Free Dining Plan For Kids at Disney World All Year Long Just Announced

Disney World has just announced the details for the 2026 hotel and vacation packages. In addition to the expected returning perks, there is now a new offer of free dining for kids that will last all year long at the resort.

This new offer is another way for Disney to incentivize on-property hotel demand and follows a similar unique offer to increase the value of a hotel stay. I’ll break down the offer and the details from the announcement today including the 2026 tickets on sale date for Walt Disney World.

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Disney World Free Dining For Kids

Walt Disney World just announced the 2026 hotel and package perks for those staying on property at one of the Disney World resort hotels. The majority of these perks remain the same as this year and include early theme park entry, transportation, free parking, early access to dining reservations, and more.

If you are looking at Disney World travel for this year, see our listing of all the current Disney World discounts here. You can now book all travel for 2026. You’ll save the most when you book with our travel partner, Get Away Today. Click here for exclusive Mickey Visit discounts on tickets and hotels.

The big news that was just released as part of the 2026 announcements is that kids will now get free dining plans when the dining plan is purchased by an adult in the group. These expanded hotel perks are likely related to Walt Disney World looking ahead to 2026 and seeing uncertainty in travel demand based on several different factors. These include both the broader travel demand in the United States and the expanding competition in Orlando from Universal. Universal is just about to officially open their new Epic Universe theme park and has opened three new hotels just this year.

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Here’s the full text of the free dining plan for kids announcement:

Throughout all of 2026, guests staying at one of our more than 25 Disney Resort hotels will get a free dining plan for their kids (ages 3 to 9) when purchasing a dining plan as part of their package for the other members of their party (ages 10 and up). Dining plans can help you maximize your stay with added peace of mind, letting you enjoy some of the many dining locations we offer from meals to snacks and kid-friendly favorites.

The kids free dining plan offering can be combined with other select special offers, meaning you may still be eligible to take advantage of other deals we later roll out for 2026.

Most notable to me is the final line of this announcement, which is that this is not considered a special offer and is instead considered a perk. That means it can be combined with other special offers. Similar to the free Disney World water park offering, this is another way to entice on-site hotel stays. Disney has also confirmed that the free water parks perk on check-in day will also return in 2026.

Free dining at Disney World has always been a lever that Disney can pull as part of seasonal discounting and offers. Now, they have decided to partially pull that lever for an entire year at the resort. They know that people love the perception of “free” and that having the dining offering will drive more people to use the Walt Disney World dining plan next year. The hope might be that this both lifts the demand for resort hotels and drives more on-property dining spending.

Typically, when Disney releases free dining as a promotion, it can’t be paired with other offers. We encourage readers to price out the savings of free dining vs another discount because often the other discount provides the bigger savings. Now, the consideration is if having the kids free dining makes it worth it for others in the family to pay for the dining plan as part of their stay. This math won’t be something that we can do until we see the pricing on the dining plan for next year.

The final notable piece of this is that now that free dining is being offered here as a perk for kids, we wonder if offering free dining for all guests loses some of its weight. People were excited to see it come back after the 2020 closure caused a hiatus for multiple years due to huge demand for Walt Disney World. Now though, it may not be enough to draw people in next year since adding free dining for adults would only be incrementally better than this perk that was rolled out and because typically the other discounts win out in our comparisons of savings.

Disney has also announced the on sale date for 2026 vacations. You can book your 2026 Disney World vacation starting April 22 for travel dates through October 2026. November and December 2026 travel dates will become available at a later date.

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