Here's my mini trip report from our trip in March and my thoughts about dining:
We decided at the last minute (beg of March) that our family of 5 could go to Disney for spring break Mar. 25-31, but we had to be on a tight budget. No Contemporary for us! Oh well, after getting over the sticker shock of the price of the park tickets and absolutely no great bargains (Disney needs to meet Target), I swallowed my bargain hunter pride and paid 99% retail and dropped $900 on 5 day base tickets at Wal-Mart. You really only wanted to know my thoughts on dining, right? It wouldn't make much sense without some background info. We stayed off sight, I know, bad, but we got a nice room for $68 a night! And at such a late planning date, there were no rooms available for a family of 5. Anyhow, the only other place to cut costs was food. So, being the great researcher, I gathered all the info for my thesis on Disney for Target clearance shoppers. I planned to follow all the tips about eating in your room, taking food to the parks, blah, blah, blah. This got really old after the first two days! Pop-Tarts, milk, juice, whatever in the room for breakfast was no problem. BUT, packing drinks, snacks, camera, ponchos, change of clothes made for a very heavy backpack. But still we were determined to not eat in the World. What? We're in MK for all of 30 minutes waiting to see Ariel and I'm already dropping $10 on bananas, muffins, and water. It's hard work power walking from the Dopey lot to the Grotto! Anyhow, we left MK for lunch in our room, sleep, swim before heading back to MK. Of course, as directed, we ate supper before returning, but what to eat? Fast food? No, we needed some serious nourishment for we had a Kingdom to conquer! But where do we eat? I'm impatient and nothing is quick in Kissimee, so we had the seafood buffet at our hotel. Ok, the worst $70 I've ever spent! But, we're still less than the $109 we would have spent for the dining plan, right? Uh, nope! Did I mention we got sucked into the force field of the ice cream cart? $15 more, but wait, that brings our total to $95 plus about $10 for breakfast and drinks, so $105! WOO HOO!! Well, we aren't finished. Instead of lugging so many drinks, we got the bright idea to fill our water bottles at the fountains. Have you ever tasted the water at MK? It's BAD! Ok, $6 for bottled water....what's that? $111??? Oh snap! Where did I go wrong? We haven't even figured gas into this equation! We used a whole tank(about $10/day) driving back and forth to the hotel in an effort to "save" money.
Ok, that was just the first day! We still gave a good effort, but really, unless you can eat fast food everyday, you will spend the money either with the mouse or without! We bought fruit, carrots, etc. but what more can you do in a hotel room?
Our other off-site meals were $50 at Golden Coral and $40 at Fridays.
If I think about the numbers for adults, it doesn't seem worth it:
$24 x 2=$48 or so for character meal (tip and tax)
$8 x 2= $16 counter
$4 x 2= $8 snack
$36 x 2= $72 The plan would be $76 for 2 adults.
But, when you add three under age 9, then the plan is magical!
$14 character meal (tip and tax)
$4 counter
$4 snack
$22- double the the price of the plan, so $66 oop or $33 dp for 3 children.
So, what was the question again? Oh yeah, is the dining plan worth it for a family of 5 with three kids under 9? For us, it definitely would have been worth it! We would have spent $545 for 5 days of dining. We spent way more despite our cost cutting efforts. I haven't even mentioned the time we wasted and the big honkin' blister I got from those extra trips to the car! That same darn spot blistered again during game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals. I went straight to the game from work and had to walk in my dress shoes OUCH!! Oh well, the Canes have the cup and I'm on
Sorry this was so long and a little off topic! I hope my babble helps the OP and others!!