DDP with two "infants"

shan981

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jul 21, 2017
We are visiting the week after Thanksgiving 2018 and right now have our reservation booked with DDP. Wondering if/hoping that dining will go free, but if it doesn't, I'm starting to wonder if it will be worth it. Obviously we have time to decide, but looking for input.

We will have a 10yo DS, and 23 month old twins. I know that children under 3 don't get the DDP and can either share or have their own plates at buffets. But I'm thinking with two of them, we will most likely have to buy at least one meal for them to split every time unless we eat at all buffets, which we aren't that crazy about. This will drive up the cost of dining and makes me think maybe it's better just to pay OOP for everyone as we go.
 
We are visiting the week after Thanksgiving 2018 and right now have our reservation booked with DDP. Wondering if/hoping that dining will go free, but if it doesn't, I'm starting to wonder if it will be worth it. Obviously we have time to decide, but looking for input.

We will have a 10yo DS, and 23 month old twins. I know that children under 3 don't get the DDP and can either share or have their own plates at buffets. But I'm thinking with two of them, we will most likely have to buy at least one meal for them to split every time unless we eat at all buffets, which we aren't that crazy about. This will drive up the cost of dining and makes me think maybe it's better just to pay OOP for everyone as we go.

What resort are you booked at? Values and MODs now only get the the QSDP, not DDP. Unless you are booked at a Deluxe, many people feel that FD at a MOD has a lot less value now that they have to pay to upgrade to the DDP.
 
We are booked for a split stay, 4 nights at CR and 4 nights at AoA, both with DDP right now. So that's true, if FD does become a thing for that time frame, we would have to upgrade for the second half of our stay. Or, we may just stick with QSDP for those days and do our character dining at the beginning. I guess I'm more concerned with what to do if there is not FD. The dining cost seems expensive when it is only covering 3/5 of our party. Granted, the other 2/5 will be toddlers, but it's hard to justify spending so much up front and then definitely having to spend OOP at almost every meal as well.
 
You will be paying the adult price for the 10 year old as well. There might be places where he wants a kids meal or where you would do better paying for something for everyone to share (Via Napoli pizza, for instance). If you are going to a lot of fixed price, it might make since.
I, personally, think it is easier to go without and do what I want. It really is not a big money saver on the adult plan, and you could lose money on it. (Some people see it as convenient, and there is value in that, but we like to be less restricted)
 


We are visiting the week after Thanksgiving 2018 and right now have our reservation booked with DDP. Wondering if/hoping that dining will go free, but if it doesn't, I'm starting to wonder if it will be worth it. Obviously we have time to decide, but looking for input.

We will have a 10yo DS, and 23 month old twins. I know that children under 3 don't get the DDP and can either share or have their own plates at buffets. But I'm thinking with two of them, we will most likely have to buy at least one meal for them to split every time unless we eat at all buffets, which we aren't that crazy about. This will drive up the cost of dining and makes me think maybe it's better just to pay OOP for everyone as we go.

I would drop all the dining plans and just get an order to your room of breakfast, snacks (especially toddler ones) and shelf-stable drinks and I'd eat as you go. Worrying about dining reservations with 2 2 year olds would drive me insane (having 1 in the mood for TS is hard enough) and the CS plan is a ripoff at full price...
 
We are booked for a split stay, 4 nights at CR and 4 nights at AoA, both with DDP right now. So that's true, if FD does become a thing for that time frame, we would have to upgrade for the second half of our stay. Or, we may just stick with QSDP for those days and do our character dining at the beginning. I guess I'm more concerned with what to do if there is not FD. The dining cost seems expensive when it is only covering 3/5 of our party. Granted, the other 2/5 will be toddlers, but it's hard to justify spending so much up front and then definitely having to spend OOP at almost every meal as well.

You're aware that free dining is not really cost effective on a split stay, correct?
So if you get FD on your CR stay...you have to buy whatever the required tickets are.
If you then want FD on your AoA stay, not only do you have to upgrade the QSDP but you have to have a minimum ticket purchase.

So let's assume you want 3 adult tickets, 8 day, parkhoppers $1485

(Now, traditionally, people could save their unused tickets for another trip, but those have expiration dates now)

But with free dining, you would have to have the tickets attached to each stay. So even if you did minimum tickets the second hotel:

OR 6 days tickets parkhoppers stay $1395 plus 2 day parkhoppers for free dining second stay $777=$2172

So you are probably going to spend around $600 or $700 extra on tickets PLUS you have to upgrade to DDP. (Plus you pay full price for the room)

I would either go totally out of pocket for food and take the room discounts OR if free dining came along, then I would do free dining on the first stay, but the tickets I need then and do room only the second part of the stay.
 
I would drop all the dining plans and just get an order to your room of breakfast, snacks (especially toddler ones) and shelf-stable drinks and I'd eat as you go. Worrying about dining reservations with 2 2 year olds would drive me insane (having 1 in the mood for TS is hard enough) and the CS plan is a ripoff at full price...
I went with my twins when they were 2 1/2 and when they were 3 1/2. We found that early morning and dinner were hard to predict. We had a miserable experience at Ohana dinner because we had to wake them from nap early. Anyhow...we found that brunch (like doing the breakfast buffet at 10:30) or lunch were the best ADRs for us to have because between 10-12 we can guarantee that everyone is awake and hungry (they never sleep in that late or nap that early). They can also be cheaper than dinners when paying out of pocket.
 


You're aware that free dining is not really cost effective on a split stay, correct?
So if you get FD on your CR stay...you have to buy whatever the required tickets are.
If you then want FD on your AoA stay, not only do you have to upgrade the QSDP but you have to have a minimum ticket purchase.

So let's assume you want 3 adult tickets, 8 day, parkhoppers $1485

(Now, traditionally, people could save their unused tickets for another trip, but those have expiration dates now)

But with free dining, you would have to have the tickets attached to each stay. So even if you did minimum tickets the second hotel:

OR 6 days tickets parkhoppers stay $1395 plus 2 day parkhoppers for free dining second stay $777=$2172

So you are probably going to spend around $600 or $700 extra on tickets PLUS you have to upgrade to DDP. (Plus you pay full price for the room)

I would either go totally out of pocket for food and take the room discounts OR if free dining came along, then I would do free dining on the first stay, but the tickets I need then and do room only the second part of the stay.

Thank you for pointing this out! I didn't realize there was a ticket requirement for FD. Right now we have 7 day tickets + DDP attached to the CR reservation, then DDP only on the AoA reservation. (Side note: Is that even possible? I was not able to book that way on the Disney website myself, but my TA did it. I'm still leery of if that's even a thing because everything I've read said DDP can only be part of a package including a room and tickets). Anyway, if there is FD, then yes we would probably only add it to the CR portion of the stay rather than change the tickets around. We won't be back to WDW for at least 4-5 years after this trip so there's no point in buying and saving extra tickets.
 
Thank you for pointing this out! I didn't realize there was a ticket requirement for FD. Right now we have 7 day tickets + DDP attached to the CR reservation, then DDP only on the AoA reservation. (Side note: Is that even possible? I was not able to book that way on the Disney website myself, but my TA did it. I'm still leery of if that's even a thing because everything I've read said DDP can only be part of a package including a room and tickets). Anyway, if there is FD, then yes we would probably only add it to the CR portion of the stay rather than change the tickets around. We won't be back to WDW for at least 4-5 years after this trip so there's no point in buying and saving extra tickets.

Yes, your second stay with just room and DDP is okay. It's called a ticketless package and CANNOT be done online; can only be done by calling. Since you have a TA, they did the calling for you.
 
I went with my twins when they were 2 1/2 and when they were 3 1/2. We found that early morning and dinner were hard to predict. We had a miserable experience at Ohana dinner because we had to wake them from nap early. Anyhow...we found that brunch (like doing the breakfast buffet at 10:30) or lunch were the best ADRs for us to have because between 10-12 we can guarantee that everyone is awake and hungry (they never sleep in that late or nap that early). They can also be cheaper than dinners when paying out of pocket.

Thank you, good to know that Disney with 2yo twins wasn't so bad, you went back when they were 3 after all, haha. It's kind of hard to plan right now (and we have lots of time anyway) because they are only 7 months, so I'm not sure what their sleep schedule or eating habits will be in another 15 months.
 
Thank you, good to know that Disney with 2yo twins wasn't so bad, you went back when they were 3 after all, haha. It's kind of hard to plan right now (and we have lots of time anyway) because they are only 7 months, so I'm not sure what their sleep schedule or eating habits will be in another 15 months.

It was definitely not a relaxing type of vacation, but lots of fun. We are also lucky that we didn't feel the need to "do it all" because we have been before and were planning to go back again. We did a lot of 1/2 days (mostly rope drop until just after lunch) and then just played whatever happened after nap more by ear (except a Pirates and Pals cruise one day and the aforementioned Ohana disaster)
 
Thank you for pointing this out! I didn't realize there was a ticket requirement for FD. Right now we have 7 day tickets + DDP attached to the CR reservation, then DDP only on the AoA reservation. (Side note: Is that even possible? I was not able to book that way on the Disney website myself, but my TA did it. I'm still leery of if that's even a thing because everything I've read said DDP can only be part of a package including a room and tickets). Anyway, if there is FD, then yes we would probably only add it to the CR portion of the stay rather than change the tickets around. We won't be back to WDW for at least 4-5 years after this trip so there's no point in buying and saving extra tickets.
I think you may want to do some math. If there is a Room Only percentage off discount offered that may be your best bet. I do not know the specifics of your reservation, but I always look at whatever discounts are available and use the one that works best for us. Sometimes FD is not cost effective. Because you have a ten year old, and are not invested in buffets and AYCTE meals, you may find a dining plan is adding too much to your bill as well.

I would look at where you want to eat, and what the kids will eat. Childrens meals are not very expensive, so buying a meal for the little ones may work out, especially if your 10 YO wants kids meals as well. At 10 my DGD was all over the place at mealtime, sometimes kids nuggets or mac and cheese, and other times the adult steak.
 
My son is currently 23 months and his eating habits change from day to day! At Disney, we have lots of his favorite snacks sent to the room via Amazon Prime and we fill in the gaps of meals with those. Usually bites from my husband's and my plates are enough to fill him up, but I can see your concern with having 2 toddlers. I would think (if they're good eaters) that you would at least want to split a kids meal between them.
 
My son is currently 23 months and his eating habits change from day to day! At Disney, we have lots of his favorite snacks sent to the room via Amazon Prime and we fill in the gaps of meals with those. Usually bites from my husband's and my plates are enough to fill him up, but I can see your concern with having 2 toddlers. I would think (if they're good eaters) that you would at least want to split a kids meal between them.

That was my thought, too. If there was only one of them, then I would think we could probably make do with sharing some from each of our plates. But with two to feed, depending on how well they eat at the time, we may need more.

I also just realized that we are paying the full adult price for DS10. I guess I should say that what I just realized is what a substantial difference there is between adult and child pricing on the dining plan. I knew DS10 was considered an "adult" by Disney standards, but I didn't know it was a ~$50 per day difference. I think that might actually push us to drop the dining plan, especially considering that the adult price includes an alcoholic beverage for him that we will obviously never use, but it is certainly factored into the rate. Of course, I'll still watch for free dining and see if that would benefit us or if there are any other discounts available, but at full price, I don't think it makes sense to pay for a DDP for a just-turned 10yo.
 
That was my thought, too. If there was only one of them, then I would think we could probably make do with sharing some from each of our plates. But with two to feed, depending on how well they eat at the time, we may need more.

I also just realized that we are paying the full adult price for DS10. I guess I should say that what I just realized is what a substantial difference there is between adult and child pricing on the dining plan. I knew DS10 was considered an "adult" by Disney standards, but I didn't know it was a ~$50 per day difference. I think that might actually push us to drop the dining plan, especially considering that the adult price includes an alcoholic beverage for him that we will obviously never use, but it is certainly factored into the rate. Of course, I'll still watch for free dining and see if that would benefit us or if there are any other discounts available, but at full price, I don't think it makes sense to pay for a DDP for a just-turned 10yo.

The beverage could be a specialty drink, and not an alcoholic beverage. These can be costly.

Before people choose to use a dining plan or opt not, I always suggest that they book the meals they want and look at the menu items each would choose. Look at CS options for meals that you would eat that are not TS restaurants. Snacks? After that, add it up. Once you have a number in mind you can make a good decision about plans in general/
 
That was my thought, too. If there was only one of them, then I would think we could probably make do with sharing some from each of our plates. But with two to feed, depending on how well they eat at the time, we may need more.

I also just realized that we are paying the full adult price for DS10. I guess I should say that what I just realized is what a substantial difference there is between adult and child pricing on the dining plan. I knew DS10 was considered an "adult" by Disney standards, but I didn't know it was a ~$50 per day difference. I think that might actually push us to drop the dining plan, especially considering that the adult price includes an alcoholic beverage for him that we will obviously never use, but it is certainly factored into the rate. Of course, I'll still watch for free dining and see if that would benefit us or if there are any other discounts available, but at full price, I don't think it makes sense to pay for a DDP for a just-turned 10yo.
Sounds like if you get free dining that will be brilliant but otherwise easier to fit around the family without it. We only got free QDP but that suits us and we've booked four TS to top it up which again will be enough with 2 littlies with us this trip.
 

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