is it worth it?

[MissionMouse]

Is getting the reg or quick service dining plan worth it? Is it cheaper than just going and paying for the meals?

You are going to get a full spectrum of answers here on the board. It may even lean toward saying yes, since this forum with located within the DDP thread section.

We normally pay out of pocket. Dine almost entirely table service while staying club level. We tried DDP this time around and found ourselves with a collection of counter service tickets at the end. Overall, we enjoyed the dessert and snack option, but next time will return to paying out of pocket. Dining strictly table service restaurants will save us money in comparison to the DDP, since we discovered we did not care for the counter service restaurant environment that made people act and behave less than magical. .

One of the reasons for us not liking cs was the common guest issue observed of having a tray of food and trying find a table where it was typical to find at least 1/3 of the tables occupied by people who are just sitting at them with no food. Clearly table hording adds to counter service ugly and kaotic seating environment that backs up the restaurant diners and adds a level of stress not found at TS restaurants.

Overall, if you use ALL the tickets issued within the dining plan, then you will most likely obtain a certain level of financial savings ranging from 5-30%. Monetarly it could be worth it, but don't forget the personal preference aspect of the full dining plan offerings too.

 

[judowoman]

Most certainly you can make your ADRs anytime without a package. If you are going in July I would recommend sooner than later. You are better off to book a restaurant and then cancel it should you change your mind than wait until the last minute to book. (Though it is only polite to cancel as soon as you know you won't be using the reservation.) Certain restaurants (Chef Mickey's for one) will already be hard to get a table at even at this point for you.

The only thing is certain restaurants require either a credit card hold (Akerhaus @ Norway - Epcot) or pre-payment (Cinderella's Royal Table and most of the dinner shows). If you plan on doing one of those last group - they are typically 2 TS credit meals - you would have to pre-pay, but then once your package is booked, they could credit you the money back.

Awesome! Thank you for the info Pete! I appreciate it

 

[Melodious]

As has been said, it depends on how you eat. For us, we don't want to do a TS meal every day so the regular DP wasn't a good value for us. On the other hand, most days we will do CS breakfast and CS lunch and TS dinner so the QSDP wasn't a good value either since breakfast is the least expensive meal of the day.

I will also say that if you do want the benefits of prepaying for food so that you don't worry what you're spending once you get there, we bought Disney gift cards (Disneystores.com has free shipping on them). We had already priced out our meals to figure out if the dining plan was a good deal and once we get to the resort, we will put the gift cards on the room keycard to use as a debit system. I just want to let others know, since this gift card idea wouldn't have occurred to me but seems like the perfect solution for us .