First timers, are we DDP material?!

[lolobug]

Hi!

This is our first trip! We are a family of 4, with a 2 year old and a 5 year old birthday girl! We are a family that will usually want at least 1 TS/ day. My kids will want snacks too, chocolate milks and ice creams/ a treat of some sort. My DH will want a coffee (I probably will too!) we would like to do the following restaurants for sure!
CRT- brunch or dinner (2 TS)
Kona- breakfast and dinner (1 TS each)
Via Napoli- pizza (1TS?)
Beaches and cream (1 CS)

Maybe:
Fultons- dinner (2)
Maybe a few other character dinners?
Ohana?
California grill?
Garden grill- is this gone?
Crossroads @ HOB?
Flying fish?
Grand Floridian cafe?

Suggestions?

There may be others as well. We will grab lunch on the go but when we dine we like sit down restaurants. My DH is in the food/bev business so he enjoys his food. We also like to have a few drinks (hey, it's vacation, right?!)
Are we DP people? Which one would you suggest? Thanks!

 

[smiths02]

Hi!

This is our first trip! We are a family of 4, with a 2 year old and a 5 year old birthday girl! We are a family that will usually want at least 1 TS/ day. My kids will want snacks too, chocolate milks and ice creams/ a treat of some sort. My DH will want a coffee (I probably will too!) we would like to do the following restaurants for sure!
CRT- brunch or dinner (2 credits)
Le Cellier?- dinner (2)
Kona- breakfast and dinner (1 each)
Via Napoli- pizza (1?)
Fultons- dinner (2)
Maybe a few other character dinners?

There may be others as well. We will grab lunch on the go but when we dine we like sit down restaurants. My DH is in the food/bev business so he enjoys his food. We also like to have a few drinks (hey, it's vacation, right?!)
Are we DP people? Which one would you suggest? Thanks!

Your 2 year will not be on the plan. She would eat "free" at buffets and family style places, but you won't get any type of credits for her.

DDP will not be enough table service credits for your family. So if you get it and pay out of pocket for the rest, then you may have too many counter service. As a first timer, I would be wary of Deluxe.

Unless you are going during free dining or you are afraid of sticker shock or you just have to pre-pay for some reason, I think pay as you go might work best.

 

[lolobug]

Your 2 year will not be on the plan. She would eat "free" at buffets and family style places, but you won't get any type of credits for her.

DDP will not be enough table service credits for your family. So if you get it and pay out of pocket for the rest, then you may have too many counter service. As a first timer, I would be wary of Deluxe.

Unless you are going during free dining or you are afraid of sticker shock or you just have to pre-pay for some reason, I think pay as you go might work best.

Thank you!

 

[melissafox18]

With a 2 and 5 year old, I would want to do Deluxe. Too much planning/scheduling involved with little kids. You would end up paying OOP for some of your meals because you have two 2 credit meals. I think you'll have more freedom without the dining plan. You don't have to worry about working within a certain set of parameters or worrying about credits.

As 2 adults we like the dining plan, but not sure what I do when our DD is older and bring her to Disney for the first time.

 

[abdgeek]

Hi!

This is our first trip! We are a family of 4, with a 2 year old and a 5 year old birthday girl! We are a family that will usually want at least 1 TS/ day. My kids will want snacks too, chocolate milks and ice creams/ a treat of some sort. My DH will want a coffee (I probably will too!) we would like to do the following restaurants for sure!
CRT- brunch or dinner (2 credits)
Le Cellier?- dinner (2)
Kona- breakfast and dinner (1 each)
Via Napoli- pizza (1?)
Fultons- dinner (2)
Maybe a few other character dinners?

There may be others as well. We will grab lunch on the go but when we dine we like sit down restaurants. My DH is in the food/bev business so he enjoys his food. We also like to have a few drinks (hey, it's vacation, right?!)
Are we DP people? Which one would you suggest? Thanks!

Because you're doing so many signature restaurants, I would suggest looking into the Deluxe Dining Plan. You didn't mention how many days you would be at WDW or whether you were breakfast or lunch eaters.

If you get the DDP, your meal at the signature restaurants would need to cost about $70 in order for the 2 TS to be worth it. That's going to be difficult to do because you only get a non-alcoholic beverage, entree, and dessert with that plan. If you had the DxDP, your meal would only need to cost $60(each TS costs out at about $30 each--each snack at $4 each) in order for the plan to be worth it. That is easy to do given that you get a beverage, appetizer, entree, and dessert. With either plan, any alcohol will be OOP. You could then use your remaining TS to do character breakfasts or lunches and the two snacks per day to get ice cream, popcorn, etc. You may want to go to Allears.net and look at the menus to cost out what you would get. I always get the DxDP when I go to WDW and love it. However, I make sure that my meals cost more than what I paid for the plan.

 

[Nixie]

Unless you are big eaters, I would probably just pay out of pocket for yourselves. The Deluxe dining plan includes an appetizer, entrée, and dessert for each person on the plan. It can be a little overwhelming to get an app and dessert for lunch and dinner every day.

 

[lolobug]

Unless you are big eaters, I would probably just pay out of pocket for yourselves. The Deluxe dining plan includes an appetizer, entrée, and dessert for each person on the plan. It can be a little overwhelming to get an app and dessert for lunch and dinner every day.

That isn't going to happen! Maybe we should just ease up on signature/character meals?

 

[ses1230]

Hi!

This is our first trip! We are a family of 4, with a 2 year old and a 5 year old birthday girl! We are a family that will usually want at least 1 TS/ day. My kids will want snacks too, chocolate milks and ice creams/ a treat of some sort. My DH will want a coffee (I probably will too!) we would like to do the following restaurants for sure!
CRT- brunch or dinner (2 credits)
Le Cellier?- dinner (2)
Kona- breakfast and dinner (1 each)
Via Napoli- pizza (1?)
Fultons- dinner (2)
Maybe a few other character dinners?

There may be others as well. We will grab lunch on the go but when we dine we like sit down restaurants. My DH is in the food/bev business so he enjoys his food. We also like to have a few drinks (hey, it's vacation, right?!)
Are we DP people? Which one would you suggest? Thanks!

This is a difficult question to answer because only you know your family's dining habits. The real way to find out is to look at the menus and see what your family might like to eat, and price it out. Look at the menus on allears or use THIS tool to calculate.

If you want more than 1 TS meal a day you have to factor in that you will be sitting in a restaurant with toddlers for 3+ hours per day, and taking that time away from touring. That is not worth it, to me.

 

[Jonathan Swift]

The person above beat me to it, but you really should crunch the numbers using the spreadsheet in my signature to see if any of the dining plans will work for you. The DDP becomes a bad deal once you start adding signature restaurants and the DxDDP gets worse every time you DON'T do a signature dining restaurant.

 

[Babypants24]

I too am curious if the DDP is worth it for my next trip. It'll be me bravely taking my 2 kids by myself. Because of that fact, I'd like to have it go as smoothly as I can possibly make it. Knowing that our food is paid for would give me peace of mind. Based on this years prices for children, I know it'll be a good deal for my 2. As for myself, I don't know yet. I also don't know if my kids will eat a dessert at both lunch and dinner. And I'm not sure what to do about breakfast. I've thought about bringing cereal or breakfast bars for them in the mornings, but I know they will want Mickey waffles and other breakfast items which means I'll have to pay OOP for a couple meals. I'll be doing just counter service which will be cheap and easy and I won't have to worry about tipping. I'm hoping for some sort of free dining or discount on something for February 2014. Until then, I'll be doing a ton of research.Lol

 

[dmiller64152]

IF you have children on the DP and IF you do a number of character buffets, the DDP can work out for you. With signatures, not so much.

We'll be one child plus two adults and we're doing 4 out of 8 TS at character buffets. I crunched the numbers and we came out slightly ahead using DDP. My family typically wouldn't have drinks and desserts with our TS meals and if you include that in the calculation, we're actually spending more on DDP. BUT, for the convenience factor of pre-paying as well as having an excuse to eat two desserts a day, we did do the DDP, but it wasn't really a $ saver.

 

[lolobug]

Bump