How do you eat?

[aml3679]

So it varies from family to family. Currently we have the deluxe dining plan. This is our first on-site stay. We like table service and to be able to sit with a nice cocktail or glass of wine. Thinking about planning on reservations for breakfast and dinner and playing it by ear for lunch. I disagree with a previous poster who said that they wish for no more free dining. Would love this and just pay the upgraded price which would save us at least $800

 

[danceintherain]

When visiting, do you have a table service reservation for every night you are there? I hate that I have to make reservations for meals and not be able to depend on what our moods/situations are. Any tips or strategies for this?

I try to plan on a variety of meals throughout our trips. I can be certain that we won't be in the mood for steak every night, so I throw some Italian in there etc.

In general, I know we'll have to eat. I'd rather be able to sit in a relaxing environment, instead of dealing with CS lines and food.

I tend towards lunches, because I can be fairly certain that we'll be in a certain park at lunch time. My dinners tend to be at resorts, so we're not necessarily tied down to a particular park.

Most restaurants at Disney can still be cancelled up until the last minute. The others only require cancellation by 10pm the night before. Also, ones with cancellations policies tend to be character meals that you go to more for the experience than the food anyways. They also tend to be buffets, which allows variety.

In general, I tend to look at planning for Disney the same as planning for meals for any other time. Our tastes aren't going to change that much between now and a month from now or even 6 months from now. We're also going to get hungry around the same times as we do at home. Yeah...there's some variations, but I can re-address my plans a week or even a night before and make changes where necessary. I've cancelled or changed an ADR every trip. It's a little more difficult now with the penalties for cancellation (I haven't been since they initiated that) but it's still not a big deal, and I try to make sure those are the ones we are more likely to keep.

 

[VillianDiva]

We usually eat TS meals for dinner. We also get the park hoppers so there is never an issue. If I don't feel like eating somewhere or we don't feel like making the trip over I always call and see if I can get a reservation somewhere else.

 

[jimmiej]

I make a ressie for every day. Dining is an important part of our WDW vacations.

 

[princessallegra]

So it varies from family to family. Currently we have the deluxe dining plan. This is our first on-site stay. We like table service and to be able to sit with a nice cocktail or glass of wine. Thinking about planning on reservations for breakfast and dinner and playing it by ear for lunch. I disagree with a previous poster who said that they wish for no more free dining. Would love this and just pay the upgraded price which would save us at least $800

Enjoy! I will give you the heads up, deluxe is a lot of food! We did deluxe dining for our 1 year anniversary trip which was basically our honeymoon. It was a lot of food, as you get an appetizer each plus entree and desser each. We found ourselves declining dessert a lot and just generally stuffed. And that was with just 2 ts a day, because we ate at all signatures for dinner. We find now unless we get a deep discount on the dining plan (our friend is a CM) we just pay OOP as we choose. Lots of times i just want a soup and salad anyway.

 

[Compassplant]

We had the deluxe plan on our WDW trip last month. Months in advance we booked a minimum of 2 table service meals/day. Here are my lessons learned.

1. Having reservations requires you to have to leave to be at your reservation. You must account for getting through crowds, getting on transportation, etc. This builds some inflexibility into your schedule.

2. At most of our table service dinners, we were still full from our table service lunch.

3. Having a table service meal, especially at lunch, was a good planned break.

Personally, on our next trip, we are planning less table service meals because we were not overly impressed with the food and having meal reservations made our time at WDW more hectic.

 

[mickeysbestfriend]

we did three big meals a day and even with all the walking we felt like slugs and would come home feeling like we gained 15 lbs.

Then a few years later we decided to cut out lunch and only do TS breakfast and dinner. This was fine as long as we got plenty of exersise.

8 years ago I bought into DVC and than changed everything! We now eat most breakfasts in the villa with a Trails End and Olivia's thrown in for good measure. We still found huge dinners to weigh us down so we made the change to having our big meal of the day at lunch. Most of the time it is after 2:30 which alowed us morning park time, afternoon pool time and then a nice meal. It has been that way for 5 years now and it works perfect for us.

I am not happy about the all day menus some places are switching to as the meals are pretty heavy and we prefer a lighter meal.

Our favs for lunch are LTT, 50's Prime Time, The Plaza, Via NApoli, GF Cafe, Le Chefs de France and Biergarten

 

[nessz79]

On short trips, we make a reservation for at least once per day.
For our next trip, we'll be there 7 days and we have 4 reservations.

 

[DisneyHardin]

We do the DDP, so I schedule a TS dinner each day. Although, this past trip, we really wanted to do Chef Mickeys for breakfast, so that day we went to DTD for dinner and had Wolfgang Puck Express so we had the feeling of a TS, but using CS credits.

 

[Traveler Steve]

How do I eat? Usually through my mouth.

More seriously, only a few reservations per trip. If I'm there five or six days, only 3 table service places, tops. I much prefer to roam as the wind takes me and stop at counter service places.

(This year I am going with family and the one who made the reservations took the dining plan option. So I made the reservations for every dinner, some lunch. I'm uneasy about being confined like this, so we'll see how it goes.)

 

[MinnieLovesMickey12]

I make ADRs for every evening of our trip. We usually do CS breakfast, CS lunch and TS dinner.

Next trip we will be doing TS breakfast, CS lunch (I will probably skip lunch altogether) and a TS dinner.

When we went on our last trip I made sure I scheduled our ADR for 7pm every night. That gave us time to get really good and hungry for dinner because we eat lunch around 11:30 or 12.

We usually make rope drop, stay for a CS lunch and leave the parks by 1 or 2 pm and go back to the room for a nap or a swim. That way we have hours in between being at the park and having to be some place for dinner.

I didn't schedule our dinners according to what park we were going to be in that day. I schedlued a lot of our dinners at Deluxe resorts like WIlderness Lodge and Beach CLub and OKW.

Next time we go we will be renting DVC points and staying at OKW so we will have a TS breakfast at Oilivia's every day.

We eat 3 meals a day at home so we try to eat 3 meals a day on vacation. But I always gain weight on vacation and have to spend a month after we get home losing the 10 pounds I gained. I just eat WAY MORE FOOD at Disney than I do at home. Sometimes at home I will skip breakfast or skip lunch if I ate breakfast but when on vacation I eat all 3 meals.

I think next trip I may skip a few CS lunches just so I eat less and gain less weight. I don't want to eat just to be eating. I don't want to eat unless I am very hungry.

We had the QSDP on a trip 2 years ago and DH really liked that but I didn't. I am a vegetarian and finding plain, simple, decent vegetarian options was almost impossible at the places we ate. I ate a TON of salads and pizza. Not much variety at CS places.

We are paying OOP next time just because the only dining plan that would suit us to get 3 meals a day would be the deluxe dining plan and we just can't bring ourselves to pay $100 a day PER PERSON for that dining plan.

 

[amberpi]

Did the DDP once, it did not suit our eating styles at all, and didn't cover the places we wanted to eat, but we wanted to "give it a try" on a short 3 day trip. We don't eat a lot of desserts, some trips we won't eat any or just at V&A. We would NEVER eat dessert at 2 meals in 1 day, its just too much.

I've been to WDW probably 25+ times in the last 10 years and the restaurants we try to get (we can't plan 180 days out due to work) are V&A (only get it about half time and we aren't picky about which type of table we get) but we always get Marrakesh and BlueZoo, we also enjoy California Grill (for late fireworks, but again hard to get on shorter notice), Kimono's, Il Muliano and I'm hoping that Monsiuer Paul will live up to the old Bistro. We screw around with openings on our phone and sometimes we get lucky, and sometimes we try something we haven't in a while. We make it work.

That's where we eat, which are all dinners - as for how... For breakfast we usually grab a banana, an espresso and my DH grabs an additional carb at the cafe - almost always in the Swan or Dolphin We park hop to Epcot for a "snack/drink around the world" for lunch - fish and chips, a cheese plate in france, something in the Tutto Gusto wine bar, La Cava; generally, we make the rounds over the course of several lunches. We also always hit Tangerine Cafe. Sometimes we try to grab a Plaza reservation for MK days, but again, sometimes we can't get one and its no big deal - just hop to Epcot. We're not huge eaters, so this works really well for us and gives us several nice dinners, but we're not tied to much during the day. I can't tell you the number of times we've eaten lunch at the Cabana Bar or by the Grotto pool at Swolphin; their casear salad is one of the best on property. Anyhow, we go with the flow and hit our faves, if I want 2 apps and 3 cocktails for dinner, I have it, life is good

One more word on how we eat - DH gets room service wings and beer on probably every trip we go on ever - including many overseas trips. He likes the ones at the Dolphin best of the places he's stayed at in WDW, including CR, YC, GF and the Swan, not sure how they are different than the Swan wings, but whatever. And, the man stays hipster skinny even with all those wings.

 

[RedfromNL]

We have three ADR's for a two week trip.

We might see if we can get some last-minute spots if we want to at that time. If we can't we'll do CS since there is plenty of choice there too.

We doný like planning too much since we like to decide on the moment what we feel like having


We have hoppers so it's easy enough to go somewhere else. We also are very relaxed travellers who DO plan but not too tightly. And we go in early may which isn't extremely busy.

 

[Figg]

Thank you so much for your thoughtful replies! We are not doing the dining plan or any character meals (ds is 17 and SO not interested, lol). I ended up making 5 reservations for our 7 day trip. I am hoping that since we are going the last week of August that if we do decide we really have to have a table service somewhere, that we will have decent luck.

Arrival night dinner at Boma
Lunch at Sanaa
Dinner at Kouzzina
Lunch at Chef de France
Breakfast at Kona Cafe

What do you think?

 

[princessallegra]

Thank you so much for your thoughtful replies! We are not doing the dining plan or any character meals (ds is 17 and SO not interested, lol). I ended up making 5 reservations for our 7 day trip. I am hoping that since we are going the last week of August that if we do decide we really have to have a table service somewhere, that we will have decent luck.

Arrival night dinner at Boma
Lunch at Sanaa
Dinner at Kouzzina
Lunch at Chef de France
Breakfast at Kona Cafe

What do you think?

Those sound great! We've only done boma breakfast and can't wait to do dinner. I've heard the soups are out of this world! We love Les Chefs and we also love Kona breakfast. Haven't done Sanaa yet and we did Kouzzina for breakfast which was awesome. Have a magical trip!

 

[dvcHammer]

We often travel with no ADR's at all for shorter trips. For longer trips I will have a few in my pocket, but if I don't feel like it on that day I am sure to call and cancel them.
I never let my pre-arrival dining plans dictate what we want to do each day once we are there.

 

[bgraham34]

We do one Table Service meal a day. Some days are dinner, some are lunch and some are breakfast. We like to mix it up because we enjoy some nights just having snacks for dinner instead of meals or quick service.

 

[pampat]

Over 32 years of visiting the Mouse in various locations we have only ever booked 3 or 4 special meals. I am such a control freak at home, it is really refreshing to be free from having to be anywhere at any given time. That way we are governed by our stomachs not our watches. But of course, we no longer have young children to worry about and we don't do character meals - knowing how difficult it was to get into these, we leave them for the families who really want to do them.

Pam

 

[GaSleepingBeautyFan]

I don't do TS everyday.

In Nov. 2012 I had a couple of TS booked and when I was in DHS I decided I wanted to eat TS there and used the Disney App to see what was available and booked it that day.

It was not a very crowded timeframe though and it was just me alone so that probably made a difference. I was also not on a dining plan so if I couldn't get in anywhere, I'd have just eaten QS.

If you are on the Dining Plan and going during a crowded time, I would not take a chance. I would figure out which park you want to go on which day and make your ADR's around that.

I just saw your reply. You will want to be aware that the end of August is usually free dining time at Disney and the TS restaurants can get booked up at that time if Disney does free dining like they have in the past.

 

[denise5374]

This year I have the pleasure of going twice.

Our vacation was planned for August with bounceback free Dining, so then we will be doing a TS every night, which is our usual style.

Then we found out that DSs high school baseball team was going for Disney Spring Training, so we are heading down again on March 22. This time i have no ADRs and are doing all CS meals, have never tried this before.