2 families on DDP

[stewart]

We will be there December, '07 Staying at WL and friends are going to be there in a WL Studio at same time. One of their kids are staying in our room due to number of people allowed to be in a WL Studio. They'll buy him a theme park ticket at the Disney Store before the trip. For the Dining Plan, will he have to be under our room since that where he'll show or can they purchase the Dining Plan for him seperate - is it linked to a room reservation? If so, any recommendations on how to keep the credits straight? Guess we'll need to eat all meals together? Confused...

 

[karla63]

I just got back with 2 rooms (8 people) but it was 3 families. The one room(room a) had 1 family and the other room(room b) had 2 diff families. Room a was easy to keep track of the plan. It shows at the bottom of your receipt. However, room b, each family had to keep track of their own meal count. It really only got confusing on the snack credits, since we ate every TS meal together. I asked at front desk about seperating each party even more, but they said they coudn't. Room a still had 8 CS left the day before we were scheduled to leave, so I ended up buying 8 cs for guest who were eating at the food court at POP. Boy, were they pleasantly surprised to have someone offer to pay for their meal.

 

[illiniowl]

I assume your friends are DVC members or at least staying on a member's points at VWL, but they have 1 more person in their family than a studio will accommodate. So I don't think they can pay for the DDP (assuming they're paying for the DDP themselves) for the "extra" family member on their reservation. He will have to be on your package/room reservation and you will have to buy him the same type of MYW that everyone else on your package is getting (and pay for his DDP too, but obviously your friends can just pay you back for his MYW and his DDP cost).

Now, like everyone else on your package, he won't have just his "own" credits on his KTTW card, he will have access to ALL of your family's credits. So you need to be comfortable with that. Especially if he will be eating meals separate from you at times. For instance if he eats with his family, there would need to be 2 checks at that table, one for him and one for the rest of his family, and he or his parents need to make sure there aren't too many credits mistakenly deducted from his (your) account. You will always get a receipt showing the number of credits deducted and remaining, and so you'll just need to keep a sharp eye on that to make sure he hasn't accidentally had too many credits deducted when he is not eating with your family or that he hasn't, you know, run your snack credit account down to zero by constantly buying mickey bars and sodas.

Your 2 families could get 2 studios at VWL under one DVC reservation (if your friends are members they might need to buy points from another member to make this happen, or even you as a nonmember could rent a sufficient number of points from one member - check the DVC rent/trade board here for more info) and then you could get the DDP for everyone at once, and none of you would need to pay Disney's rack rate for your park admissions; you could get them separately from a re-seller at a discount. You might save a fair chunk of money this way (especially if you were not planning on staying on a Friday or Sat. night to begin with, since the number of DVC points required for a weekend night is double what it is Sun.-Thurs. nights). But everyone in both families would have access to all of the DDP credits, so you would still need to be OK with that. And availability at VWL for December might be somewhat limited at this point anyway. But it could be worth a look.

 

[klinlin]

Everyone staying in one room must be on the same package as everyone else in the room. If his family does not choose DDP for themselves, their son will still have to have it if you do. Hope this helps.

Have a great trip! WL is awsome for Christmas decorations!

 

[stewart]

Thanks for explaining. I talked to TA today and learned that the other family's child who will be in our room will need to have his MYW ticket and dining plan the same as us. Meaning his family can't buy his MYW ticket ahead of time. We'll work it out by having his parents reimburse us for the cost of the MWY ticket and dining plan. Plan on eating most meals together, but you know how plans can go when traveling with a total of 13 people (yes, there's a third family going with us), SOOOOO we'll just keep an eye on the number of credits used!!

 

[ErinC]

Thanks for the clarification. I needed to know this exact same thing!

 

[2Pirates_1Princess]

We just went with my in-laws and they had DD4 in there room. So we had two seperate dinning plans. The dinning plan is attatched to each persons room card. For example each child has there own key to the world - that key contains all the dinning plan information and will open the door to the resort room. So if we split up we could just put DD4 on her own bill and then use her key card for her meal.

I hope that helps. Once you use the DDP the first time it isn't as confusing as it sounds on these boards.