Flyin2MCO
09-02-2008, 10:04 PM
Returned from a great (but very hot and very crowded) week at WDW. The lure of "free" dining led us to the Yacht Club for our first onsite stay and our first time using the dining plan. My thoughts on the DDP:
We were also attracted to the late August time frame by the potential for lighter crowds. It logically seems that the dining promotion is driving higher crowd levels...with a few exceptions, we experienced very busy parks and packed table service meals all week.
I'm a hardcore Disney planner and visitor, but the DDP requirements added too much stress and in some cases limited our flexibility during certain days.
The desserts with every meal add up to way too much food...we are only occasional dessert eaters (maybe a few times a month at home), so this was calorie and sugar overload for us. I also think it was incredibly wasteful...now I know we didn't need to order or accept the desserts, but in most cases we did, only to throw away most of them after taking a few bites.
The level of Cast Member awareness on DDP rules was inconsistent. For example, some refused to allow snack purchases even when the item was noted on the menu board with the DDP logo. And then some were more flexible and allowed items outside the "approved" list.
From the beginning we treated this as a subsidy for our trip. I haven't done the analysis on the stack of receipts from the trip, but we certainly saved money overall since it was of course "free" dining. As mentioned, we would not be ordering dessert outside of something like the DDP, so the "savings" for us were a bit inflated.
Overall, we had a fantastic time and ate way, way too much. I doubt we will ever do the dining plan again in the future, and we'll also try to avoid going in late August again due to the extreme heat, big crowds, packed dining locations, and ever present threat of hurricanes.
We were also attracted to the late August time frame by the potential for lighter crowds. It logically seems that the dining promotion is driving higher crowd levels...with a few exceptions, we experienced very busy parks and packed table service meals all week.
I'm a hardcore Disney planner and visitor, but the DDP requirements added too much stress and in some cases limited our flexibility during certain days.
The desserts with every meal add up to way too much food...we are only occasional dessert eaters (maybe a few times a month at home), so this was calorie and sugar overload for us. I also think it was incredibly wasteful...now I know we didn't need to order or accept the desserts, but in most cases we did, only to throw away most of them after taking a few bites.
The level of Cast Member awareness on DDP rules was inconsistent. For example, some refused to allow snack purchases even when the item was noted on the menu board with the DDP logo. And then some were more flexible and allowed items outside the "approved" list.
From the beginning we treated this as a subsidy for our trip. I haven't done the analysis on the stack of receipts from the trip, but we certainly saved money overall since it was of course "free" dining. As mentioned, we would not be ordering dessert outside of something like the DDP, so the "savings" for us were a bit inflated.
Overall, we had a fantastic time and ate way, way too much. I doubt we will ever do the dining plan again in the future, and we'll also try to avoid going in late August again due to the extreme heat, big crowds, packed dining locations, and ever present threat of hurricanes.