Y.E.S. questions

[PeanutButterMom]

I read the giant thread, but I have a couple questions and I think I'm confusing myself more and more

I know PB will absolutely LOVE the Wild By Nature class (she loves animals, and wants to "be a vet at Disney World" when she grows up ). But I'm REALLY confused about the "deal", I guess.

We want to use the Dining Plan, whether it's free or not (though it most likely will be at the end of October when we're going. I can't figure out how to wrangle it, I guess. My head is swimming with all these numbers and I think I haven't had enough coffee to figure it out

Can someone talk me through it?

[heyca]

I'm sure i'll be much less help than some others here, but I'll try we just did wild by nature! The deal is on the tickets--I wanna say ours were almost half price! But the tickets are sold by another company and cannot be bought as part of a pkg. So no dining plan. We got a room only discount on hotel and paid for food out of pocket. I think we prob did end up saving some but personally, I don't think I'd do it again. I'd rather just get a package--I'm sure others will disagree. We just ate a lot more quick service than we're used to and the class was fun, but not something we're dying to do again....just my opinion. Hope this helped!!!

[PeanutButterMom]

Originally Posted by heyca

I'm sure i'll be much less help than some others here, but I'll try we just did wild by nature! The deal is on the tickets--I wanna say ours were almost half price! But the tickets are sold by another company and cannot be bought as part of a pkg. So no dining plan. We got a room only discount on hotel and paid for food out of pocket. I think we prob did end up saving some but personally, I don't think I'd do it again. I'd rather just get a package--I'm sure others will disagree. We just ate a lot more quick service than we're used to and the class was fun, but not something we're dying to do again....just my opinion. Hope this helped!!!

Ok thanks! This is going to sounds dumb, but I wish I could just do the class and not the tickets! If it does end up being free dining it'll be a way less "deal" - I'd save on ticket but not that much. Maybe we'll have to skip it

[heyca]

We are a family of 5, but one infant, 3 and 7 and our tickets were actually I want to say almost $700 cheaper, so it was actually a substantial savings plus what we saved on our room. We figured if we spent less than $1300ish on food we would come out ahead. We definitely did! The class itself was fun, but not any more animal interaction than just doing animal kingdom honestly...lots of walking and talking. If you have any questions about the class, I'd be glad to help

[PeanutButterMom]

Originally Posted by heyca

We are a family of 5, but one infant, 3 and 7 and our tickets were actually I want to say almost $700 cheaper, so it was actually a substantial savings plus what we saved on our room. We figured if we spent less than $1300ish on food we would come out ahead. We definitely did! The class itself was fun, but not any more animal interaction than just doing animal kingdom honestly...lots of walking and talking. If you have any questions about the class, I'd be glad to help

Thanks! I finally found the detailed review in the giant YES thread (post 3000-something, lol).

I'm sort of on the fence now. I think she would enjoy it, but I was hoping for more of a "behind the scenes" thing like our local zoo does (she does classes there at least once a year, and "zoo camp" etc). Reading on the disney.go site, I think she would enjoy the "Backstage Safari" the best (actually, I know she would flip her lid over it), and I would gladly pay for it, except that she wouldn't even meet half of the 16-years-old age requirement

Bah.

[tzolkin]

Originally Posted by PeanutButterMom

Ok thanks! This is going to sounds dumb, but I wish I could just do the class and not the tickets! If it does end up being free dining it'll be a way less "deal" - I'd save on ticket but not that much. Maybe we'll have to skip it

It really just depends on what deals are offered during your dates and the makeup of your family.

We are a family of 5 and bought the 8 day YES park hoppers. I think we saved almost $800 on the tickets. We were then able to take advantage of a room only % off discount (which was a big savings over 11 nights) and just paid for food OOP. We spent less money than we would have if we got free dining.

That said, we're not really big fans of the dining plan. We did it two trips ago, but found it was just not how we like to eat at Disney. (We're more "grazers" on vacation, so we wasted a lot of food since you had to get a full meal plus desert in one sitting. We also like to have more flexibility and don't like being tied to reservations every day.)