Half board questions

ryankski

Mouseketeer
Joined
Dec 30, 2016
I've done some Googling and the link in the pinned First Time Visitor thread is giving me a 504 error. The DLP site says that the room promotion includes "half board (buffet breakfast at the hotel + lunch OR dinner". From what I've gathered the lunch or dinner is in the park and not at the hotel too and includes a list of eligible restaurants. Is this correct? Also is there away to find out the list of restaurants? Trying to figure out if it is counter service restaurants or sit down. Do you get the half board meals (breakfast & lunch/dinner) for every night or every day? So if you stay 3 nights with tickets for 4 days do you get the half board meals for 3 days or 4?

We are trying to figure this out as we are leaning to booking through the French site which doesn't include half board. The French site is just over $380 cheaper then booking through US site and just over $300 cheaper then booking through the German site which both include half board. If it matters this is for three nights at Sante Fe. When we are in Disney parks we tend to eat counter service meals and skip table service and will tend to eat a small breakfast (no buffet) or pastry in the morning (sometimes we bring granola bars or similar for breakfast) with a snacks for lunch/throughout the day and then a counter service dinner. It seems like with this we could by a lot of food for $300-380 (depending on site booked through). Looking at the DLP site it looks like most counter service meals are around 15 euros +/-.

Any info/help is appreciated so I can more completely compare. Thanks
 
You get one voucher for each night of your stay to use in table service or buffet restaurants in either the park or hotels. The category relates to the hotel you are staying in. So value hotels is buffets in your hotel or the parks and deluxe includes most table service restaurants. You can use the vouchers towards any table service or buffet meal. You can also use the vouchers at any time so you could have 2 meals in one day and none on another. You can't use them in counter service locations.
For that price difference I wouldn't book half board at the Santa Fe. You can eat more cheaply at counter service or even some table service in the Disney Village.
 
Ok. So if we stay at Santa Fe it would be breakfast in the hotel (as per DLP) and then it's buffet only in either the hotel or park. Is that correct? Am I understanding you correctly? What are the buffet restaurants in the park? Are there many? Thanks
 
Currently Plaza Gardens and Agrabah Cafe, both very good. There is also a Tex Mex buffet at Billy Bob's in The Village and you can use the hotel buffets at either the Cheyenne or Santa Fe. Yes breakfast at your hotel would also be included. You can also use your voucher at face value towards other meals.
 


You can also use your voucher at face value towards other meals.

So you could use it any counter service restaurant throughout the parks then? What's the face value then? I'd assume the face value of a buffet restaurant is more than a meal at a counter service, correct? Along that lines if also decided to do to Wild Bill's I'd assume you could trade the voucher for face value (another reason I'm curious what the face value is) and pay the difference. Is this correct?

With EMH I'd assume you'd be able to eat breakfast at the hotel and then make it to the park for opening. Do the bottles buffet open early enough for this? The DLP site says you should book reservations for the hotel buffet is that necessary? Thanks
 
Sorry Im not sure what the face value is but you cant use them at counter service restaurants anyhow - only table service or buffets (You can use them at Buffalo Bills)

Breakfast at the hotels starts about 7am so time to eat then head in for EMH.
When you check in at the hotel you will be given a time slot for breakfast. If you cant get the time you want dont worry just head there anyhow and you will be fine - they just try and spread people out a bit.

A word of warning - at Santa Fe you are not shown to a table for breakfast you need to find your own so its worth trying to find somewhere before you head to the buffet for food and then taking it in turns to go up for food and someone stay to keep the table. Otherwise you are wandering round with trays of food trying to find somewhere and it can be a bit chaotic.
 


Another option I have found in my research is you can skip the buffet breakfast, go to EMH and come our at 10.30 to Disney Village to Annettes and have their full english breakfast instead. A good option if you don't want to get up too early for breakfast.
 
Another option I have found in my research is you can skip the buffet breakfast, go to EMH and come our at 10.30 to Disney Village to Annettes and have their full english breakfast instead. A good option if you don't want to get up too early for breakfast.

You would have to pay for this thought wouldnt you? You cant use the credits for breakfast there can you? They can only be used in your own hotel
 
You would have to pay for this thought wouldnt you? You cant use the credits for breakfast there can you? They can only be used in your own hotel

We are half board plus and can use my credits there. Not sure about standard, but worth checking.
 
We are half board plus and can use my credits there. Not sure about standard, but worth checking.

I know you can use meal credits there for lunch/dinner but Ive never heard of being able to use breakfast credit there. Have you actually done this yet or just hoping to do it?
 
I know you can use meal credits there for lunch/dinner but Ive never heard of being able to use breakfast credit there. Have you actually done this yet or just hoping to do it?

I have spoken to people who have done it as recent as christmas. I have seen photos of the breakfast they had, it is pretty big, the only complaint I hear is that it isn't as good value as the buffet. But an extra hour sleep is worth missing the buffet some days for us. Worth checking if you are there. We will ask about it the first day and use it on subsequent days.
 
I have spoken to people who have done it as recent as christmas. I have seen photos of the breakfast they had, it is pretty big, the only complaint I hear is that it isn't as good value as the buffet. But an extra hour sleep is worth missing the buffet some days for us. Worth checking if you are there. We will ask about it the first day and use it on subsequent days.

Thank you - thats interesting to know.
 
The free plan in the current offers is not "plus" so would work for my original question
 
The free plan in the current offers is not "plus" so would work for my original question

The level of plan you get depends on the hotel you stay in. Santa Fe and Cheyenne get Standard, Sequioa Lodge and Newport Bay get Plus and Disneyland Hotel gets premium. New York used to be Plus but unsure what it will be when it reopens
 
We were there in November at the Santa Fe with the Free Half Board plan. We were able to use the voucher at counter service. We did it twice. I don't know if it is supposed to work this way but they used one credit for both of us because the value covered it. I think the face value is about 35-38 euros or something around there.

The breakfast buffet opens at about 7:30, at least that's when the one at the Santa Fe opened when we were there. We were shown to a table on the mornings we ate there. We did skip it one morning when the line was horrendous but we just grabbed a quick bite at a food stand in the Studios park. I never thought to try and see if we could get a sit down breakfast somewhere.
 
The level of plan you get depends on the hotel you stay in. Santa Fe and Cheyenne get Standard, Sequioa Lodge and Newport Bay get Plus and Disneyland Hotel gets premium. New York used to be Plus but unsure what it will be when it reopens
Yes, per my original post we are looking at Santa Fe and so current plan would not be half board plus.
 
We were there in November at the Santa Fe with the Free Half Board plan. We were able to use the voucher at counter service. We did it twice. I don't know if it is supposed to work this way but they used one credit for both of us because the value covered it. I think the face value is about 35-38 euros or something around there.

The breakfast buffet opens at about 7:30, at least that's when the one at the Santa Fe opened when we were there. We were shown to a table on the mornings we ate there. We did skip it one morning when the line was horrendous but we just grabbed a quick bite at a food stand in the Studios park. I never thought to try and see if we could get a sit down breakfast somewhere.
Good to know it did work at counter service. The value wouldn't seem be good for us if we used them at counter service and can save $300 by not getting HB through the French site, but good to know. I feel like DLP does a horrible job of explaining what it included with HB.
 
You definitely can use meal vouchers at counter service because we did so at Cowboy Cookout on our last trip. The cashier did try to tell us that they wouldn't recommend doing it as it wasn't good value, but the fact was we were leaving very early on our final day, so we essentially had an extra's day meal that we weren't going to be able to use, so it was better to use it for a quick lunch rather than waste it completely. All of our other vouchers were used for what I would call the main meal of the day - Cafe Mickey and the Steakhouse in the Village, Cape Cod buffet in Newport Bay and Restaurant des Stars in the Studios, most of which would have cost us 80 - 100 euros if we'd paid cash, compared to about 35 euros at Cowboy Cookout.
 
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Oh this was a much-needed post! I'm also debating whether to go for the Free Half-Board deal since the 25% off hotel offer ends next week with it and I'm still unsure about what's worth it. My roommate and I are going to DLP for the very first time this May and as WDW vets that love signature dining it's hard hearing that table service/food in general at DLP might not be the greatest. OP, what did you end up booking?
 

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