Deal alert! Walt Disney World in Florida is bringing back its Disney Dining Plan for a limited period in mid-2025.
Historically, the Orlando-area resort has whipped out its food plan to help shore up bookings in softer periods. This year, the plan's dates of availability coincide with the first weeks of operation of Disney's new theme park competitor, Universal Epic Universe, which debuts in May.
The Disney Dining Plan grants holders the right to eat free meals at either "Quick-Service" (counter-service) locations or sit-down restaurants on the resort property.
In 2025, you'll have to meet a few important criteria to qualify for the dining plan, and each has its own costs.
Walt Disney World's frustrating official website will dump you into a digital queue that you must endure before it shows you the barest details, and it will only give you price quotes at the end of an awkward and time-consuming date-and-property search process. We'll break down the basics for you here.
Condition 1: You must stay at the resort on dates when Florida heat and humidity will be at their most unpleasant.
In 2025, the Disney Dining Plan will be offered on "most nights" (Disney's wording, not ours) for a month from May 27 to June 26, 2025, and again for a month from July 7 to August 6, 2025.
School will be out of session in most places in America then, making this deal more attractive to families with kids. However, none of those dates fall in what's considered low season, and, more importantly, they fall during a period when Florida weather can be challenging for the uninitiated.
If you have never experienced peak Florida humidity, imagine a steaming wet rag on your face and a mushroom hothouse in your pants. Surviving the prickly heat, thigh chafing, and routine afternoon thunderstorms of Florida's doggedly wet summer can present a bigger adventure than any theme park land that Disney ever built. Floridians do it every year—but do you want to?
Condition 2: You must pay for at least 3 days of tickets at the theme parks, and you also have to pay for the Park Hopper option.
If you only plan to visit Disney for a day or two, this deal won't be available to you. You have to commit to 3 days of park tickets.
Disney changes its entry prices daily, but in that time of year, you can expect to spend around $475 per person (aged 10 and up) for 3 days of tickets, or around $600 for 4 days.
On top of that, you must add the Park Hopper option, which buys you the privilege of being able to visit more than one theme park a day if you wish. This is a great option to have, but in this case it's not optional. That will add another $80–$101 on top of whatever your base ticket price is.
Condition 3: You must stay at a Disney-run resort hotel, and the lower-priced hotels only buy you a limited dining plan.
This is where the value begins to dissolve, because even Disney's cheapest hotels can cost twice as much as a hotel of an equivalent quality level just outside the resort property.
If you stay at a Disney hotel property that the company labels as "Deluxe," then you may use the full Disney Dining Plan, which grants you enough food credits to populate your schedule with one sit-down table-service restaurant a day and one counter-service meal. Bear in mind that this version of the Dining Plan also requires you to make advance reservations for every restaurant, which will contribute to the burden and complexity of your vacation planning and will also take more time out of your touring schedule to enjoy.
At Disney, hotels at the Deluxe price level routinely cost $800–$1,000 a night, even if your room has a view of the parking lot. Prices go even higher from there.
But if you stay at a Disney property considered "Moderate" or "Value," then you'll be restricted to the type of Dining Plan that only allows you to eat at counter-service, walk-up food outlets, which do not require reservations.
When you pay for them out of pocket, counter-service meals at Disney's Magic Kingdom, including at the Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn & Cafe pictured above, usually cost about $13–$17 a plate, plus about $5 for a soft drink. So estimate about $20 per person per meal if you don't have the Dining Plan. Kids' meals cost about $10, with a drink included at most locations. The Dining Plan at Moderate and Value hotels gets you two meals, one snack, and a refillable mug.
Meanwhile, Disney's Moderate hotels can easily cost in the middle $300s to mid-$400s a night, while Value properties will be priced in the upper $200s a night.
That's why staying at a Disney hotel to obtain the Dining Plan is a false economy. Outside the park gates, it's a snap to find hotels of similar quality starting in the $100s. At that price level, you could afford to buy your own counter-service meals at Disney and still pay less than what Disney demands for its hotels.
Assuming you pay $40 per adult per day for counter-service meals for lunch and dinner, you'd still pay less staying at a non-Disney hotel, without the Dining Plan, than what you'd have paid to meet the high bar required to quality for the "free" Dining Plan.
Disney resort hotel guests don't have to pay the $30-a-day theme park parking fee, but off-property guests can afford to pay that, too, and still save money.
Another thing to know: Both versions of Disney's Dining Plan cover only two meals a day. You're still paying out of pocket for other meals, typically breakfast. The Dining Plan also doesn't include gratuities for servers, so if you have the nicest plan, you'll still have to pay out of pocket to tip (unless your party is six or more, in which case the gratuity is automatically added at 18%).
Also, all of your party has to be on the plan. You can't exclude anyone staying in your room.
So if you're looking at Disney's offers of a free Dining Plan because you assume it would save you money, that's often not the case. You'd have to spend too much money to qualify to begin with.
And don't assume that you can find a discounted hotel room at Disney World to make this bargain worth it. Disney explicitly warns that the Dining Plan will only be valid for undiscounted rooms. You'll have to pay full price, baby.
Disney is also making a big splash about another freebie in 2025: the right to use a Disney waterslide park for free on the day of your arrival.
But as we pointed out when that perk was announced, it's not as useful as it seems, either. Most people spend their arrival day traveling from elsewhere and they won't get to the Disney property in time to make use of this privilege. If Disney really wanted to be nice, it would have given us the ability to use a water park for free on the day of departure instead. This is another benefit that won't benefit many.
Is the Disney Dining Plan worth it in 2025?
Based on the cost breakdown above, you'll only save money using the Disney Dining Plan if you meet the following conditions: You were already planning on spending the extra cash to stay in a Disney hotel anyway, and you had already planned to stay for at least 3 days with Park Hopper tickets.
If that scenario matches your original intentions, then free is free—grab the Dining Plan.
But if you hadn't intended to pay Disney's inflated hotel prices or linger at the resort that long, then don't assume that splurging to qualify for the Dining Plan offer will save you any money.
Jason Cochran is the author of the award-winning Frommer's Disney World, Universal & Orlando guidebook.
