Are the Meal Plans a value?

[kcsquared31]

We are planning first trip to Disney - 2 adults - 4 children (8,6,4,4) -- is there an advantage or savings to have a meal plan through Disney?

[ldo]

at 10 years old, a child is an adult price. With your ages, I assume you are going to do some character meals. For that, DDP will save you $. For other dining, it's a toss up, unless you have big eaters. Most kid's meals at WDW restuarants are around $7. If you don't think you would do at least 1 TS (sit-down) meal in a restuarant each day, then it's probably not worth it. You can look at menus with prices at allears.net to see what you would pay. When we get a DVC with a kitchen, we never get DDP, as we cook a few simple meals in the villa and only eat out a few dinners.

[BEASLYBOO]

You will get many varied opinions on this. IMO, no, 1st my son never ate kid meals even before becoming an adult at 10 (ridiculous) and the structure of the DDP's are too restricting. There's no spontaneity, on vacation we don't always want a big meal at night, we typically don't eat desserts and at times we may only want appetizers depending on the days/night activities planned. I also find the offerings very repetive amongs the participating restaurants, and luckily as I stated earlier DS(13) was never a nugget/pizza/mac& cheese kid, he ate from the adult menu. For us, it tied us to a schedule (ADR's) that we don't care for and in many instances it was way too much food. We do a few CS meals, a couple of nice ADR's like Blue Zoo & Jiko and then breakfast and other meals are in the villa, over the years we've discovered that this is what works best for us.

Of course, what works for me may not work for you and vice-versa, we tried the DDP only once and we do better nutritionally and financially without it. Sometimes you have to try something to determine if it's for you or not.

Good Luck!

[dianeschlicht]

We have done it both ways, and we spent a LOT more doing the Disney dining plan than we did when we just paid OOP with the TIW card. Don't forget there are some DVC discounts at some restaurants even if you do NOT have an AP or TIW card.

[christa112]

We have always used the DDP. Our 1st three times we were not DVC owners and we traveled during Free Dining (which is what got us hooked on the DDP).

On our last trip I really debated on not purchasing the DDP and paying OOP because I do have a child who is 10 and we would have to pay the adult price for him. After thinking and rethinking as well as doing some very rough math on where we were going to eat it worked out to be almost the same as if we would have just payed OOP.

For our eating habits and how we spend most of days in the parks it makes sense for us to do the DDP. We like eating character meals and TS's once a day. I also do not like to cook, so cooking in our villa is out of the question.

We did order groceries from Garden Grocer for breakfast items (milk, cereal, pop tarts, toaster strudels, bread, butter, soda). I can handle that kind of cooking = a toaster :laughing:

In the end my 10 yr old enjoyed eating off the adult menu. He found he loved double cheeseburgers and the meatloaf from 50's Primetime! I honestly don't think the child's portions would have been enough for him and my 9 yr old could have easily eaten off of the adult menu as well. 4 chicken nuggets for him does not cut it (he can easily 10-12 nuggets)

It worked out to be around $240 a day for 3 Adults and 2 children for the basic DDP. Maybe I could have saved a few bucks paying OOP, but the convience of the DDP gets me every time. I love it and I don't really see us not using it time and time again.

I hope this helps you OP. Good luck in your decision.

[jakenjess]

It really depends on where you're going to eat. As a PP said, with four children, if you're going to do a few character meals it could very well be a good deal. For us it's not, as our children are now considered "adults" and we could never justify that price, plus we rarely do the fixed price meals anymore. You should get at least a rough idea of where you're going to eat and price it out and see if it would pay off for you. Good luck!

[Metsoskil]

You'll get all kinds of replies, but the only way you will know for sure is to look at menus, get a pretty good idea of what you would eat at each restaurant, and figure out the price. Add up the cost of the dining plan, and the cost without and see if you will be saving money. Disney prices the plan very close to the cost of eating without the plan. If you are going to order expensive entrees and always get dessert, the plan will likely work in your favor. If you are a salad/pasta kind of person, it likely won't.

[bobbiwoz]

Because you don't get appetizers, and I really don't enjoy the desserts as much as the appetizers, we only get a DDP when we're planning to eat at buffets, and then we also do the Fantasmic dinner package at H&V (which both of us enjoy) because the TIW doesn't include that package, and every couple of visits I like to see Fantasmic without standing in a long line.

Bobbi:goodvibes

[katied]

It doesn't work for us. We eat an average of 2 meals/day in the villa, so even if the meal out is a character meal, the math still doesn't work out. If our schedules change where we're eating more meals in the park, I may reconsider.

[kristie03]

We have been a fan of the DDP for the last several visits to the park. We have done the deluxe the past couple of trips, and that has worked great, though there is always a bit of a feeling that if I was paying with cash as we go, I wouldn't have ALL that food.....but hey we are on vacation.

Now that we have bought DVC we are going to try our first trip in July out with getting breakfast foods in the room and doing the 1 CS meal 1TS meal plan, and see if we end up coming out of pocket enough that the deluxe plan is better for us.

It all comes down to how you eat. I don't eat carbs, so the dessert is useless to me, so I really do wish you could substitued an appetizer for the dessert.....I guess this is not much help to answering your question, but just one more view.

:)

[Vickis3js]

We found that when we went and all our kids were still kids it definatly was worth the price. 2 of my 3 kids are light eaters and my oldest is a bigger eater but I can never finish my meal so she would pick from my plate if she was still hungry. Last year we did not do the DDP and we kind of wished we had just for the convience of having it all paid for when we get there.

This year my oldest is an adult and its still a savings for us. We will have a villa with a kitchen but I refuse to do more then use the toaster or microwav when I am on vacation. So the DDP works for us. Plus we go at Christmas and were not charged the higher rate so thats another savings.

[lumpydj]

For us, Dining at Disney is all part of our "Disney Experience". I made my ADR's for all the places we wanted to eat this trip. Then I looked at the menus and figured which entree I would get. I added up all the costs of the entrees for those we would use a dining credit for. Then I figured how many counter service meals we would have and averaged $15 for those. I added everything up and compared it to the price of the DDP. This time around, we were very close with our OOP and DDP. We decided to go DDP because I figured entree only, not including drink and desserts. We would save money on DDP so we went with that. It's certainly not a "must do" for us, but if we figure that it would save us $$, we'll do it. Plus we're the type of family that likes sit down meals and will go through the effort of all the planning that's involved. Good luck with your decision! :cool2:

[rcchello]

It does not work for my family, since I do not have any big eaters. It does guaranty to deliver 1.5-4 times your daily calories in a day. So if mantaining or gaining weight is on you agenda the DDP is for you.:rotfl:

My wife and I find that if we have a Table service meal the next day we end up sharing a lunch. Many of the entrees at full service restaurants are enough for two people and then we end up sharing a dessert. Disney is very nice to people who share meals. If you let them know you are sharing when you order many times the meal will come nicely served split between two plates. (No charge!)

So it depends on your style and ability to consume large amounts of food. If you are planning on a Table service meal every day and will eat breakfast and lunch at Disney, then the DDP can be cheaper. A couple of times I have run into people who have paid for my counter service meal since they were going to go to waste because they gave up eating lunch a couple days into their trips.

Compare what you would reasonable buy from the menus and the price of DDP and then try not to over order just because you can.

[Brian Noble]

It depends on what you'd do if left to your own devices. We *always* end up spending less than the "approrpriate" dining plan would have cost to eat what we want, where we want. But, we tend to not quite eat one TS per day, and the closer to that we get, the more likely that some of them are less expensive---not because we're saving money, but that's just the way we tour. I'm there for the parks, and in many cases have better restaurants here at home.

[dianeschlicht]

I'm there for the parks, and in many cases have better restaurants here at home.

I will go you one better and say I think the DDP is the reason you have better restaurants at home. The quality of food service even in the signature restaurants has taken a BIG downturn since the inception of the current DDP.

[BDJazz]

My wife and I are traveling to the World in May for 10 days. We decided to do the Deluxe Dining Plan. We realize this is a lot of food, so hopefully we won't put any of these credits to waste. We had a long list of restaurants that we really want to try, and most are table service, some being signature dining (Jiko, Cali Grill, Narcoosees).

My wife put together an excellent spreadsheet with multiple scenarios. She took the average costs for meals from the "Passporters WDW 2010 book" and compared the costs to the dining plan. She compared using the dining plan to pay for signature vs paying out of pocket for signature and out of pocket for other meals (plus many other scenarios). Overall, the dining plan won in every scenario. Even when we deducted the price of the appetizer, paying out of pocket for 3 meals a day, the out of pocket calculated about $200 higher. Upon looking at the actual menus and prices, our average costs were conservative, and the value of the plan may actually be better than indicated on the spreadsheet. If anyone would like a copy of the spreadsheet, please PM me and I will send to your e-mail.

We are eating at the following restaurants on our trip:
Breakfast: Boulangerie Patisserie, Snack day 2, Crystal Palace, Akershus, Hollywood&Vine, Gran Floridian Cafe, Donalds Sfari, Kona Cafe, Snack day 9, The wave.
Lunch: Biergarten, Tusker House, Tonys Town Square, Tokyo Dining, Sci Fi Drive in, big river grile, flame tree BBQ, Raglan Road, Teppan Edo, Whispering Canyon.
Dinner: Boma, Le Cellier, Jiko, Wolfgang Puck, Marrakesh, Narcoosees, Ohana, Kona Cafe, Les CHefs de France, and California Grill.

All meals above are paid for with the dining plan except for breakfast at boulangerie on the first day.

Hope this helps... We will be tracking the bills at the restaurants we eat at while we are there and have a full report on the cost savings as well as if the amount of food was too much.

[hakepb]

I think the DDP works more in your favor (multiple kids) when you use more buffets.

I just do not like being always locked down to kids meal selections only, At a buffet a kid can get anything, but at other restaurants, they may be stuck with Disney provided kids food that restaurant's chef would never put on a menu (i.e yuou have a decent dinner, but the kids get stuck with pbj or Kraft EasyMac. Especially bad at many CS, too. For instance the kids meal gets processed chicken nuggets, when an adult meal gets chicken strips that contain actual cuts of chicken. I'd understand fewer strip(s) for the kids meal, but with all of Disney's health initiatives (I think all kids meals now have meet certain calorie and/or fat guidelines) the chicken nugget vs strip does not make sense to me...

[HotdogDncrs]

We've always purchased DDP, however since March will be our first time travelling as DVC members, we have decided to try OOP for the first time. We are going to purchase the TIW card (since we know that we have at least 2 trips planned within this year). Like many other posters have commented, getting desert with every meal gets to be a little too much. I hate having to worry about losing weight when I get home:lmao:

We figure that we will use our TIW to get the 20% discount, and after doing some preliminary math, I think we'll end up ahead. We are the type of people who would be happy ordering several appetizers instead of an entree, or not bothering with dessert. Also the carrot cake or brownie that seems to be offered with every CS aren't that great - we'd rather save the calories for some Mickey Ears!

One thing I think I will miss however, is the convenience of not having to look at prices or pay for everytime you order something. In order to help us see if we end up ahead, we are going to charge everything to the room, so that we have a grand total at the end of our trip.

Good luck with your decision, and enjoy your meals:)

[CarolMN]

Moved from DVC Boards

[ppoe65]

Having four young children, I think you will make out just fine with the basic DDP. You will get QS, 1 TS and a snack per child per day for only approximately $12 a day. Like other posters have said, if you have a character meal, especially buffets, you would benefit.
I have family of 6 and we have done both DDP & OOP, we prefer DDP. The math works out almost even, we make out better w/DDP. Plus we like to have everything paid for before we arrive.

[TDC Nala]

With four kids under age 10 if you intend to go for table service meals you will almost definitely realize a savings from the Disney dining plan if you use it the way it is intended to be used (don't leave credits unused, don't trade TS credits for CS meals, etc). It is especially valuable for children if you are scheduling buffets or family style all you can eat restaurants. These are not a great DDP value for adults but are an exceptional value for children.