10 days of QSDP(UK Plan)-How much did we cost Disney? Update 8/9, last day on Page 4

[Rienchen]

I've been home from WDW for about 2.5 months now and I think it's finally time to get my reviews online. I want to go back so badly but it won't happen for a couple of years, so this dining review will have to cheer me up for the time being.

My mum and I went to WDW from 5/2-5/12, so we were there for 10 nights.
We were lucky to be there at a time when UK guests had free dining included in their booking with a moderate (or above) resort.
We chose Coronado Springs Resort and had QSDP included, which we were excited about.
We never once thought about upgrading to regular dining plan as we just didn't want to deal with reservations and planning our days too far ahead.
Last time my mum and I went to WDW back in 2006, we both were on a tight budget(I was an Aupair in New York at the time) so we hardly bought any meals at the parks, I do remember getting a double cheeseburger and extra bun, that's how tight our budget was ;-)
So it was such a nice and welcome change to just order whatever we wanted whenever we wanted

So here are the details:

who: me(29) and mum(51)
when: 5/2/12 - 5/12/12
where: Coronado Springs Resort
what: Quick service Dining Plan UK version
40 dining credits
40 snack credits
2 refillable mugs

So, here's the game: guess how much we cost Disney, or rather guess how much food we didn't pay for ;-)Of course we ate more than we would have eaten had we paid out of pocket, but it was still fun to keep track of the amounts and we had a little shock afterwards.
We didn't buy a single snack or meal out of pocket apart from a trip to the mall and our meal at the airport.

Let the fun begin

Direct Links:
Day 1 and 2 Airplane Food, 1st visit to WPE, Jalapeno Pretzel, The Mara, Captn Cooks
Day 3 and 4 Columbia Harbour House, Cafe Rix, Pepper Marke Breakfast Buffet, WPE, Goofy's Candy
Day 5 and 6 Starring Rolls, Writer's Shop, Sunshine Seasons, Fife & Drum, Tangierine Cafe, The Mara
Day 7 and 8 Earl Of Sandwich, Contempo Cafe, Columbia Harbour House, Aloha Isle, WPE
Day 9 and 10 Cafe Rix, Rosie's All American Cafe(HS), Tangierine Cafe, Karamell Kuche, Mickie Pretzel, Capt. Cooks
Day 11 WPE, Goofy's Candy, Cafe Rix

 

[Rienchen]

Day 1

Alrighty, we left our house around 7am(UK time) and finally arrived at CSR around 5:30 US time, so a whopping 15.5 hours later.
We were exhausted but knew we had to go and eat a little something, especially after the rather bland airplane food.

Instead of heading out into a theme park, we decided to start the dining plan at a restaurant we were very excited to try:

Wolfgang Puck Express in Downtown Disney
We shared a spicy chicken Pizza, a creme brulee, my mum had a fountain drink and I had some tap water.

The pizza was good, not amazing but good. I would have liked it a bit more *spicy* but I liked the thin base as I'm not a big fan of chewy, doughy pizza bases.

Creme Brulee was nice too.
we will definitely try both of these items again sometime during our trip but this was a good start to our Disney trip.

The meal came to $23.28


We had a quick look around Goofy's Candy to check out some of the snacks we will be spending our snack credits on later this week.

On the way back to our room, we stopped at Rix Market at Coronado Springs Resort to purchase our refillable mugs and some fruit for breakfast.(no picture of this)

The mugs came to $30.87 and the fruit was $3.99(plus tax, no idea how much that was as I can't find the receipt)
39/40 Dining credits remaining
39/40 snack credits remaining
total spent: $58.14


Day 2

We decided to make Animal Kingdom our first park as we were still pretty tired and wanted to be completely rested for Magic Kingdom.

After a breakfast at the hotel of a few bites of fruit(purchased the previous day) and a scone(brought from the UK) we arrived for 'rope drop' and went to the Safari first, followed by the 10:30 showing of 'Festival of the Lion King', a favourite of ours

We're not used to the heat and went in search of a snack afterwards and decided on a Jalapeno cream cheese Pretzel and a Odwalla Mango Smoothie to share

We absolutely loved the pretzel, just the right amount of spice and I will always hunt one of these babies down whenever I visit WDW.
The smoothie was okay, not sure why we chose it as water would have been just fine and I almost felt like it was a bit of a waste of snack credit at the time. Like I said, the smoothie was good and tasted nicely of Mango but not as refreshing as water would have been.

The two snacks came to $9.04

After the Nemo Musical, Primeval Whirl(which we loved), Triceratop Spin and the 2pm Flights Of Wonder show we decided we had enough and needed a break and some lunch.

I had done quite a bit of research before our trip and was very keen to go out to the Animal Kingdom Lodge to eat at 'The Mara'.
We took the bus to Animal Kingdom Lodge but weren't entirely sure what stop to get off at, but we did manage to find it at the end.
Animal Kingdom Lodge is such a beautiful resort and we took our time walking and looking around.

We each felt like having a salad so we chose the 'Mara salad' with chicken, greens with lentils, feta, chick peas, chicken and tomatoes. One of the best salads I have ever had and so filling with all that protein! Delicious!
We each had the pomegranate ice tea and chose the pineapple and carrot cake for dessert.
We saved the fruit for the next day and just shared the cake, which wasn't a very good carrot cake but enough to satisfy our sweet tooth after the meal. I make a pretty good carrot cake, so this wasn't up to my standards ;-)

The meal came to $35.73

We went back to our hotel, which took a while as we had to go to one of the parks first and then go to Coronado Springs Resort from there but we didn't mind as we each had a seat and were in the airconditioning away from the heat.

After a couple of hours break at the digsite pool we headed back out. This time to the Polynesian Resort. Again, I had done some research as I didn't want us to get bored on the quick service meals so we planned on eating at many different places to get a good variety of food.

I had the Multigrain Turkey Sandwich with fries, mum had the stir fry noodles with chicken, we each grabbed a bottle of vitamin water from the fridge to take with us as we couldn't finish the entire drink with our meal. I had the orange zero flavour and mum had dragonfruit Power C, hers was definitely nicer.
For dessert we shared a dole whip and a macadamia chocolate cupcake, which just looked amazing and earned us many jealous looks on the bus that night as we took this back to the hotel for later.

The turkey sandwich was good but the fries were disappointing. Don't think my mum enjoyed the noodles much either. Not a meal we would repeat.
The dolewhip was a favourite of ours back in 2006, so we had to have one here.
This was self serve and I know I could have fit more into the cup, but this was more than enough for us.

The meal came to $34.66

Afterwards I told mum that I wanted to have a walk around the resort, but didn't tell her that we'd be able to watch Wishes from the beach here, which we both enjoyed. She hadn't done any research at all and was amazed by all the great things I had found, and this was only day one!

The trip home took a while as we went to Downtown Disney via bus and then back to our resort.
What a fabulous first day

35/40 Dining credits remaining
38/40 snack credits remaining
total spent: $137.57

 

[nutz2notz]

Great start to your reviews! The turkey sandwich looks so good and that cupcake looks amazing.

Looking forward to more!

 

[nanienamou]

Thanks for sharing! Can't wait to read more!

 

[IrisSphere]

I'm hooked - I want to know what the total was! Also researching snacks for our Dining Plan, so curious to know what you end up getting.

Also the Pretzel looks amazing - I think i might make it my meal all on its own!

 

[MrsB1228]

I'm in! Really enjoying your reviews and looking forward to the next installment!

 

[Nohal]

Looking forward to the rest of your reviews

 

[Sheaboys]

looking forward to reading more.

 

[dixonsontour]

Great start

 

[pumba]

thank you for your reviews so far....I always love to read or look at the food others have eaten ..
Thanks again

 

[Disneyof3]

Great start. Can't wait to hear more. I was thinking the next time we head to WDW to try all the resorts CS. Great idea. Keeps things different

 

[chocolateMinnie]

great start - interested in what else you find. Found the Mara to be ok but not as nice as other deluxe cs.

 

[butiflfeet]

It all looks pretty yummy so far! I can't wait to see what's next

 

[Tracerr00]

Great start to your reviews!! I really love the idea of keeping thing exciting by visiting different CS places. Thank you because now we get to see quite a variety of CS foods. I'm excited for day two!

 

[crazyfordisney2000]

That cupcake looks amazing! Did it have macadamia nuts inside too, or just on the frosting?

 

[GoofySon'sMom]

Really enjoying your reviews. We do not eat at many CS restaurants outside of EPCOT so it is always nice to see a review of the many different options. We will be eating at Mara in August and that salad looks wondeful!

 

[Rienchen]

Great start to your reviews! The turkey sandwich looks so good and that cupcake looks amazing.

Looking forward to more!

The turkey sandwich was ok, it did have bacon on it, which I don't really like but I picked it off. It was a lot of food!

Thanks for sharing! Can't wait to read more!

Thank you

I'm hooked - I want to know what the total was! Also researching snacks for our Dining Plan, so curious to know what you end up getting.

Also the Pretzel looks amazing - I think i might make it my meal all on its own!

Welcome to my dining review
We really enjoyed the pretzel and had it a few more times over the next few days.

The total amount really was shocking. I'm still waiting for people to make a guess ;-)

I'm in! Really enjoying your reviews and looking forward to the next installment!

Thank you.

Looking forward to the rest of your reviews

Thank you and welcome.

looking forward to reading more.

Thank you for following

Great start

Thank you, I was excited to start writing my review. I really wanted to write a trip review but unfortunately I have forgotten a lot of the details, so I thought a dining review would still be nice.

thank you for your reviews so far....I always love to read or look at the food others have eaten ..
Thanks again

Me too, I spent so much time looking at other people's food pictures before we left

Great start. Can't wait to hear more. I was thinking the next time we head to WDW to try all the resorts CS. Great idea. Keeps things different

Definitely. I really wanted to make sure we didn't have too many meals of burgers/chicken nuggets unless we wanted them!

great start - interested in what else you find. Found the Mara to be ok but not as nice as other deluxe cs.

We loved the Mara salad, it's the only thing we ate there.

It all looks pretty yummy so far! I can't wait to see what's next

Thank you. My pictures leave a lot to be desired but I hope people find them still helpful

Great start to your reviews!! I really love the idea of keeping thing exciting by visiting different CS places. Thank you because now we get to see quite a variety of CS foods. I'm excited for day two!

Thank you and welcome to our dining review. We loved visiting the different resorts and their food courts/quick service restaurants. We did stick to the same few after a couple of days but that just means we have some more to try out next time ;-)

That cupcake looks amazing! Did it have macadamia nuts inside too, or just on the frosting?

It was amazing and so filling. We shared this cupcake twice on our trip.
There were more nuts on the bottom of the cupcake and it was filled with a heavy chocolate ganache. Mmmmh.

Really enjoying your reviews. We do not eat at many CS restaurants outside of EPCOT so it is always nice to see a review of the many different options. We will be eating at Mara in August and that salad looks wondeful!

Thank you for reading along, Epcot does have some great CS options and we tried some of them over the next few days.

 

[Rienchen]

Day 3

Breakfast was the pineapple that we saved from lunch yesterday and the last one of our scones, which we brought from London. Not super filling but enough to keep us going for a bit.

We had an early start as we planned to do rope drop at MK so we got up at 6:45 and arrived at 8:45...not too bad and we got loads done in those first few hours.

Because we got up so early and didn't eat very much for breakfast, we were hungry at 11:50.
I knew exactly where and what I wanted to eat today: Columbia Harbour House!
We were 'boring' and both got the salmon but we didn't regret it, such a great meal and when I showed the picture to my friends after I returned home, they couldn't believe that this was theme park food.

I LOVE salmon and eat it about once a week at home, but it's quite expensive so I took advantage of this being readily available on the dining plan and had it a few times during our trip.

The salmon was perfectly cooked, not dried out like I had feared, bear in mind that this is cooked in huge quantities in the kitchen.
The cous cous was great and the broccoli was perfect, I love mine with a bit of 'bite' to it, that way it actually feels healthy.

The portion size was huge, as you can see we just about fit our two meals on the tray.

We had the large drinks(diet coke) as they were included in the dining plan and I am always thirsty but my mum laughed when she saw the size of this.
I chose the apple crisp and mum chose the chocolate cake.
The apple crisp was delicious, but it could have done with a dollop of vanilla icecream or some custard.
Nothing much to say about the chocolate cake. Having read reviews I thought this would be terrible, but we had never eaten this before so we quite enjoyed it, but have to say it was quite 'heavy'.

This meal came to a total of $35.67 and by this point I was starting to enjoy just handing over my card and see the amount due change to $0.00

In the afternoon we took a break at the hotel and then went to Walmart to buy a new travel adapter plug, since the one my mum brought had broken.

We really enjoyed walking up and down the aisles in the Supermarket but were shocked by the sheer size of some of the things, I was really tempted to buy this bag of chips for the bargain price of $3 because I love LAYS chips
It might look small in this picture but I believe this was over a POUND of chips, the normal size here in the UK is roughly 7oz(ish)

The trip to Walmart took a few hours since we had to rely on public transport, so we didn't feel like going far for our dinner once we were back home. We must have left Coronado Springs around 4pm and retuned around 9:30, just to show just how much more convenient it would have been to take a rental car!

We decided to eat at Coronado Springs' 'Cafe Rix' and each had the Southwest Salad with chicken.
This salad was okay but had a lot of chillis in it, which we had to remove as it was just a little bit too spicy.
Strangely enough they didn't have ANY low fat/fat free dressing available, which we thought was a little bit strange. They even checked in the back for us but none available, they did get some fat free ones in a few days later.

We had come straight from Walmart so didn't have our refillable mugs with us, so just chose a soft drink each.

For dessert we had a bowl of mixed fruit and a bowl of pineapple. I do love pineapple and melon whenever I'm on vacation in the US, it's so much sweeter than in the UK.

This meal came to $28.49


31/40 Dining credits remaining
38/40 snack credits remaining
total (not) spent: $201.73

Day 4

This was a Saturday and we had decided to go out to the Florida Mall today and avoid the theme parks.

We started the day off with breakfast buffet at Pepper Market, which only cost 1 Quick Service Dining Credit each.
We wanted to make sure we had a good amount of food in our bellies to get us through a full day of shopping at the mall ;-)

I know people don't like buffet food pictures but I'm posting them anyway:

First my 'sweet plate' with a selection of pastries, a pice of waffle, french toast and pancake. A nice way to start.

Our drink choices were juice and mum also had a coffee. I asked for some tap water but because we were on the dining plan we were each given a small bottle of dasani water.

Next on to the savoury plate:

Some breakfast tortilla, scrambled egg, potatoes and a roll...
Then I was full.

We were very quickly given the check to pay, I'm used to this but in Germany or in the UK they don't rush you out of the restaurant so quickly, so my mum was a bit surprised.

The breakfast came to a total of $31.93 and the suggested tip of $6 was pointed out several times.
We did enjoy this meal but would have never eaten here had we not been on the dining plan. No way would I have spent almost $38 incl tip just for breakfast.

We spent the day at Florida Mall and shared some Chinese Food on the food court, which came to about $11 for the two of us.

After a long day of shopping and sitting around waiting for the Lynx bus, we returned to Downtown Disney, where we had our dinner at Wolfgang Puck Express

I had the salmon(oh yes, what else) and my mum had the bacon wrapped meatloaf. I had seen this in the reviews and thought it looked amazing, but I knew it wouldn't be something I would eat so I was happy when I could convince her to try this.
Both meals were very good, this restaurant is such amazing value and quality on the quick service dining plan.
We each had a soft drink and the cheesecake for dessert.

The cheesecake was nice, but nothing amazing.
This meal came to a whopping $51.87

Afterwards, weighed down by all of our bags, we decided to stop by Goofy's Candy shop to spend some of our snack credits as we had only used two credits so far because we always bring our water bottle to the park and then refill them with free ice water from any counter service.

We each chose 5 things - 4 to take home and 1 to eat there.
I picked 2 bags of gummy sweets and 2 packs of cheesy mickey head crackers for the girls I look after.
The treat for myself was a Rice Krispie treat with Reeses Pieces, which I think cost roughly $5, but was still classes as a snack credit.
Mum chose 4 bags of gummy sweets to take home and a peanut butter chip krispie treat.
These 10 snacks came to $50.89!

Because we had just had dessert with our dinner, we decided to save the Rice Krispie treat for the next day.


27/40 Dining credits remaining
27/40 snack credits remaining
total (not) spent: $336.42

Oh my, just look at the total amount 'spent' already!!

 

[Tink2Day]

Joining in!
My that salmon looks yummy (both of the salmon dishes)! I had the shrimp at CHH, think it was before they offered the salmon. It was good too but the salmon looks like it beats it hands down!

 

[chocolateMinnie]

The salmon does look very good for cs and the food at Wolfgang Puck is always amazing. Lovely to see pictures of the Pepper Market breakfast buffet. We always stayed at CSR until Maya Grill stopped doing the buffet but the breakfast at PM looks pretty good too - bargain for a cs credit.