Dining Plan worth it?

[Jonathan Swift]

Here is our itinerary...

This is great! It will be easier for someone to work with this itinerary as a baseline. The savings is less than $2.50 a person per day (including the 3-9 year old), but it's something!

 

[GillianP1301]

This really comes down to how you and your family eat and the best way to try and figure out value is to get a rough idea of what you would spend out of pocket by looking at menus. You probably don't even have to look at them all, you get a pretty good idea of an average meal cost once you do just a few.

For us, we did the DDP last trip (first time for us) and I'm not going to bother with it next time. For me I really liked the fact that it was prepaid and on vacation, I do like to indulge in desserts. We did get "free" dining, so we ended up breaking even, saving maybe a little bit. For my DH, he always felt like he needed to be ordering the most expensive item, even if it's not what he really wanted and to me, that's just not an advantage, plus he's not a big dessert eater. DDP definitely doesn't work well for him.

So this trip, we'll try without and see what we like better, but purely cost wise, based on how I've calculated, DDP is not a cost savings for us.

 

[alisha123]

In my opinion heck no!! I just leads to believe you should eat more food and who wants to be tired and sluggish and spend a ton of money to get it? My oldest daughter and myself split a lot of things and we are not big eaters anyway. So in my opinion it's not worth it and your gonna spend more money than needed

 

[kris4360]

We always get the DDP... it works for us and we like having our meals paid off in advance

Same here.

 

[kevschickee]

It's worth it in my opinion. I love that my meals are prepaid and people say it's a ton of food but really it's a reg days worth of food.

 

[aaarcher86]

The DDP never working comments are obnoxious.

It works out to save people all the time. We do the DXDP and save money. It may not work for many, but it works for us. We don't order the most expensive thing all the time. We order what we want.

I've run the pen and paper numbers plenty of times and then compared actual receipts after my trip. The DP calculator tool did not come out very accurate for me. You have to do the math and see the numbers but make the decision for yourself. The whole 'DDP never works out' business is misleading.

 

[bdklein]

So for us it saves about $43 getting the dining plan.

Well considering you have to pay ahead of time for food you have not yet eaten, might not eat if someone gets sick, wants to go on rides instead, or decides they arent hungry and just want a snack or salad instead of the steak, and having to make sure you maximize your value, is $43.00 really a savings? I think not.

 

[alisha123]

Well considering you have to pay ahead of time for food you have not yet eaten, might not eat if someone gets sick, wants to go on rides instead, or decides they arent hungry and just want a snack or salad instead of the steak, and having to make sure you maximize your value, is $43.00 really a savings? I think not.

Totally agree on that! It's just something else trying to get ya to spend, spend, spend. We bring items for breakfast and lots of bottle water from home. Saves quite a bit

 

[kevschickee]

Well considering you have to pay ahead of time for food you have not yet eaten, might not eat if someone gets sick, wants to go on rides instead, or decides they arent hungry and just want a snack or salad instead of the steak, and having to make sure you maximize your value, is $43.00 really a savings? I think not.

To me it is. My kids don't have a choice. It's lunch time they come with me or if it's dinner time they come with me. It isn't just about saving money. There is a convenience factor too.

 

[kevschickee]

The DDP never working comments are obnoxious.

It works out to save people all the time. We do the DXDP and save money. It may not work for many, but it works for us. We don't order the most expensive thing all the time. We order what we want.

I've run the pen and paper numbers plenty of times and then compared actual receipts after my trip. The DP calculator tool did not come out very accurate for me. You have to do the math and see the numbers but make the decision for yourself. The whole 'DDP never works out' business is misleading.

I completely agree

 

[kevschickee]

danceintherain: I don't believe the people who claim the DDP saves them money actually tried to figure it out in a systematic way. I think they just look at the prices for steak and assume it does. I thought I needed the plan because I have three expensive restaurants reserved for my trip. The double point deduction actually makes these places WORSE to use on the plan! (You're wasting points by using your plan on a 2 point restaurant vs. two 1 point restaurants if the combined bills of the 1 point places are more than the 2 point one, and they usually are.)

I also think part of the logical fallacies going on in people's heads is the idea that they need the plan so they can pay for everything up front. There's a card game called "Let It Ride" where the players have to put up three bets and then have the option to take some away as the game progresses. You'd think it would be no different if the rules were put one bet down and add more bets as the game goes on, but it's not. There's something about the human brain that resists changing the initial bet. Similarly, even though it's cheaper to pay OOP, people want to give all the money up front because it forces them to buy meals they wouldn't have if they had to face the bill each time. This is crazy, because these people are willfully trying to trick themselves to spend beyond their wishes. This benefits Disney rather the customer but instead of balking at it, they see it as a feature of the "service." OOP purchases are done with your room key and list of payments is provided at the end of the trip, so I don't get the "sticker shock" claim. I honestly don't have an explanation about the cognitive dissonance about how the DDP is supposed to be easier. I don't understand how having to track your meals to use up points makes things easier.

If anyone has an itinerary that is cheaper with one of the dining plans, please post it. It would be interesting to see an example where the plan works and works to be significantly cheaper than OOP.

I actually worked it out and we are doing mostly character buffets and it works out that we do save some money.

 

[goofy4prez]

Well considering you have to pay ahead of time for food you have not yet eaten, might not eat if someone gets sick, wants to go on rides instead, or decides they arent hungry and just want a snack or salad instead of the steak, and having to make sure you maximize your value, is $43.00 really a savings? I think not.

Let me ask you this, if you were walking down the street and happened to find $43 laying on the ground with a note attached that said, "congrats this is your lucky day" would you say no big deal it's only $43 and just leave it for someone else? I think not.

I'm not attacking you or blasting you so please don't take it as such. But for some the DDP is well worth it and for some it's not. To each their own.

 

[kevschickee]

Let me ask you this, if you were walking down the street and happened to find $43 laying on the ground with a note attached that said, "congrats this is your lucky day" would you say no big deal it's only $43 and just leave it for someone else? I think not.

I'm not attacking you or blasting you. But for some the DDP is well worth it and for some it's not. To each their own.

Well said

 

[Minniesgal]

We can get value out of the DDP but only by eating way more than we need or want to! i beleive if we go OOP we will eat less and spend a lot less. i have estimated my OOP savings at over $1000.

 

[Minniesgal]

danceintherain: I don't believe the people who claim the DDP saves them money actually tried to figure it out in a systematic way. I think they just look at the prices for steak and assume it does. I thought I needed the plan because I have three expensive restaurants reserved for my trip. The double point deduction actually makes these places WORSE to use on the plan! (You're wasting points by using your plan on a 2 point restaurant vs. two 1 point restaurants if the combined bills of the 1 point places are more than the 2 point one, and they usually are.)

I also think part of the logical fallacies going on in people's heads is the idea that they need the plan so they can pay for everything up front. There's a card game called "Let It Ride" where the players have to put up three bets and then have the option to take some away as the game progresses. You'd think it would be no different if the rules were put one bet down and add more bets as the game goes on, but it's not. There's something about the human brain that resists changing the initial bet. Similarly, even though it's cheaper to pay OOP, people want to give all the money up front because it forces them to buy meals they wouldn't have if they had to face the bill each time. This is crazy, because these people are willfully trying to trick themselves to spend beyond their wishes. This benefits Disney rather the customer but instead of balking at it, they see it as a feature of the "service." OOP purchases are done with your room key and list of payments is provided at the end of the trip, so I don't get the "sticker shock" claim. I honestly don't have an explanation about the cognitive dissonance about how the DDP is supposed to be easier. I don't understand how having to track your meals to use up points makes things easier.

If anyone has an itinerary that is cheaper with one of the dining plans, please post it. It would be interesting to see an example where the plan works and works to be significantly cheaper than OOP.

I used it in February and ran a spreadsheet of what the meal or snack would have cost me OOP and it totaled at about 27% more than what I paid for the DDP so you can use it to save money. But we did it by using every QS credit and every TS credit and to be honest we were eating things for the sake of it because it was prepaid. So although it allows you to get more food than you would for the same amount of money OOP it doesn't actually save you money because chances are you would eat less OOP.

it will work for people who want to eat 1 Qs with dessert per day and 1 TS. We would have been happier skipping the Qs for just a snack in the rooom.

 

[I loveStitchnippyjon]

My problem with the regular dining plan is that I resent taking time from the parks every day to schedule a TS meal. DH and I have done it and saved some money, but only because that was back when appetizers and tip were included.
DD and I did the QS plan last year, and when we figured it out we broke even, but ate too many desserts and had a ton of snack credits left over.
In June we are doing 2 TS dinners and one TS lunch in 9 days; the rest are QS.

 

[Jonathan Swift]

To me it is. My kids don't have a choice. It's lunch time they come with me or if it's dinner time they come with me. It isn't just about saving money. There is a convenience factor too.

What's the convenience? You still have to swipe your card for every meal, right? How is OOP different in convenience compared to the dining plan?

I've run the pen and paper numbers plenty of times and then compared actual receipts after my trip. The DP calculator tool did not come out very accurate for me. You have to do the math and see the numbers but make the decision for yourself. The whole 'DDP never works out' business is misleading.

If the spreadsheet seems inaccurate to you, there could be a couple reasons...

1. It estimates costs based on averages of menu items, not an actual bill.
2. You have to estimate things like appetizers and desserts, too.
3. Peak plan costs aren't reflected.

The spreadsheet includes lots of variables in there. You have to make sure you're filling it out correctly. There's lots of gotchas that the spreadsheet points out that people may not realize. (The Hoop De Doo sometimes counts as TS and sometimes not.)

Let me ask you this, if you were walking down the street and happened to find $43 laying on the ground with a note attached that said, "congrats this is your lucky day" would you say no big deal it's only $43 and just leave it for someone else? I think not.

If you found a $43 coupon lying on the ground and it said, "This coupon is worth $43 if and only if you pay Disney up front for all food costs you intend to use, but if you deviate, this coupon may decline in value and/or surcharges will be added to your bill that may cause you to actually lose money by using this coupon," would you use it? I think not.

 

[bdklein]

Let me ask you this, if you were walking down the street and happened to find $43 laying on the ground with a note attached that said, "congrats this is your lucky day" would you say no big deal it's only $43 and just leave it for someone else? I think not.

I'm not attacking you or blasting you so please don't take it as such. But for some the DDP is well worth it and for some it's not. To each their own.

Unfair comparison. If there were $43 on the ground, I would take it and be happy. That is a one-time event and a sure thing-and didn't cost me anything yet.

Again, you have to pay ahead of time for food you have not eaten, and actually may not eat. So Disney has your money ahead of time. What if some people get sick and can't eat for several days at WDW? Is that not a waste of money? There goes the $43 savings. Again, what if one or more people in the group decide they want the pasta or chicken instead of the steak, even though you have pretermined that in order to save money you must order the steak. There goes the $43 savings.

 

[bdklein]

. We want to enjoy the rides and the parks and not having to worry about the food. With DDP, we are sure we will be properly fed.

You would worry about the food if you were not on the DDP?

So if not on the plan the kids won't be properly fed? What happens the other 51 weeks when you are not at WDW?

 

[martinezmom3]

Trying to explain why/why not someone should use a dining plan, when they've already decided which they prefer, is like trying to convince a family who camps/backpacks/fish, that they would prefer to stay at the Waldorf and have mani/pedi appts, and cucumber water for their vacation. For me, one of those options sounds like heaven, and the other,,,, well,,,,not going to happen,,,ever......yes there are ways the dining plan can save, yes there are those who find is much more convenient, but for some who just plan/vacation differently, it's just not worth it! It really is basically just a family to family preference.