A little over one month after Walt Disney World released the ‘second wave’ of the 2025 Free Dining Plan discount for Summer through Christmas, they’ve abruptly ended the deal. Here’s what we know, along with our speculation about why the special offer was prematurely pulled and whether it’s an issue of high occupancy or preparing for a third wave of Free Dining.
Before you get too worried about the end of Free Dining, see All Current Walt Disney World Discounts for 2025. There are promos available for most dates between now and July 2025, plus targeted special offers through Christmas 2025. So that’s worth checking out if you’re debating when to travel and which deals to book.
In case you missed it, the second wave of Free Dining was released back on March 27 for guests purchasing a non-discounted Walt Disney World vacation package that includes a room at a select hotel with Park Hopper tickets. It was valid for arrivals June 29 to September 30, 2025; October 20 to November 1, 2025; December 6 to December 22, 2025. This date range made Free Dining the rare general public discount with validity windows beyond July 31, 2025.
While Walt Disney World has gotten more aggressive with discounts in 2025, they’ve also become more strategic about ending them early. It used to be the case that special offers were bookable until the immediately before the travel period started or ended. Meaning that past precedent would’ve dictated that Free Dining be bookable until June 29 at the absolute earliest. Room-only discounts were often bookable until the very last day of eligibility (December 22, 2025 in this case, but that’s never how Free Dining worked).
For a specific example, 2019 Free Dining had dates from September 1 to December 23, 2019, and was bookable through September 29, 2019–an end date that was announced when the promo was first released. When the booking windows opened and closed for Free Dining in the last few years pre-closure were all over the place, as Walt Disney World often did multiple waves–some for the general public and some just for Disney Visa. It was common for Free Dining to get released and re-released to drum up interest.
This is still happening, arguably even more so with Walt Disney World re-mixing special offers. The big difference is that it’s becoming less and less common for Disney to specify a “book by” date up-front. Instead of specifying an end date, many discounts simply state “Now Booking” or “Check Availability” and are open ended. Here’s what that can look like on the Disneyworld.com deal page:
This button used to say “Book through: [date]” and is still formatted that way. “Book through: Now Booking” doesn’t exactly make sense, does it?
The reason we’re mentioning this is because several special offers have been pulled early (by historical standards). This has caught many longtime Walt Disney World vacation planners by surprise, as they assumed they had longer to make a reservation, but instead, the deal vanished.
When browse the special offers page on Disneyworld.com, you’ll notice Free Dining is no longer listed. When attempting to visit the old URL directly, the deal has vanished and this appears in its place:
This is nothing new and even though the ‘last valid offer date’ did not pass, it’s also not a glitch. This has happened consistently and repeatedly with the ‘stay longer & save more’ and ‘book early & save more’ discounts, among other discounts.
The currently-available Stay Longer & Save Up to 30% Off Walt Disney World Resorts in Summer & Fall 2025 was previously released at the beginning of this year with better savings for the more distant travel dates. It was pulled early, and then re-released with tweaks to the dates and scaled-back savings. The exact same thing happened in 2024.
Both of the last two years, the first ‘wave’ of those deals were incredibly popular. They offered significant savings on popular dates, so long as guests booked early and locked-in longer stays. They were so popular, in fact, that Walt Disney World “ran out” of room inventory fairly quickly last year, and quietly pulled the deal from the website.
We just wanted to give you a heads up about this practice, as Walt Disney World is doing it more and more. From our perspective, this actually isn’t the worst thing. Disney has also gotten very aggressive with deals, both the percentage savings and the eligible dates. It’s better to release superior discounts for historically popular dates and pull them quickly than to not release them at all.
It just means that vacation planners need to be on top of booking special offers ASAP when they’re released. And by ASAP, I really just mean “within a week or two.” It’s not like they’re being pulled within 24 hours or even a few days. For a lot of these special offers, the biggest limiting factor is room inventory, and always has been. The removal from the website is somewhat of a distinction without a difference if you couldn’t find resort availability in the past, anyway.
The alternative is doing more targeted discounts that aren’t available to everyone, or keeping the deal open but having minimal availability. The current approach is understandably disappointing to those who thought they had more time, but leaving a discount with slim to no availability up on the ‘special offers’ page would be even more frustrating (and time-wasting). For this and other reasons, we always advise booking within 3 days of when deals are released–the earlier, the better. You can always cancel later–but you cannot book a deal once it’s pulled or resort/room availability runs out!
That’s just generalized advice about special offers in general, and really is more of a warning about the ‘stay longer & save more’ deal that’s still available (for now). A reminder to act before it’s too late–and for the next time such an offer is released in December or January.
Arguably, this does not apply to Free Dining circa 2025. This discount is no longer that popular. Not like it used to be, and not even as compared to the aforementioned ‘stay longer’ deal that remains bookable.
So what gives? In theory, one possible explanation is discussed in Walt Disney World Bookings Are Up for Rest of 2025. As the title suggests, bookings are outpacing last year. During Disney’s latest earnings call, CFO Hugh Johnston expressed enthusiasm for the Experiences segment, indicating it performed better than expected for the fiscal quarter.
He shared that bookings for Walt Disney World are trending up 4% in the third quarter and are up 7% for the fourth quarter. While those year-over-year increases sound impressive–and are given the surrounding circumstances–keep in mind that last year was down as compared to the prior year. So the baseline was lower, and this is more a reversion to the norm. Walt Disney World might want to further fuel these strong results by continuing the aggressive discounts.
While the 4% and 7% increases are good news for Walt Disney World, it’s probably not the explanation for Free Dining ending early. It would make sense if other discounts that encompass the fourth quarter were also quietly pulled, but they were not.
Moreover, Free Dining is a deal that management loves because it locks in higher per guest spending, which is one of the company’s favorite metrics to share with investors. It requires that guests purchase full-priced park tickets and hotel reservations, whereas the a la carte deals do no such thing. That’s precisely why our mathematical analysis, 2025 Free Dining vs. Room & Ticket Deals at Disney World, came down strongly in favor of the a la carte deals for the vast majority of guests.
Another theoretical possibility is Advance Dining Reservation availability. That Walt Disney World is pulling Free Dining to ensure there are adequate ADRs to preserve the guest experience or whatever. We highly, highly doubt that. Things have changed in a big way, and ADRs are much easier, even during Free Dining season. If anything, Walt Disney World needs more dining deals to help fill tables.
That leaves us with a couple of plausible explanations. The first is that there really is no rational reason. That Free Dining was pulled because Walt Disney World is satisfied that it has met certain targets and projections are looking better, but that there’s no rhyme or reason as to why the deal that ended early was Free Dining as opposed to the other options. They just picked one at random.
While I tend to think that Walt Disney World fans overestimate the degree of strategy and analytics that go into the decision-making processes, that’s just as a general matter. When it comes to special offers, there’s usually a fairly high degree of precision and careful consideration. Even if decisions miss the mark in retrospect, they were thoughtfully made in the first place. Nothing happens at random.
That thus leaves the final possibility: Walt Disney World plans on releasing a third wave of Free Dining for 2025 (or rather, re-releasing this one). In which case, there are several possible reasons for ending this special offer early. Perhaps the arrival dates are going to differ, with some cut and others added. Maybe eligibility is going to change, going from general public to Disney+ subscribers or Disney Visa cardholders. It’s also possible they just want to drum up demand or create a false sense of urgency.
This is basically the Disney Vault, but applied to discounts. It’s savvy strategy when it comes to incentivizing obsessive Walt Disney World vacation planners…but arguably less effective with casual guests who might only visit DisneyWorld.com once, see no discounts for their dates, and book vacations elsewhere.
One final possibility is that bookings are so slow for Free Dining that there’s internal recognition that the current version of the deal is insufficient. This is precisely why we think they’ve introduced the Kids Eat FREE All Year in 2026 at Walt Disney World perk for bookings next year.
What if there’s a new promo planned that riffs on that for this year? Maybe it’ll be the Half-Off Kids Tickets and Dining Plans Deal or the Free Dining Card Deal: Up to $200 Per Night Deal that were offered in 2023 and 2024. Everything we saw suggested that both of those offers are actually now more popular with planners than traditional Free Dining.
That wouldn’t surprise me in the least, especially given how the current room and ticket deals trounce 2025 Free Dining. And if there is going to be a kids eat free or dining card deal, or some variation thereof, it might make sense for Walt Disney World to pull traditional Free Dining to avoid consumer confusion, or in order to highlight one of those signature special offers as part of a future promotional push.
Ultimately, it’ll be interesting to see what happens. We previously didn’t expect to see a third wave of 2025 Free Dining given the arrival dates of the second wave extending all the way to December and it being offered to the general public. However, the aggressive deals released over the last month-plus coupled with the 2026 offer and 2025 Free Dining being pulled prematurely cast doubt on that. At this point, we would now be surprised if there’s not another version of a ‘free food’ deal for the second half of this year. Or at least some type of novel, ‘signature’ special offer that Disney wants in the spotlight instead of Free Dining.
We’ll be closely monitoring the 2025 Walt Disney World discount situation, keeping our ears open for more news about other special offers. Should anything be released or rumored for future travel dates, we’ll send you an alert if you sign up for our FREE Walt Disney World newsletter.
In the meantime, if there’s currently a discount available for your travel dates, book that as a hedge for the reasons identified above. Although we suspect more deals will be released for the second half of 2025, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be better than what’s available now–and nothing to say the current special offers won’t be poofed just like Free Dining. As always, we recommend that Walt Disney World first-timers or regulars who just don’t want to deal with the hassle use a travel agent. (Click here to request a free quote from Be Our Guest Vacations, an Authorized Disney Travel Planner that we recommend.)
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
What do you think of Free Dining ending early? Think Walt Disney World poofed it because bookings are already strong, and they’re going to pull back on discounting for the remainder of 2025? Or do you think Free Dining just wasn’t competing with the other offers, so we’re going to see a better marquee deal? Would you book a third wave of Free Dining for the general public if it covered different dates? What would get you to book Free Dining? Thoughts about the 2025 Free Dining discount versus room-only and ticket deals? Agree or disagree with our commentary? Any questions? Hearing your feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts or questions below in the comments!
