants may have limited or no availability at time of package purchase (a common complaint with Free Dining in past years has been the lack of ADRs for those who arrived without booking anything in advance, but not really an issue last year).
Cannot be combined with any other discount or promotion. Disney Dining Plans exclude gratuities, which will need to be paid out of pocket at table service restaurants. Children ages 3 to 9 must order from a children’s menu, where available. The number of packages allocated for this offer is limited. Everyone in the same room must be on the same package.
Must use a valid Disney Visa Card or Disney Rewards Redemption Card to pay the deposit. Disney Visa Cardmember must stay in the room. Theme park tickets are valid for admission beginning on date of check-in and must be used within a limited number of days, depending on length of stay and ticket. Some table-service restaurants may have limited or no availability at time of package purchase.
You can book the deal directly via Walt Disney World’s official site here. (This link might come in handy if you’re not seeing Free Dining on DisneyWorld.com’s special offer’s page, which we’re told is a common issue.)
It’s imperative to do the math on Free Dining vs. other special offers to see which works best for your family. As discussed below, that’s going to be difficult right now, but you should still try. Sometimes Free Dining is a good to great deal. Sometimes it isn’t. It all depends upon your unique circumstances. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but there are rough rules of thumb (also discussed below).
When it comes to doing the math, I want to put in a plug for reaching out to a travel agent. Any travel agent! As always, we’d recommend requesting a FREE no obligation quote from Be Our Guest Vacations, an Authorized Disney Vacation Planner and having them book for you.
They’ll assist you with the planning process, help you choose the most economical dates, best add-ons, etc. Notably, they also monitor reservations and can retroactively apply new discounts if a better deal is released to save you more money. (A big thing right now, since better deals keep coming out and supplanting the old ones!)
Equally as important, they’ll help you with discount comparison shopping. There will be several different discounts available for Walt Disney World in the second half of 2025! What you see now is NOT everything that’ll be available for your travel dates if you’re visiting in July 2025 or later.
2025 Free Dining Analysis
This is now the ‘second wave’ of Free Dining (the first ran through August 6, 2025), and it encompasses a subset of the same dates as the first round. Accordingly, we’re expecting that entire room categories are already sold out from day one for many of the July travel dates.
Beyond that, availability should be better. One month we want to draw your attention to is October, which is a fan-favorite time to visit since the weather starts to get better and it’s Halloween. According to the DTB Archives, this is the first time October dates have been included in a Free Dining offer to any meaningful degree since 2015–a full decade ago. For the dealhounds out there who are also discount history buffs, October 1 arrivals were included in 2016; this is the highest number of October arrival dates since 2013!
We’re not surprised by this. To the contrary, we’ve been predicting a comeback of October arrival dates. First last year (wrongly) and now this year (correctly!). This was a smart bet because October just hasn’t been as busy as it previously was once Fall Break is over. In any case, we don’t have any good recent data about the popularity of October Free Dining dates. It was incredibly popular back in 2015-2016, hence it being excluded since. But that was a different era, one during which Free Dining was generally much more popular (and better).
It’s a similar story in recent years for the December arrivals. That’s a popular month for Walt Disney World travelers, so availability then might also go fast–but it should start out better since December has not been part of any previous general public promotions. As such, we’d lock-in something ASAP if you’re planning a visit.
We’re not saying this to scare you into booking before you’re ready or to foster FOMO. It’s simply always a best practice to book early rather than to wait. You can always cancel later if you book something now about which you’re uncertain. You cannot wait and then book something that’s already sold out once you become certain. That is, unless you have a time machine…and there are probably better uses for that technology than booking WDW deals.
That’s the nature of the beast with Walt Disney World discounts whenever there’s high demand and low availability. As always, those who are willing to compromise with hotel choices, room categories, and even travel dates are in the best position. If you are dead-set on a certain type of room at a specific resort and are entirely unwilling to consider anything else…you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.
Right now, this Free Dining promo necessarily involves a large degree of uncertainty since the next round of discounts have not been released for travel dates beyond July 2025. Yes, there were dates through September 2025 for the “Stay Longer & Save More” deal, but everything after July ended early (an increasingly common tactic).
For this reason alone, it might make a larger-than-normal degree of sense to book now, and do the math later.
In all likelihood, there’s another round of Walt Disney World discounts that’ll be released in roughly 1-2 weeks.
This isn’t a matter of me having a crystal ball, it’s what I’m surmising because Disney Visa is referring to this Free Dining deal as “exclusive” or “early” access. Between that and the extremely brief booking window, I’m betting that it expands to the general public sometime on or after March 27, 2025.
That’s around the time that Walt Disney World would normally release another round of discounts, so it’ll probably happen then or perhaps the following week (most likely discount release dates are March 27 or April 1, 2025). We don’t know what those new special offers will be, but past precedent strongly suggests that we’ll see at least some of the following:
- Stay Longer & Save Up to 30% (Wave Two!)
- Save Up to 30% Off Room-Only Rates (Florida Residents)
- Save Up to 35% Off Room-Only Rates (Annual Passholders)
- 4-Park Magic Walt Disney World Discount Ticket
For reference, the first three of those deals were released alongside the second wave of Free Dining for Disney Visa Cardmembers last year (there was no general public Free Dining last year). So if you’re wondering why existing ‘Stay Longer & Save’ deal was abruptly cut short, it was probably so Walt Disney World could re-release it as a new discount. (Last year, the resorts and percentages did shift slightly–it’s worth mentioning that here so you’re aware it could happen, but not the exact shifts as those are not precedential.)
The 4-Park Magic Ticket came about a week earlier. I’d bet on something similar this year, with the possible exception of the 4-Park Magic Ticket. Walt Disney World can get away with delaying that a bit more, especially since Easter is several weeks later this year and almost certainly will be excluded. It also might behoove Disney to delay the 4-Park Magic Ticket if they really want to push Free Dining, as that ticket deal gives a decisive edge to room-only discounts for a lot of guests looking for bottom-dollar prices.
As for why Free Dining is being offered for the above dates and likely will be expanded to the general public, the answer is always hotel occupancy. Walt Disney World does not release any promotion out of corporate generosity. The Disney Dining Plan is “given away” to entice guests to travel at times of year that have lower hotel occupancy rates.
You might wonder why Walt Disney World is giving the discount to tourists taking week-long vacations during the heart of the summer season. It’s because occupancy is lower! Summer ceased being peak season a long time ago, and even with Disney Starlight Night Parade launching this summer to attract crowds, there’s also Epic Universe to draw some of those same crowds to stay on-site at Universal Orlando. Same goes for late October. It’s a bit of a different story with December, which has seen a growing number of discounts to “offset” higher rack rates.
To that point, there’s no such thing as a free lunch–you receive the Disney Dining Plan for “free” because you pay full price for your hotel room and park tickets. You’re also forfeiting other discounts to get this offer! This is also why Free Dining is often not such a great deal. For many families, taking the room-only discount is superior.
You really need to do the math for yourself to determine whether Free Dining is right for you. I cannot stress this enough. Even though it’s the more “boring” deal, the room-only discount paired with that 4-Park Magic Ticket probably will be the better choice for 75% of vacation planners. Obviously, we cannot do the math right now, as Free Dining is the only discount available. But you can make some “guesstimates” based on past precedent, and we can help with that since we track this stuff.
Below are some sweeping generalizations about Free Dining that are usually accurate. I’d expect these to hold true once the room-only discounts and that 4-Park Magic Ticket are released, assuming they’re released (they will be–Disney isn’t pulling back on deals the year Epic Universe opens!).
Free Dining is likely to work best for the following guests:
- Large parties in Family Suites at Value Resorts
- Almost all families staying in standard rooms at Value Resorts
- Most families in standard rooms at Moderate Resorts
- Parties of 3 or more Disney Adults at Deluxe Resorts
Free Dining is likely to work worst for the following guests:
- Solo travelers almost anywhere
- Parties of 2 or fewer at Deluxe Resorts
- Couples at Moderate Resorts
- Smaller parties in Family Suites at Value Resorts
From that, you should have a decent sense of who benefits most and least from Free Dining. Basically, you want to look at party size (the larger, the better!) and age (the older, the better!), and room cost (the lower, the better!). That’s pretty much it…but it sounds simpler than it actually is.
These are not hard & fast rules or numbers, though. The thing to keep in mind about the math is that it’s going to vary for different Walt Disney World vacation planners. This is because there’s both an objective and subjective side to crunching the numbers.
What I mean by that is that we know the cost of the Disney Dining Plan–that’s an objective number. What we don’t know is its value to you. For some people, the DDP is worth more than its price. This is increasingly uncommon with the 2025 Disney Dining Plan than in the past, but those unicorns do exist.
For a lot of others, the DDP is not worth anything close to its sticker price. I would not even consider paying full price for the Disney Dining Plan, so why would I evaluate it at full price when comparing promos? The value you’ll get out of the DDP isn’t its objective cost, but whatever it’s actually worth to you.
If you have to change your eating habits or would waste credits to make it “work” for you, it’s not worth it. This applies to Free Dining because, again, it’s not actually free. If you’re thinking of it as a freebie, you’re evaluating it incorrectly. Oh, and don’t forget gratuities–you still have to pay tips with table service meals, which can be a huge added expense if you get the standard Disney Dining Plan for “free.”
There are plenty of parties who will be better off by simply taking the room-only discount–that’s always the case. Although it’s the “boring” discount, we are strong advocates of the room-only deals in borderline scenarios. Taking the up-front savings and not being “forced” to buy extras just to (supposedly) save more money is usually the best way to go if it’s a close call, in my opinion.
The bottom line is that you always need do the math, because the comparative value of Free Dining varies based upon resort, party size, eating preferences versus alternative discounts.
For more on DDP value for money, see Is Disney’s Dining Plan Worth It? That breaks down the demographics and scenarios in which the Disney Dining Plan is worth getting and the circumstances where it isn’t. Obviously, that’s geared towards the paid DDP, but the same ideas can be applied to Free Dining. A lot of fans incorrectly view the Disney Dining Plan in black and white terms. It’s either always awesome or always awful–there’s no middle ground. Both of those extremes are wrong. In reality, there is only middle ground!
All of this math is difficult to do without being able to directly compare discounts, but hopefully past precedent coupled with our rough rules of thumb gives you a pretty good idea. One option that we’d recommend if you’re borderline is simply booking Free Dining now and modifying whenever the rest of the special offers are released if those end up making more sense for you. We will be closely monitoring what’s released and will notify subscribers of our free email newsletter when any Walt Disney World discounts are released or rumored. Stay tuned!
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
Your Thoughts
Happy to see a ‘second wave’ of Free Dining for the second half 2025? Surprised by the first set of October arrival dates in a decade? Have you booked this Free Dining discount or other deals for 2025? Do you agree or disagree with our analysis? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!