"disney dining plan" is it worth it?

The DDP does not work for us for several reasons. I hate to have to make ADRs 6 months out and basically be a slave to our reservations.

I don't mind making ADRs for 3 or 4 meals during our 10 day trip but anything else for us is excessive. We also love dining outside of WDW so we can relax with out all the hub bub.

We usually just have coffee and a bagel for breakfast and a light lunch but do enjoy going out at night for a nice dinner.
 
Yes it's worth the price. We share a CS for Breakfast. then share a CS for lunch. Used are TS for dinner, works good for us. Everyone should decide for themselves.
 
y2khardtop said:
Haven't tried this yet. We eat A LOT in the parks, and often the nicer restaurants. I guess you can't carry points from day-to-day etc, to save up for the 2-pt restaurants??

$38 seems expensive, but I don't really remember prices. I'd love to hear any feedback, as well as what you guys think of the "disney dining experience", the 20% discount plan.

We tend to eat ALOT when we are at WDW also. We join together here and there in the parks by calling each other on the cell phones and getting a "meet point" to hook up for awhile...but most of the time, separate to "do our own things" so at the end of the day at a nice TS is where we "catch up" with each other to discuss our day to spend "special time with each other... We use the Dining Plan because the TS meals alone most of the time costs at least if not more than the dining plan. So... the snack and CS are basically free. And we're on vacation... we should eat hearty while at WDW with all that GREAT FOOD that is there.

By the way... You can spend your points as you please.... You get a certain amount of points and if you want to use 1TS, 1CS, and 1Snack per day you can.... if you want to use 2CS, and 1Snack with 0TS to save them up for a 2TS meal, you can do that too.... I don't know how we lost tract but last time we went to WDW, we had a bunch of CS meals left and a few Snacks so we got some sandwiches and a bunch of snacks and brought them on the plane to eat on the way home...We usually pay out of pocket for a small breakfast and get into the parks early.... Then we eat a CS meal for lunch at about noon.... Because many of the CS meals are large, we eat our TS meal at about 8pm... then play in the park until it's time for the fireworks. If you use the TS at dinner time, it is more worth it. That's where you are saving lots of $$$... We found that for 6 of us, we saved hundreds of $$$ on the DP.
 
YoMickey said:
We used the DDP last spring. We ate way tooo much food.

I have a question about a future trip next spring. We're staying for 9 days. No dining is booked right now and no ticket packages are booked. We probably will only go in to the park for half the days we are there. When you get the magic your way dining and park hopper can you get it for a portion of your stay or do I have to get all 9 days? We plan to use the pool and maybe shoot over to Universal for a day.


The Dining Plan would have to be purchased for the entire length of your stay.
 
There are no points just a credits that gets deducted from your account anytime you give the restaurant your key to the world card for either a sit down meal, a quick sit down meal or a snack.

We had 3 people and got for our total stay--
15 snacks credits
15 counter service credits (like the cafeteria style ones)
15 table service credits (50's Prime Time Cafe, SciFi, etc.,

Example:
We 3 did a sit down dinner in Italy at Epcot.
We tell the waiter we are using the disney dining plan, he informs us that we get 1 appet., 1 entree, 1 dessert and 1 non-alcoho. drink per person.

We choose, we eat, we give ONE card, waiter rings everything up, brings your receipt to sign, and on your copy it will show that you used 3 table service credits and that you now have 10 table service meals. The reciept will show what you ordered but the price next to each item will be 0.00
(Sometimes they leave you an actual cost of things with your receipt but if not I wrote in the prices on my copy to go over later and get a good idea of what I would have spent out of pocket!)

Same thing happens at the counter service.
Your copy will show how many counter services you used and how many you have left.

And the reason it could have sounded a little confusing is because some counters offer a combo or items separately. But if you are on the Disney Dining plan you get 1 entree, 1 dessert, 1 drink OR combo with dessert. So people new to ordering may stumble around before they get the hang of it.
The servers put me at ease with that.
Light bulb moment-----At some counter services you can use a counter service credit or a snack credit, so that could have been the confusing part too if someone didn't specify.

Each copy only shows what you have left for that type of credit
example- snack receipts show the amount of what you've used & have left for snacks ONLY. Table shows for table and counter for counter.



the following was for another similar post:

We just got back from WDW and did the DDPlan. I have mixed feelings about it; I agree with one poster about the pressure of needing to use up the table service credits. We actually lost 2 (ouch)! And we almost had 10 counter service credits left but were able to use them up to buy a whole pizza for the girls. I thought I was going to have to stand in line to buy strangers their lunchs so as to not waste them! I would have a made a few friends though!

You get ALOT of food at those places (remember, you get 1 appt., 1 entree, 1 dessert and 1 drink for a table service.)
Honestly, you could easily split a meal between 2 people, maybe even 3 depending upon the entree and tummy sizes on your own money.
BUT the nice part is is that you can use those meals on whomever is joining you for dinner. Meaning if family or friends join you for dinner but are not staying at the resort with you, it doesn't matter they just deduct the number of table service meals you used for that night. Remember, you can use these credits in any order. You could use all table service credits (or counter service) at one time! We ate at Spoodles at the Boardwalk once and between 4 people the bill was close to $200.00!
Beacuse we were already paid for we easliy tried new things we might never have tried before because we would be worried about the price and wasting it if you didn't like it. So by spending 37.99 per person to get one snack, one counter service and one table service PER DAY - it makes sense, IF you can eat that much! We've pretty much decided that we really don't eat that much while on vacation for our family. And I've always averaged $20.00 for dinner, $10.00 for lunch, $5.00 snack(if you do food & drink) and about $10.00ish for brakfast (if you have 3 meals a day). And that's not eating at table service priced places!

I thought we could do the counter or table for breakfast, have a snack to tie us over till dinner and then use the remaining table/credit service.

It sounded like a good plan but we're from CA and dealing with the time change is a little tougher, we managed to get out by 10:30 in time to eat lunch but were not all that hungry by dinner time. Might work out better for east coast people.

We also didn't make any restaurant reservations because our schedule was up in the air and we paid for that! Couldn't get into our Favs like the 50's Primetime Cafe or SciFi, couldn't even try the Brown Derby. Otherwise we may have struggled for more table credits ;-) Same with Cindrella's everything - those take 2 ts. (Should have called in Member services as soon as I was told no to walk-ins to see if we could have squeezed any ressies in!)

All in all I will go with the plan again; I liked not having to deal with money, more credit card charges and not having to figure out tips! We just had to pull out our key to the world card. We'll just get a little more savvy about using our plan. It's a matter about figuring out the bumps in the plan for your family!

(By the way, you just need to use one card for all transactions at one time, so if daughter went to get snacks for all of us, then she just needed to show her card-it deducts from the whole plan, not individually.)

Also, as a side note, my husband attended a convention at the Grand Cypress Hyatt just down the street and the dining plan would have been useless for him; he had to network with his cronies while we got to play and eat at WDW. DVC member services were very accomodating and authorized the BW a guest key for him since he was sleeping there only.


Whew! I'm hungry! Wish I were back at Epcot!
 
Our last trip we used a combo of the DDP and DDE. Overall, I itemized everything and we saved about $70 for two adults using these methods. For my next trip its just me and my two nephews and after I estimated costs for the DDE and DDP combo and then just DDE, I would not get my money's worth with DDP this time.


I think if you itemize and estimate (with a lot of help from the menus and prices on allearsnet.com), you'll be able to figure out of the DDP is a good deal for you and your family given your touring and eating style while at WDW.
 

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