Is the dining Plan worth it ?

[Lovetherodent]

I'd probably spend less without it. However, not listening to the spouse complain about the bill? Priceless. Making sure everyone feels like they can order whatever they want? Also makes it a pretty good deal for me.

 

[mamamelody2]

It definitely does not make sense for our family. We have had free DDP twice and free QSDP three times. It was the best discount for us. However, we had lots of leftover credits so to buy it would make no sense.
I am going in January with my 13 year old son. He is not a big eater. If we got the QSDP it would be $110 a day. I'm sure we can eat for about $60 a day as we will share meals and buy a refillable popcorn bucket.

 

[Feberin]

We're going to try it f or our next trip. We're doing a lot of character meals. I think we could do it cheaper if we packed lunches and only did the meals we really wanted to do and were careful about snacks. But my husband isn't interested in packing lunches this time and when I calculate it we're coming out ahead.

 

[RealBlast3]

We also eat 3 meals a day, but like you, not full meals. I always eat a breakfast of some sort but I found that about 99% of Disney breakfast items are terrible values on the dining plan so we would never use it for that (unless we happened to go to a character buffet breakfast).

Really? I have found the entrees I have ordered at the Grand Floridian Cafe, Kona Cafe, and the buffets at The Wave, Crystal Palace, Boma to all be of truly exceptional quality and worth every penny. But I do tend to be easy to please when it comes to food, but if I was to compare these breakfasts to oh, I don't know, places like Dennys or IHOP or whatever, I would say they blow them out of the water, and the extra cost is justified (for me).

 

[Nancyg56]

Really? I have found the entrees I have ordered at the Grand Floridian Cafe, Kona Cafe, and the buffets at The Wave, Crystal Palace, Boma to all be of truly exceptional quality and worth every penny. But I do tend to be easy to please when it comes to food, but if I was to compare these breakfasts to oh, I don't know, places like Dennys or IHOP or whatever, I would say they blow them out of the water, and the extra cost is justified (for me).

The food may be delicious and the cost of each entree may be worth the money paid, but if you are using a DDP credit, the value for that credit is not usually there.
When folks cost out using a dining plan part of the math involves not only where you are planning to eat, but what you are going to order. I am happy to pay for my breakfast in WDW because the food is usually very good and the value for what I paid is acceptable for a vacation meal. I will never use a dinign plan credit on an ala carte breakfast though, because I paid more for that credit than the meal cost when i bought the plan.

 

[RealBlast3]

The food may be delicious and the cost of each entree may be worth the money paid, but if you are using a DDP credit, the value for that credit is not usually there.
When folks cost out using a dining plan part of the math involves not only where you are planning to eat, but what you are going to order. I am happy to pay for my breakfast in WDW because the food is usually very good and the value for what I paid is acceptable for a vacation meal. I will never use a dinign plan credit on an ala carte breakfast though, because I paid more for that credit than the meal cost when i bought the plan.

I do see what you are saying here, and you are of course right, and in the cases where I didn't have enough dining credits to cover all the meals I had planned (due to me picking too many signatures), I would chose to pay out of pocket for some of my breakfasts, so yes, simply because they are a far less costly meal than the lunch or dinners, you don't get as much value for your credit, you are right.

However, if I DO have enough dining credits to cover my breakfasts, I will, of course, use them, like this year, because I am only going to do a couple of signatures, I actually do have enough credits to cover my breakfasts. I mean, if the credits are there for me to use, I would rather use them than pay out of pocket, even if the value isn't as good for breakfasts, because I do eat a nice breakfast every day, the cost would add up on a 10-14 vacation the more I have to pay out of pocket.

 

[Nancyg56]

I do see what you are saying here, and you are of course right, and in the cases where I didn't have enough dining credits to cover all the meals I had planned (due to me picking too many signatures), I would chose to pay out of pocket for some of my breakfasts, so yes, simply because they are a far less costly meal than the lunch or dinners, you don't get as much value for your credit, you are right.

However, if I DO have enough dining credits to cover my breakfasts, I will, of course, use them, like this year, because I am only going to do a couple of signatures, I actually do have enough credits to cover my breakfasts. I mean, if the credits are there for me to use, I would rather use them than pay out of pocket, even if the value isn't as good for breakfasts, because I do eat a nice breakfast every day, the cost would add up on a 10-14 vacation the more I have to pay out of pocket.

Of course you should use them if you have them. When we try to determine if a dining plan is "worth" the money it costs, we have to look at the cost of the plan over the length of the trip, and them at the places where people are dining, and then what they plan to order. For you the breakfast items may be worth a credit, but for many families, they cost less than a credit is valued at, and over the length of stay, this can add up to a significant loss.

Value is subjective and what I may consider money well spent is nto what you or anyone else may determine is a value. I do not intentionally spend more for plans than what my family dining will cost, so if we were to book more breakfasts, few buffet or character meals, and a few signatures, I might just pay OOP, and skip the plan. It depends on my food costs on that trip. In general, breakfast credits will not cover the cost of a plan, but for you , they do.

 

[Aj1129]

It works for the way our family likes to eat. DS and DH must eat breakfast each morning or else they are very cranky. So we will do character breakfasts for DS. We will eat at a signature restaurant each night. The cost of the character meals and signature restaurants really make the dining plan worth it for us.

 

[Christine]

Really? I have found the entrees I have ordered at the Grand Floridian Cafe, Kona Cafe, and the buffets at The Wave, Crystal Palace, Boma to all be of truly exceptional quality and worth every penny. But I do tend to be easy to please when it comes to food, but if I was to compare these breakfasts to oh, I don't know, places like Dennys or IHOP or whatever, I would say they blow them out of the water, and the extra cost is justified (for me).

Sorry, I should have clarified.

First, I *generally* don't do table service for 3 meals a day. A table service breakfast or breakfast buffet might happen just once or twice during a weeklong trip. So, I will either do a counter service at the food court, or cereal in my room on the other mornings. QS at the food court usually runs about $12 for an "entree." Terrible use of a QS credit as opposed to using it at lunch.

For your comment of a TS breakfast at the GF cafe, I'll use an example. Spectacular food, yes. But not what this thread is about. It's about value or "worth it" financially.

I believe @sharonabe used a general guideline that your TS credit should come to about $45 to make the standard dining plan "worth it" or to get your value. At the GF Cafe, the most expensive breakfast entree is $27.00 for Miso Salmon (let's put aside the many people are probably ordering the much cheaper pancakes/eggs, etc and stick at about $19.00 per entree). The most expensive cocktail is $15.00. There doesn't appear to be a dessert offering on the breakfast menu. So at this meal, ordering the most expensive things, you are at $42 for your TS credit. Not a wise use of a TS credit. Character buffets are though.

So my comment was about value not quality.

 

[tguz]

For us, yes it makes sense. We all like to have meals of our choosing and a couple snacks a day and I drink a lot of soft drinks so the refillable mug at the resort was nice. We don't share meals nor do we skip meals. We have had free dining the last 2 Summers but this Summer I kept all receipts so I knew where we ate every meal and snack. When we got home I went to the menus and priced everything out and we would have pd right at $75 more had we payed out of pocket than what the meal plan would have cost. In my opinion, if you feel that the food cost will be anywhere near a "wash" paying oop or with a dining plan, I would choose the dining plan as it is convenient. You don't have to carry cash, credit card, or charge to the room thru the magic band and then keep a mental note of what you have spent versus a predetermined food budget. It is also nice to say "Yes" to the kids on vacation if they want a couple snacks instead of thinking "wow 2 snacks a day pp is going to cost our family an extra $60 a day". After all, it is vacation.

 

[Farro]

We are going on our next trip without the dining plan for the first time in a long time.

I was on the fence, but recently we had some house-guests and we went out to dinner almost every night...I found I couldn't even eat after the third night of dinner!

So I'm much less nervous about not using dining plan because I can guarantee there are going to be days where I only want to eat fruit or something! Or nights when I just want an appetizer or some bar food.

We shall see I suppose.

 

[SaintsManiac]

Does DVC get a different plan? just wondering why it was mentioned.

DDP doesn't work for my family, because we don't eat that much, we share meals, we don't like making ADRs.

Only you can determine what something is worth to you.

 

[sharonabe]

Does DVC get a different plan? just wondering why it was mentioned.

They get the same plan as everyone else, but the price of the plans is locked in at the beginning of the year, so if there is an increase in price during the year, they don't pay the increased price.

However, Disney has not done a price increase mid-year for several years now. I'm thinking at least 3, if not more years, since we saw one during the year. So this "benefit" is not as valuable as it once was when increases were haphazard, to say the least.

 

[Sara_H]

It honestly depends on each person/family. For us, it is not worth it. I make a spreadsheet of the places we will most likely eat and what we will most likely order, I throw in some snacks and random extras and it always comes out cheaper to pay out of pocket. But for us, we don't want to spend a few hours each day sitting down having a meal, we'd rather be riding rides and experiencing the park. We do have a couple TS thrown in during the week but not many. However, there are other families who love the downtime of the meals and want to do more than one character breakfast and for those families, the dining plan is worth it. It honestly depends who you ask and what type of vacation they are taking.

 

[CraigInPA]

When doing your comparison, make sure you include any applicable discounts you may have available to you. In my case, my DVC, AP, and Disney Visa discounts are more than any savings I might have made by buying the dining plan.

 

[Karebear]

For my family, it is not worth it. DH does not drink alcohol or soda and prefers water with meals. I have 2 “disney adult kids”...one of them prefers water and the other soda. We are not dessert eaters and would maybe split 1 or 2 desserts between the 4 of us. Every time I run the numbers, it just does not work for us but I know that it does for many.

 

[mckennarose]

We don't do the dining plan nor do we stay on site. I just wanted to comment on what we witnessed last week while traveling with a large group who did stay on site and did get the dining plan. Two families in particular were desperately trying to use up their snack credits the night before we left for home. One bought a TON of rice krispy treats and candy in Goofy's in Disney Springs, and the other bought a bunch of lobster rolls for everyone to share in the American pavilion at Food and Wine. They were both disappointed in the waste and trying hard to "make it work out" before losing those extra credits.

 

[tguz]

We don't do the dining plan nor do we stay on site. I just wanted to comment on what we witnessed last week while traveling with a large group who did stay on site and did get the dining plan. Two families in particular were desperately trying to use up their snack credits the night before we left for home. One bought a TON of rice krispy treats and candy in Goofy's in Disney Springs, and the other bought a bunch of lobster rolls for everyone to share in the American pavilion at Food and Wine. They were both disappointed in the waste and trying hard to "make it work out" before losing those extra credits.

We don't usually have a ton of snack credits left at the end of the vacation but we usually have a couple per person left. The kids like to get the sour balls (over $5 a bag) for the ride home and I like to get a tin of mints as a souvenir from the trip. I got a Star wars tin this year.

 

[mckennarose]

We don't usually have a ton of snack credits left at the end of the vacation but we usually have a couple per person left. The kids like to get the sour balls (over $5 a bag) for the ride home and I like to get a tin of mints as a souvenir from the trip. I got a Star wars tin this year.

And that's fine if that's the way you normally eat and what you would normally spend money on. For these people, they did not normally eat that way and really didn't understand the ins and outs of the plan or how to work it to their advantage. So they were frustrated with all the left over credits and trying to find a way to use them up so they didn't lose them.
The Star Wars tin sounds cool. I don't remember seeing that in Goofy's.

 

[Christine]

I had about 6 snack credits left last year (across the 3 people in my room) so basically 2 snack credits per person which wasn't that bad. I think it was just so freakin' hot outside that I couldn't eat like I normally would (and I would NOT use my credit for a bottle of water).

The good/bad thing was that we were driving home (13 hours) so we bought some fabulous cupcakes and a couple danish for the ride home. The cupcakes made it all the way home and it was great eating those the next day. And they were a good value. I did try one of those prepackaged rice krispy things which I think are kind of sad actually.