Is the Dinning plan worth it?

[Cindybell]

I am going back and forth on wither or not to purchase the Dining plan. I have a family of four (my children are 12 and 14) and we usually eat 2-3 meals/day while at Disney. Well, usually a full breakfast, a very small lunch or snack then a sit down dinner (or counter service if not a lot of time). We will be staying 7 days. I only want to do it if it will save money and not for convienence. Could someone help?

[aka-mad4themouse]

The dining plan itself is going to cost you $140/night based on the fact that your children are both juniors. For that $140 you will each be allotted one sitdown meal, one counterservice and one snack per night.

Since it must be booked with a package, you will not get any discounts unless you have a package-specific code or if you book thru AAA. This can make the bottomline a little higher than if you were to book a discounted room and bought your tickets from some place like Ticketmania or MapleLeaf.

My feelings are that the dining addon is a good deal if you planned to book a package anyway and if you use the sitdown option for dinners and not character meals. Just take a look at the menus at AllEarsNet.com and compare the price of Breakfast with Cindy to dinner at the Concourse Steakhouse (which includes appetizer, entrée, dessert & beverage) and you'll see what I mean.

It's a difficult decision to make. I think that if I could get the package price closer to what I pay for room + tickets on my own, then I would jump on the chance to do the dining addon. But the package is actually so much more than my discounted room + tickets that I cannot justify the cost. Fortunately, I still have a couple of vouchers left.

[ncbyrne]

For DH and I it will definitely save us money! There are lots of really nice sit down restaurants on the plan and several of them are buffets, which DH enjoys. We booked a package thru AAA to get the dining option. If you check the prices on the menu http://www.allearsnet.com/menu/menus.htm on this site, you will be able to determine if this plan will save you $.