3 year old and DDP?

[disneybeginner]

We will be visiting WDW in May 2007. My 3 year old eats very little and would love some advice on the DDP. I have already purchased the plan for her but wondering if it's possible for her just to share with my husband and I instead of wasting the money on her own meal plan? Any advice would be very helpful.

 

[beth_cam]

Everyone in the room has to be on the plan.

 

[virginiamama]

I think it is either everyone on the reservation buys the meal plan, or nobody buys the meal plan, no sharing. My DD will be 3 when we go this Oct and DD7 doesn't eat that much either. We will probably have them split a few CS meals and have extra CS credits to use to buy them meals as snacks if they get hungry at non-meal times. I'm sure they'll sleep through a TS or two, and end up hungry after. We typically can split a kids meal at say Chick Fil A and DS2 eats the fries DS7 eats the nuggets and are filled up. Good luck to you!

 

[virginiamama]

Forgot to say... I think it's a pretty good deal for the price of the kids meal plan, so I don't mind as much if they don't eat all of it as I would if I was paying OOP.

 

[mom2aredhead]

Everyone on your reservation has to have DDP. I too have purchased DDP for all of us, including my VERY PICKY 3 year old and am wondering if it was the right choice. Partly because I have a feeling we will be leaving the TS restaurants to go to a CS place to buy him an extra dinner. Also becuase I'm having a hard time with giving up actual PARK time to go and have a sit-down meal. I know we have to eat eventually, but I'm thinking we're more of a grab-a-burger-on-the-way kind of family.
I initially booked it becuase we intended to do a few of the character buffets and planned on using TS for them thinking we would at least break even. But looking at my (very loosely planned) park schedule for the week, I felt like I would be running all over the place just to eat instead of just eating something wherever we were, KWIM? I'm sure the restaurants are good, and from reading posts about DDP, people essentially make it almost a sport to "get their money's worth" and eat more than DDP cost per day. I don't think I can be bothered.

 

[Hopefully]

Mom2aRedhead,
If you really are a "grab and go" kind of person, the meal plan very well may not be for you. It does take away from Park tourning times.
In my experience an average TS meal takes about 90 minutes. To that you need to add travel time to the restaurant, if that applies.
It sound like you may have a lot of travelling to do to make your ADR's. I would advise that you plan your park days, and then make an ADR in that park or very near by (A resort monorail restaurant on a MK day). You really do not want to be running around to make a distant ADR.
Good Luck with your decision.

 

[Topo Bella]

As I understand it, you must buy the DDP for everyone in your party age 3 and over. That being said, when we went a couple of months ago, I opted to buy the plan for my 2 year old. Although my DD is also a picky eater, she would have much more of a problem sharing my dinner which was bound to be something other than chicken fingers or mac & cheese. Also consider that the plan includes one snack a day for your DD. Since a snack usually covers most things under $4, the snack alone each day made up for a good portion of the cost of the meal plan ($10.99 per day, I think) for a child.

 

[mom2aredhead]

Mom2aRedhead,
If you really are a "grab and go" kind of person, the meal plan very well may not be for you. It does take away from Park tourning times.
In my experience an average TS meal takes about 90 minutes. To that you need to add travel time to the restaurant, if that applies.
It sound like you may have a lot of travelling to do to make your ADR's. I would advise that you plan your park days, and then make an ADR in that park or very near by (A resort monorail restaurant on a MK day). You really do not want to be running around to make a distant ADR.
Good Luck with your decision.

We generally have CS breakfast at the resort and go to the parks that have evening EMH around 10:00 am. Against all rules, I know. BUT, I really don't want to have to set an alarm clock on vacation - it is supposed to be vacation after all. Most of the restaurants that sounded interesting to me were either in Epcot or other resorts, and I was really struggling to find places to eat every day that we would all like and would not require us dropping whatever we were doing just to go eat. My DH gave me a reality check...His (nearly) exact words were "you can be the one to tell our 3 year old that he can't ride anymore rides because we have to go to Morocco to eat"
So then I changed everything and decided just to book some character meals, use the CS/snack credits for breakfast, and wing it in the parks. Adding it up, I'm not saving much money using DDP this way, and I'm booking probably 3 more character meals than we would have done w/out DDP just because I have the credits
I think we're just going to go OOP.

 

[frannn]

I had some of the same concerns as you. I made sure to book almost all character buffet dinners, so it would be more like we were rushing to our "dining entertainment". By the time dinner rolled around, DD and DH were ready for a break, and the variety at buffets ensured me that DD would find something she liked to eat. I was still left with the concern that she not eat at the TS meal time, and be hungry before or after, so I bought some applesauce, drink boxes, etc, and carried them with us. Yes, we ended up with leftover snack credits, but it was just easier and healthier for me to pull out a small snack for her while we waited on line, or sat in the shade for a moment. The DP is not a must for us, but definetly forced us to slow down. We've been to Disney about 8 times, so the new ADRs we are trying are like our new "attractions"!