Lisa F
is a very wise woman
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2000
My husband and I recently returned from a week at WDW during which we took advantage of the DDP option with our DVC reservations. Overall I would call it a huge success.
We don't have any kids, so it's just the two of us. We went into it thinking it would be too much food and we were right. It was a LOT of food, especially with a few OOP things mixed in here and there. Add to that fact that neither of us are particularly big eaters (I can go to a restaurant and get 2-3 meals out of my meal on a good day depending on the restaurant) and we knew it would be too much to finish, but neither of us are members of the "clean plate" club and never have been so it wasn't a problem for us.
There are so many yummy sounding things on the menus that before the DDP in general we ordered an appetizer to split, an entree each (sometimes an entree to split though) and a dessert to split. With the DDP we each got to choose our own appetizer and dessert without guilt and it was actually kind of nice to not have to think about what the other liked when ordering. Our tastes do overlap quite a bit so it's never a problem finding something we both like to share but pretty often it's neither of our first choice so it was a luxury to not feel like "I just paid $10 for this dessert but can only eat a couple of spoonfuls." I have no moral qualms about not cleaning my plate but I AM a little too cheap to pay disney prices for a dessert when I really only want at most 3 bites (less than half).
The plan more than paid for itself in our table service meals alone so basically the counter service and snacks were "free." I actually enjoyed the fact that CS came with dessert because it made splitting one that much easier. DH and I split almost every counter service meal we had and the few bites of dessert afterward was nice. I would say the best value for a CS was at wolfgang puck express at downtown disney... it was virtually a table service meal and delicious with roaming staff trying to refill our drinks.
Our basic pattern was to have an early CS around 11am (or sometimes as early as 10:30 depending on when it was open for lunch), an early dinner sometime btwn 3-4pm and then share another counter service when we got back to the hotel after a long day, sometime around 11pm (right before the roaring forks grill closed). This worked out really well for us actually as I prefer several smaller meals and with a snack in there and some leftovers for breakfast I got my "5 small meals" a day in (with one being larger, obviously, the TS).
We didn't try to get the most for our money except that DH refused to use snack credits on things like water after declaring there to be far more worthy snacks, and we did try some really yummy things we hadn't tried before. I think I have nearly $900 worth of receipts for the $545 we paid for the plan. We did end up with 7 snack credits left at the end and we went over to Goofy's candy company and came home with a bag of mickey pretzels, mickey cheddar crackers and 5 boxes of cookies. We gave some of these away as gifts.
Overall we thought it was a very good value for the money and would likely do it again.
We don't have any kids, so it's just the two of us. We went into it thinking it would be too much food and we were right. It was a LOT of food, especially with a few OOP things mixed in here and there. Add to that fact that neither of us are particularly big eaters (I can go to a restaurant and get 2-3 meals out of my meal on a good day depending on the restaurant) and we knew it would be too much to finish, but neither of us are members of the "clean plate" club and never have been so it wasn't a problem for us.
There are so many yummy sounding things on the menus that before the DDP in general we ordered an appetizer to split, an entree each (sometimes an entree to split though) and a dessert to split. With the DDP we each got to choose our own appetizer and dessert without guilt and it was actually kind of nice to not have to think about what the other liked when ordering. Our tastes do overlap quite a bit so it's never a problem finding something we both like to share but pretty often it's neither of our first choice so it was a luxury to not feel like "I just paid $10 for this dessert but can only eat a couple of spoonfuls." I have no moral qualms about not cleaning my plate but I AM a little too cheap to pay disney prices for a dessert when I really only want at most 3 bites (less than half).
The plan more than paid for itself in our table service meals alone so basically the counter service and snacks were "free." I actually enjoyed the fact that CS came with dessert because it made splitting one that much easier. DH and I split almost every counter service meal we had and the few bites of dessert afterward was nice. I would say the best value for a CS was at wolfgang puck express at downtown disney... it was virtually a table service meal and delicious with roaming staff trying to refill our drinks.
Our basic pattern was to have an early CS around 11am (or sometimes as early as 10:30 depending on when it was open for lunch), an early dinner sometime btwn 3-4pm and then share another counter service when we got back to the hotel after a long day, sometime around 11pm (right before the roaring forks grill closed). This worked out really well for us actually as I prefer several smaller meals and with a snack in there and some leftovers for breakfast I got my "5 small meals" a day in (with one being larger, obviously, the TS).
We didn't try to get the most for our money except that DH refused to use snack credits on things like water after declaring there to be far more worthy snacks, and we did try some really yummy things we hadn't tried before. I think I have nearly $900 worth of receipts for the $545 we paid for the plan. We did end up with 7 snack credits left at the end and we went over to Goofy's candy company and came home with a bag of mickey pretzels, mickey cheddar crackers and 5 boxes of cookies. We gave some of these away as gifts.
Overall we thought it was a very good value for the money and would likely do it again.
