CaliforniaGirl09
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2009
Intro:
We are West Coast Disneylandphiles who have branched out to WDW in the past year, mostly due to RunDisney. My friend @Calfan “discovered” the half-marathons a couple years ago. I thought she was nuts, but I eventually decided to try out the Star Wars Light Side with her at DLR in January 2017. I just completed my 6th RunDisney half since then! I guess you could say I’m hooked, LOL. We’ve been DVC owners of VGC for almost a decade, but we just added on at BLT so we have some place to stay at WDW going forward for the races.
We are a family of four: me, DH, DS21 (special needs) and DD18. This was my fourth trip to WDW in the past year, but it was the first time all four of us had been to WDW together since Christmas about ten years ago. I went to Dark Side last April with @Calfan for a last minute girls’ race trip, the kids flew out to join me after a conference in the summer (DH had to work), and our daughter missed the last trip in February for Princess as she was at University. Fortunately, the Dark Side fell over her long Easter Break so she was able to join us.
Our first family trip to WDW ten years ago was a bit of a disappointment. Compared to Disneyland where you can walk back and forth between the parks easily and ride tons of rides each day, the buses and spread out nature of WDW was hard to adjust to. We’d tried out a few of the restaurants, but we didn’t really “get” the whole going to Disney to eat thing as at Disneyland it isn't a big deal.
That changed last summer. The kids and I tried out the DxDP when they flew out to join me after I had a conference in July, and I think it really helped us differentiate DLR and WDW in a positive way. We stopped trying to fit WDW in the DLR box and ended up enjoying the experience much more. At Disneyland we were ride commandos, but that really didn’t work well at WDW. Sitting down for a nice meal and spreading out the day with dining reservations helped to combat the frustration of not being able to do as many rides. We also decided to UBER/LYFT everywhere rather than rely on buses. That was a huge lift in the frustration level. I haven’t added it up, but I think we were around $200 in UBER/LYFT rides, which was easily the best $200 we spent on the trip. So. Worth. It.
Relying on buses would have made my ADRs (see chart below), which were all over the place, much more time consuming. For example, I was able to secure a couple FOP FP+ times, but—of course—they butted up against ADRs. One night we had a 5:50 FOP and 7:20 Dinner reservation at Jiko, and another night we had a 5:05 FOP and a dining reservation at Akershus for 6:55. If you’ve been on FOP, you know that it an take a long time (40-60 minutes) even in the FP line. For both reservations we were booking it across the parks, but thanks to UBER we made them. We wouldn’t have been able to do this on the buses as we would have needed a lot more time.
Back to the dining plan … we enjoyed the DxDP so much on our trip last summer, that DH, DS, and I did it again for the Princess in February. In those first two trips, we ended up coming out about $400 ahead with three people. This time, because there were four of us, that number improved. You'll see how much in the last spreadsheet.
I posted the results of our first two trips in the Dining Reviews forum [https://www.disboards.com/threads/i...anning-mini-reviews-thoughts-updated.3624113/]. As that post turned out to be more about the numbers/spreadsheets than the dining reviews, however, I probably should have posted over here. This time around, I also decided to add an additional spreadsheet for what we actually ordered so that skeptics can see that we definitely don’t max out the plan allotments or pick the most expensive item. We just ordered what we wanted as we normally would have done. Sadly, for our family of four, $200ish is pretty much par for the course in dining out at Disney Restaurants.
Here is the chart of our tentative plans:
A couple of notes. We arrived really late Wednesday night (2:30 am) and stayed in a one-bedroom standard at Kidani. We switched over to a Savanna one-bedroom for the rest of the stay so we had 4 nights on the DxDP. We pretty much held to the itinerary with the exception of a few fast passes. I cancelled the FOP on Monday due to our flight time and hopefully made someone happy
CONTINUED IN NEXT POST ...
We are West Coast Disneylandphiles who have branched out to WDW in the past year, mostly due to RunDisney. My friend @Calfan “discovered” the half-marathons a couple years ago. I thought she was nuts, but I eventually decided to try out the Star Wars Light Side with her at DLR in January 2017. I just completed my 6th RunDisney half since then! I guess you could say I’m hooked, LOL. We’ve been DVC owners of VGC for almost a decade, but we just added on at BLT so we have some place to stay at WDW going forward for the races.
We are a family of four: me, DH, DS21 (special needs) and DD18. This was my fourth trip to WDW in the past year, but it was the first time all four of us had been to WDW together since Christmas about ten years ago. I went to Dark Side last April with @Calfan for a last minute girls’ race trip, the kids flew out to join me after a conference in the summer (DH had to work), and our daughter missed the last trip in February for Princess as she was at University. Fortunately, the Dark Side fell over her long Easter Break so she was able to join us.
Our first family trip to WDW ten years ago was a bit of a disappointment. Compared to Disneyland where you can walk back and forth between the parks easily and ride tons of rides each day, the buses and spread out nature of WDW was hard to adjust to. We’d tried out a few of the restaurants, but we didn’t really “get” the whole going to Disney to eat thing as at Disneyland it isn't a big deal.
That changed last summer. The kids and I tried out the DxDP when they flew out to join me after I had a conference in July, and I think it really helped us differentiate DLR and WDW in a positive way. We stopped trying to fit WDW in the DLR box and ended up enjoying the experience much more. At Disneyland we were ride commandos, but that really didn’t work well at WDW. Sitting down for a nice meal and spreading out the day with dining reservations helped to combat the frustration of not being able to do as many rides. We also decided to UBER/LYFT everywhere rather than rely on buses. That was a huge lift in the frustration level. I haven’t added it up, but I think we were around $200 in UBER/LYFT rides, which was easily the best $200 we spent on the trip. So. Worth. It.
Relying on buses would have made my ADRs (see chart below), which were all over the place, much more time consuming. For example, I was able to secure a couple FOP FP+ times, but—of course—they butted up against ADRs. One night we had a 5:50 FOP and 7:20 Dinner reservation at Jiko, and another night we had a 5:05 FOP and a dining reservation at Akershus for 6:55. If you’ve been on FOP, you know that it an take a long time (40-60 minutes) even in the FP line. For both reservations we were booking it across the parks, but thanks to UBER we made them. We wouldn’t have been able to do this on the buses as we would have needed a lot more time.
Back to the dining plan … we enjoyed the DxDP so much on our trip last summer, that DH, DS, and I did it again for the Princess in February. In those first two trips, we ended up coming out about $400 ahead with three people. This time, because there were four of us, that number improved. You'll see how much in the last spreadsheet.
I posted the results of our first two trips in the Dining Reviews forum [https://www.disboards.com/threads/i...anning-mini-reviews-thoughts-updated.3624113/]. As that post turned out to be more about the numbers/spreadsheets than the dining reviews, however, I probably should have posted over here. This time around, I also decided to add an additional spreadsheet for what we actually ordered so that skeptics can see that we definitely don’t max out the plan allotments or pick the most expensive item. We just ordered what we wanted as we normally would have done. Sadly, for our family of four, $200ish is pretty much par for the course in dining out at Disney Restaurants.
Here is the chart of our tentative plans:
A couple of notes. We arrived really late Wednesday night (2:30 am) and stayed in a one-bedroom standard at Kidani. We switched over to a Savanna one-bedroom for the rest of the stay so we had 4 nights on the DxDP. We pretty much held to the itinerary with the exception of a few fast passes. I cancelled the FOP on Monday due to our flight time and hopefully made someone happy
CONTINUED IN NEXT POST ...