Let me preface this by saying we have gone to WDW for the last 4 years and used the free dining promotion, but last year we upgraded to the deluxe dining plan. It seemd like a HUGE waste of food for us. An appetizer, the entree, and a dessert twice a day was just not what we had in mind. In fact, after a hefty meal at Rose and Crown, I was so full halfway through our meal at Le Cellier I actually (sigh) passed on my maple creme brulee! Yes I know, you don't have to eat everything placed in front of you. But in order to justify the expense, we tried a little bit of everything and probably went a little overboard.
So this time around, we thought about doing the food OOP. After sitting down and doing some quick calculations, we should be able to save a ton of cash, still be able to eat where we want, and may even be able to use a room-only discount instead of getting the free dining.
Anyone else had this work out for them?
ABSOLUTELY!!!!!!!
A few years ago, I thought I was the only person on the planet who didn't "get" the value of the DDP and never opted to buy it. But every time I'd sit down and do the math on how, when, and where we planned our meals, the DDP came out as a *huge* money loser for us.
This isn't at all to say it's universally a bad deal. You/everyone *must* do the "due diligence" on how your family will handle eating at Disney, and work through the numbers. What works for family A won't work for family B.
For us, we drive to Disney, stay on-property, and plan most breakfasts to be in our room early in the morning before we hit the parks. Having a POV means that we also don't mind visiting the surrounding area some, and we've found a nice family pizza place we don't have back home, a local Orlando seafood place, and - perhaps most importantly - the option not to eat at all.
When we sat down and worked out where we *did* want to eat Disney meals, we identified a grand total of four places we
really wanted to go. One of them doesn't even accept DDP. So, guesstimating our expense for those four meals (three sit-down, full service meals, one walk-up location), we calculated a total that wasn't even in the *ballpark* of the additional cost to add DDP to our vacation. Plus, we were forewarned of how having DDP can encourage you to eat more than you might have otherwise, and that didn't quite make sense to us, either.
So, again,
for our family, DDP didn't work and doesn't provide us with any value. Our Disney meals are all out-of-pocket, and we never feel compelled to eat more, or eat an extra meal, or scarf down a snack just to use up unspent credits. If we stayed 100% within the confines of Disney (no local transportation), and knew up-front
every meal would be a Disney restaurant, our calculations might have been different. For us, out of pocket was clearly the way to go.
The key, as I said, is planning. You have to do what's right *for you*.
