Can you do the Dining Plan and buy your park tickets elsewhere?

[g-mama]

I'm confused....just got off the phone with Disney and wanted to add the Dining Plan to our resort reservation. I swear I did this two years and separately bought my tickets through Undercover Tourist to save money. The rep said I have to buy my park tickets along with the dining plan. Is that right????

[Tinkerbell313]

Yes, that has been the case, you must buy park tickets to get dining plan, at least since 2009. You have the option of a resort only reservation or a package reservation (the package includes both the tickets and the DP together, you can't buy separate). However, if you are staying DVC then you can add on the dining plan without tickets.

[hellokitty]

I may be wrong, but I *think* you have to buy at least one days of park tickets to get the dining plan, so it can count as a pkg, not just a room only reservation. At least that was my understanding when I originally booked a room only discount and wanted to add on the dining plan when we had originally planned to stay at a deluxe.

[HallsofVA]

You have to buy at least 1 day of tickets (which of course make them the most expensive tickets you can buy!) to make it a package and get dining, and we had to buy 2 days of tickets to take advantage of free dining the last time we booked it.

We used Undercover Tourist to buy tickets a few years ago (6 day non expiring park hopper), and I still have several days left! Our last disney stay was 5 nights in August, and it worked out to be much cheaper (on a per day basis) to buy the package tickets rather than use our non-expiring park hopper tickets, since once you get past 4 days, the daily cost is very low. Now we use our UT tickets when we're staying 3 or less days.