We stayed at Disney's Pop Century Resort: Classic Years this time around. We had the Disney Dining Plan for 5 of the 7 nights.

Thoughts & Observations:

• This was by far the coldest trip to Walt Disney World. I did not even break the shorts out of the suit case. Three of the days the temperature was in the 30s when my day started and highs did not get much further than 50s a couple of the days. The coldest I saw was a wind chill of 21 degrees the one morning. Luckily we only had rain part of one day and even that did not really linger long or rain that hard.
  
  
• This trip we took advantage of the free dining promotion for 5 of the nights and annual passholder rates for the other two, all were at Disney's Pop Century Resort.
  
  
• Once back I went through our receipts and was curious how much we would have saved if we had actually bought the dining plan. In the end it came out to about an 8% savings vs paying for the same food. Since the plan was free it was a great deal but if we would have paid for it I am not sure it would have been worth it. Also a couple of times I felt we ordered food because you were allowed to not because we needed or wanted it. For example some of the desserts.
  
  
• Two dining disappointments this trip. First was that Trailsend no longer serves the buffet for lunch. It is a dinner only option. We were planning on heading out there for a lunch. I hope they change back. Secondly we failed to get a reservation at Le Cellier. I had one lunch one prior to our dining plan and ended up canceling since it was outside the plan window. But in the 8 days all I could find was that one lunch and I tried over 100 days out. The problem is the booking window opened at 180 days out. Add in the free dining promotions, normal dining plan guests, and the Candlelight packages and dinner was out of the question. Maybe next year when this switched to two dining points for dinner it will be easier.
  
  
• Our stay at Pop Century was uneventful. The new TVs were nice to see and made the room feel more modern and even slightly larger. The resort was busy as usual and if you tried to eat during peak breakfast hours good luck getting a hot breakfast.