Dining Plan and a 10 yr. old, what to do?

[habg1]

One of my kids turned 10 since our last visit. We are heading back in Feb. She's a picky eater: mac & cheese, nuggets, etc... you get the picture. We are throwing around getting the dining plan or not. If she has to eat off the adult menu, she will hardly eat anything.

Would like to hear any opinions on this matter, or solutions. Any similar experiences?

[Tricia1972]

You have a few different options - not sure which one will work best for you and your group.


- She can order off of the child's menu and use an adult credit to pay for her childs meal.

- She can order off of the child's menu and you can pay OOP for her selection. Bank up her credits and then you could use them for signature dining experiences.

- Of course it's always an option to get no plan at all. Depending on how the rest of the party eats, this may be the most economical choice.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

[habg1]

I like the banking idea. So, we pay out of pocket for her table service, kid's meals. Then take the credits we didn't use and go to a signature, or another rest. of our choosing. I'm thinking this maybe an option. Thanks so much for the advice.

[Singinglizzie]

We are new to the dinning plan. I thought the kids menu 9 & under was restricted to kids 9 & under. Will your daughter be allowed to purchase those meals? Would hate to see you hassle with the restaurant servers and be charged for an adult portion of the kids meals, which wouldn't save you anything. Again, I don't really know the answer to this question :confused3 . Was she 9 before you bought the dinning plan, maybe there is a "grandfather" clause that would allow you to still use the kids ds plan???

[Tricia1972]

Anyone can order off of the kids menu at any place other than buffets and AYCE type places.

If it's a regular TS with a hard menu, she will be permitted to order off of the children's menu.

[DisneyKidds]

I agree. Pay OOP for her kids meals at table service restaurants, then use the saved credits to cover another meal for the other adult meals, or do some signature dining. Keep in mind that if you do any character meals you will use her adult credits for those.

Who knows, maybe your daughter will expand her dining horizons. We had a recently turned 10 yo on our last trip. She was excited to be an "adult", and really enjoyed al the filet mignon she ate that week!

[shopn24seven]

ONE cashier for CS would not let pay OOP. I guess it all depends how ***cool*** the CM's are. LOL.

[Allison]

We are new to the dinning plan. I thought the kids menu 9 & under was restricted to kids 9 & under. Will your daughter be allowed to purchase those meals? Would hate to see you hassle with the restaurant servers and be charged for an adult portion of the kids meals, which wouldn't save you anything. Again, I don't really know the answer to this question :confused3 . Was she 9 before you bought the dinning plan, maybe there is a "grandfather" clause that would allow you to still use the kids ds plan???

Yes, she can purchase the child's item. Any family style or buffet meals would be at an adult price but otherwise a kid's meal could be purchased in most situations.

There is no clause, the price charged for the dining plan is based on the time of the visit not when the plan is purchased.

[Cinderella3]

I know last Dec when we ate at Coral Reef, the waitress would not allow us to order of the child's menu, My son was 10. Be careful, I would call and talk with CM to see

[Tina G]

I just posted an almost identical thread to this one a few days ago. My daughter is currently 9 but will turn 10 shortly before we go to Disney in May. I thought about paying OOP for kids meals for her and then pooling her adult credits for us to use but since we usually eat at 2 breakfast buffets and 2 dinner buffets which we would have to use adult credits for her, it only leaves us 3 TS credits to use as extras which didn't seem to be much of a savings, especially if we end up having to use adults credits for her at the buffets. Since the breakfast buffets are usually less than $20, it's a waste to use DDP credits on them. The CS credits could be pooled and used pretty easily but we're thinking we might end up with too many CS credits at the end that may get wasted. So in the end, we are thinking that it will make the most sense to just forget the DDP and pay OOP for our meals. We are also light eaters, don't usually eat dessert, and will often share 2 CS meals between the three of us anyway, so the DDP is not a great value for us anyway.

I know last Dec when we ate at Coral Reef, the waitress would not allow us to order of the child's menu, My son was 10. Be careful, I would call and talk with CM to see

This is one of my concerns as well. Many of the Disney menus state kids meals are for ages 3-9. I'm sure some servers are more laid back but there are surely some that will hold to that rule. My DD is petite and is the size of an average 7-8 year old so we may stand a chance of them assuming she is 9 or less. If we are asked her age, we won't lie. But we are not planning to offer the information unless asked, especially at the buffets.

I wish they had a junior plan, between the adult and child plan. It's a huge jump between paying $10.99 per day to $39.99 per day for the DDP.

[habg1]

A junior plan would be great! We're still undecided about things. This is probably a stupid question, but, does she even have to be on the dining plan? If the rest of us are on it, can we just pay out of pocket for her so she can eat off the kids meals?
Or does everyone have to be on the same plan?

[TDC Nala]

She has to be on the dining plan if you want the rest of the family to be on the dining plan. Everyone on your reservation over age 2 has to be on the same dining plan. But you do not have to use her credits to buy her meals, except at buffets and all you can eat meals, where she will be required to pay the adult price. It can be said that generally the a la carte restaurants will permit you to order a children's meal for her and pay for it in cash rather than dining credits. Her adult credits can then be used to buy other meals for other adults in the party. Can't get you past the rare occasion where a CM will not permit her to order a children's meal though. In those cases you may still be permitted to order a children's menu meal but pay for it with an adult TS credit. You would have to ask your server.

[Good Ol Gal]

we just got back from WDW last week and at all of the restaurants we went to mac and cheese was taken off the kids menu!

My 13 yo son lives on mac and cheese and he was bummed! (they let him order off the kids menu at each restaurant, no problem).

Here are the ones we dined at:
WCC
Le Cellier
Rose and Crown
Sci Fi
ESPN club

This forced him to order off the adult menu and try new things, but he was bummed.

All the restaurants had the same style menu, so I would guess that it was World wide. Each menu did have some restaurant specific items, skillet at WCC, steak at Le Cellier, etc.

(we were not on the DDP)

[klynn]

I know last Dec when we ate at Coral Reef, the waitress would not allow us to order of the child's menu, My son was 10. Be careful, I would call and talk with CM to see

Were you on the DDP and trying to use his credit or were you trying to pay OOP? We ate at Coral Reef last week (we were on the DDP) and my 11yo daughter had no problem ordering off the kids menu, but we paid OOP and did not use her credit. Perhaps that is the difference?

[kelma]

When we were at Le Cellier last fall, the waitress would not let us use an adult credit for my 10 year old dd to buy a kid's meal, but did let us pay OOP for it. Seems like there's not a lot of consistency with the waitstaff :confused3

[DCDisney]

My son had just turned 10 on our last trip and some places would let us pay OOP for him to get a kids meal but that isn't always the case. There is no way to hide their age if you are using the DDP because you will have to show your card to pay and it tells how many adult vs kids you have. We still had 1 kid aged kid so it made doing the DDP worth it for us but on our next trip they will both be adults so we won't do the DDP again. That way if they won't let them order a kids meal we can just order them an appetizer or side and we won't have to worry about losing money on the DDP. I'm sure in a few years they will want adult food and we can go back to the DDP. We ended up using the 3 extra credits for a breakfast and then paid OOP for my kid aged kid. It was tricky though because we weren't really sure how many credits we would have because some CMs won't let you pay OOP. It ended up fine for us but really you don't save that much on the DDP anymore that leaving a few TS credits behind would totally negate any savings.

[SoonipiLady]

My son had just turned 10 on our last trip and some places would let us pay OOP for him to get a kids meal but that isn't always the case.

I am a bit concerned about that, how are they to know that the kid is your son? It could be your nephew, and not be on the plan. :confused3 :confused3 We are going with friends this spring. We are 3 adults and 1 child. (DH, DD, DS & me) There are a couple of meals that we are doing that will be me, DD, our friend and her DD. That will be 3 adults and 1 child, but not the 3 adults and 1 child that are on the plan. How do you make sure that they allow the two that aren't on the plan pay OOP? It's also worrisome for us on another level....DS will only be eight, but is taller than some of the 10 year olds in his school. I would hate to have CMs think that he's one of the adults on the plan when he's with DS while the girls are at a princess meal and give DH a difficult time over ordering a kids meal. DH would NOT deal well with that....he's a bit type A sometimes!:rolleyes1

[Sibahan]

Thats my solution...i know lying isnt the best, but i would just say she was 9 if it made a price difference!

[disneynuts777]

I know last Dec when we ate at Coral Reef, the waitress would not allow us to order of the child's menu, My son was 10. Be careful, I would call and talk with CM to see

I would have asked to speak to a manager. My DD who is know 12 and eats practically nothing on the Adults menu has always ordered from the children's menu. Sometimes we have been on the dining plan(and we pay OOP) for her meals and bank those credits for California Grill and Narcoosee's. A couple of times we have been OOP for all of our dining.
In August when we were on the deluxe plan and banking the credits was not nessessary they would let her order from the kids meal and would bring her an adult size portion of it.(She never ate it all but I did not want to pay OOP and have leftover credits!!!)

[DCDisney]

. How do you make sure that they allow the two that aren't on the plan pay OOP? It's also worrisome for us on another level....DS will only be eight, but is taller than some of the 10 year olds in his school. I would hate to have CMs think that he's one of the adults on the plan when he's with DS while the girls are at a princess meal and give DH a difficult time over ordering a kids meal. I think when you are going with a different group you just need to let them know up front that these 2 are on the plan and those 2 aren't so they can split up the check. I really doubt they'll argue but when it's clearly what looks like 1 family unit some of the CM's just say no or offer a double kids meal for an adult credit. In terms of age they don't seem to argue with whatever you say. For us it seems like they often ask the kids rather than us and very subtly ;P My son is very tall for his age at 10 he's like 5 foot 2 and broad shouldered and he was similarly sized for the past 2 years. They never said boo to us about him. Occasionally at the buffets especially he would seem to get subtly asked what grade, how old, etc but they won't give you a hard time about age.