Dining Plan with a large group ???

[mwmuntz]

Hi Folks, hope you can help me out here.

We are staying with a group of 12 in a GV in September, and we are interested in the dining plan. I understand that we all need to buy the plan, since we are all staying in the same unit, but will we all need to eat together at the TS meals? We have 3 families going. One of the families are real park commandos, while the other two plan to spend some time around our resort, so it might be hard to plan the TS meals if we all need to be together.

 

[ADP]

Hi Folks, hope you can help me out here.

We are staying with a group of 12 in a GV in September, and we are interested in the dining plan. I understand that we all need to buy the plan, since we are all staying in the same unit, but will we all need to eat together at the TS meals? We have 3 families going. One of the families are real park commandos, while the other two plan to spend some time around our resort, so it might be hard to plan the TS meals if we all need to be together.

You will not need to eat at the same restaurants at the same time. Your dining credits are tied to your room key. As each individual in your party scatters throughout the WDW resort they just hand their card key to the Cast Member and they deduct the appropriate number of credits from the account assoicated with your room key.

Make sure you are keeping track of them. One family may take more than there share leaving less credits for the other 2 families (by mistake of course) . The credits are just pooled together.

 

[dianeschlicht]

Just one word of warning....We found the dining plan to be difficult to manage with more than one family using the credits. It became a bookkeeping nightmare. With 12, I can imagine it would be even worse. I wouldn't say "don't do it", but I would caution you that if it is your first time using the DDP, it could be a nightmare.

 

[mwmuntz]

Ahh. Thanks for the warning. 2 of the families, including us, have experience with the dining plan, so we know how it works. We'll discuss everything up front to decide how we will use the tickets. The only problem I see is if the 3rd family is not aware that some places require 2 TS tickets. We also will be able to get together for some of the meals, but certainly not all of them.

Thanks for the advice folks!

 

[dianeschlicht]

Ahh. Thanks for the warning. 2 of the families, including us, have experience with the dining plan, so we know how it works. We'll discuss everything up front to decide how we will use the tickets. The only problem I see is if the 3rd family is not aware that some places require 2 TS tickets. We also will be able to get together for some of the meals, but certainly not all of them.

Thanks for the advice folks!

Well, it WOULD be easier if there were actual "tickets", but for the unititiated, just keeping the running total with the receipts can be confusing. My DH is a stickler for details, so he kept a pretty good watch on it, but there was a computer glitch, and when we went to pay with our "credits" one night, they showed an incorrect total. Good thing all of us were dining together, or it would have been a bigger issue. With all the credits coming from the same pool, it is difficult to track the more individuals you have using that pool of credits. I don't know how many days your ressie is for, but if you are staying a week, you will have 84 TS credits, 84 snack credits, and 84 counter service credits on your room keys. They wont be divided out by individual, so if one person has a computer glitch issue or inadvertently uses more credits than he thinks he used, it becomes a problem for everyone else. I almost wish they DID have tickets....it would be so much easier.

 

[mwmuntz]

Yes, I know they aren't physical tickets... bad choice of words, sorry for the confusion.

This part of the trip is only for 3 nights, which sounds like a good thing. Yeah, I agree, having to manage 84 credits of each type would be a nightmare!

 

[dianeschlicht]

Yes, I know they aren't physical tickets... bad choice of words, sorry for the confusion.

This part of the trip is only for 3 nights, which sounds like a good thing. Yeah, I agree, having to manage 84 credits of each type would be a nightmare!

Well, 3 nights will be much easier!! That's only 36 credits of each type! Of course, it still isn't any less crucial that things go well. We decided we would only be doing DDP again when it was just us. Much easier that way!

 

[Wendy1953]

We went in October 7 adults, 1 child, and 1 infant.....my DH and I were the only experienced ones on the DP, so what we did was....everyone had to turn in their food "bills" to us every night, and we checked to make sure the right amount of credits were used...we did run into a problem with Disney charging a TS for the infant for our lunch at H&V, but I went to the front desk at OKW, explained the situation, and it was cleared up in less than 5 minutes.

I suggest you make the ADR's for most of the TS meals that everyone wants, especially if you are planning on 12 people getting into the restaurant at one time! Have a Dining Plan get together, go onto Allearsnet.com, view the menus, and have everyone decide where & when they want to eat...and then make the ADR's. You'll be assured that if someone is choosing a 2 TS credit restaurant, they know about it in advance, and are fully aware that they may have to POOP (pay out of pocket) for a meal. The whole DP should be set up so each member of the party has their own DP on their own card, this way if someone messes up and uses more than they are entitled to, no one else has to pay the price.

 

[mwmuntz]

We went in October 7 adults, 1 child, and 1 infant.....my DH and I were the only experienced ones on the DP, so what we did was....everyone had to turn in their food "bills" to us every night, and we checked to make sure the right amount of credits were used...we did run into a problem with Disney charging a TS for the infant for our lunch at H&V, but I went to the front desk at OKW, explained the situation, and it was cleared up in less than 5 minutes.

I suggest you make the ADR's for most of the TS meals that everyone wants, especially if you are planning on 12 people getting into the restaurant at one time! Have a Dining Plan get together, go onto Allearsnet.com, view the menus, and have everyone decide where & when they want to eat...and then make the ADR's. You'll be assured that if someone is choosing a 2 TS credit restaurant, they know about it in advance, and are fully aware that they may have to POOP (pay out of pocket) for a meal. The whole DP should be set up so each member of the party has their own DP on their own card, this way if someone messes up and uses more than they are entitled to, no one else has to pay the price.

Thanks for the advice, especially from a fellow LI'er! (Garden City Park here.) I agree, this is not something we should just "wing" when we get down there, we will have all of our ADR's in place before we go. We already have an ADR for the entire group for one of the TS meals - Whispering Canyon Cafe, should be fun with a large group. Given everybody's plans, I'm not sure that we will be able to get together for the other TS's, or if we would even want to for that matter. Dining in a group of 14 (6A + 6C + 2 babies) might be nice once, but it may be something that we wouldn't want to do each night. 2 of the families have used the plan and know how it works. Guess we'll just have to carefully explain the plan to the 3rd family, especially about the 2 credit restaurants & if they REALLY want to go to a 2 TS restaurant, they'll either have to do something creative, like forgo a TS meal on another day, "buy" credits from another family, or just POOP for one of the meals. LOVE that acronym! I feel like I am back in the 3rd grade.

And like it has been pointed out, we'll need someone to keep track of all of the credits at the end of the day. I'll be more concerned about something not being billed correctly than someone flaking out and using more credits than thier allotment. And trust me, if someone does mess up, like charging a 2nd snack on a given day, it's not going to be a big deal. It's primarily the TS's that I am worried about, and those should be planned well in advance.

Boy! I'm starting to think that it was easier for NASA to land a man on the moon than it is to plan a trip for 12 to Disney!

 

[Wendy1953]

Thanks for the advice, especially from a fellow LI'er! (Garden City Park here.) I agree, this is not something we should just "wing" when we get down there, we will have all of our ADR's in place before we go. We already have an ADR for the entire group for one of the TS meals - Whispering Canyon Cafe, should be fun with a large group. Given everybody's plans, I'm not sure that we will be able to get together for the other TS's, or if we would even want to for that matter. Dining in a group of 14 (6A + 6C + 2 babies) might be nice once, but it may be something that we wouldn't want to do each night. 2 of the families have used the plan and know how it works. Guess we'll just have to carefully explain the plan to the 3rd family, especially about the 2 credit restaurants & if they REALLY want to go to a 2 TS restaurant, they'll either have to do something creative, like forgo a TS meal on another day, "buy" credits from another family, or just POOP for one of the meals. LOVE that acronym! I feel like I am back in the 3rd grade.

And like it has been pointed out, we'll need someone to keep track of all of the credits at the end of the day. I'll be more concerned about something not being billed correctly than someone flaking out and using more credits than thier allotment. And trust me, if someone does mess up, like charging a 2nd snack on a given day, it's not going to be a big deal. It's primarily the TS's that I am worried about, and those should be planned well in advance.

Boy! I'm starting to think that it was easier for NASA to land a man on the moon than it is to plan a trip for 12 to Disney!

Suffolk - Selden here! I agree....NASA had it easy! We were only concerned with the TS's too! We wound up coming home with some Snack Credits left....but it was food & wine time, and we had lots of the Food & Wine Pairings, cooking classes, etc. booked, so we were quite full! Well, have a wonderful trip!

 

[mwmuntz]

Suffolk - Selden here! I agree....NASA had it easy! We were only concerned with the TS's too! We wound up coming home with some Snack Credits left....but it was food & wine time, and we had lots of the Food & Wine Pairings, cooking classes, etc. booked, so we were quite full! Well, have a wonderful trip!

It's funny you mention left over snack credits. They always seem to be the ones left over. Let's face it, they might as well call the DDP the Disney Gorge Fest! We never seem to use all of our snacks. The last time we used the plan, we had a bunch of snacks credits left over on the last day, so I think the kids each had a soda, a popcorn and a Mickey pop for "lunch". We were thier heros that day! (Not really, they had some "real" food too....)

 

[dianeschlicht]

It's funny you mention left over snack credits. They always seem to be the ones left over. Let's face it, they might as well call the DDP the Disney Gorge Fest! We never seem to use all of our snacks. The last time we used the plan, we had a bunch of snacks credits left over on the last day, so I think the kids each had a soda, a popcorn and a Mickey pop for "lunch". We were thier heros that day! (Not really, they had some "real" food too....)

Well, in our case, it's always the counter service ones we have left! We tend to use the snacks each day, but when we have a TS meal planned, we tend not to use the CS credits. Last trip, we had 8 CS credits go unused, but we used all the snacks.