5 short days, eating in the parks- best place?

licountrygirl

licountrygirl
Joined
Feb 15, 2005
Messages
275
We are a group of 7 ( 2 families) and everyone has left it up to me where to eat and when.

We are only there for 5 nights and because of that, we don't want to spend a lot of time traveling to other resorts to eat. We plan on eating in the parks we are in for the day. We do have park hoppers because we are under the impression that Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios aren't necessarily a full day.

Where would you eat? We are planning on using the dining plan for the first time, which I'm still not sold on. My 12 year old son is a very picky and plain eater. Would probably eat chicken fingers or pizza at every meal. One family will pretty much eat anything, it's my family that's a pain to feed. We'd like to get the most bang out of the dining plan because it's expensive for us.

Here's an idea of what I might be looking at doing:

Arrival day (Tuesday) we will probably eat at the POP food court so we can hurry and get into Hollywood Studios. Then we plan on eating dinner at 50s Prime Time Cafe.

2nd day - Magic Kingdom - eat breakfast in the resort and then do lunch at Crystal Palace and dinner at Cosmic Rays.

3rd day - Epcot - breakfast at the resort and then lunch at Coral Reef, dinner at a counter service place.

4th day - Animal Kingdom - Character Breakfast at Tusker House, lunch at Flame Tree BBQ ( is that even open in December? heard it's seasonal) - not sure about dinner, guess that will be counter service out of pocket.

5th day - we'll go wherever we want to, hit things that we might have missed on the days we were there. We're fine park hopping this day. How do we make ADRs? Or should we just wing it that day?

6th day - departure day. Are planning on taking an evening flight so we might hit a park in the morning - again - so set plan so no ADR idea.

Should we skip the character breakfast at Animal Kingdom and do a character breakfast on this day?

Any ideas will be very much appreciated. Again, I want to make the best of my dining plan options and also cater to a very picky family!

Thank you
 
To get your money's worth I would always use the TS credits for dinners as dinners are more expensive than lunch or breakfast. You should use all CS for lunch.

When we did the DP, we did not pay OOP for anything. I did this by using our snack credits for breakfast, CS for lunch and TS for dinner.

Of course, you can try doing a buffet early for dinner and just use the snacks for bfst or lunchtime and then save the CS for your last day.

If you really must have 3 meals a day, then you probably do have to pay some meals OOP, but usually the portions are big enough where the DP will be more than enough food.

The locations that you've choosen are very good choices though.
 
Day 1--Pop food court is definiately a good idea; it is much better than any CS at the Studios.

Day 2--Everything sounds good. Pop has a yogurt parfait that is just a snack credit that is a good breakfast item. Fruit bowls are a snack and are pretty big, too.

Day 3--I would do Coral Reef for dinner (we went at 5:30 and it worked out really well). It gives you a break so you won't be too tired to see Illuminations. Have you thought about booking a Candlelight Processional dinner? I don't think they'll be available till the first of July, but you could go ahead and book a dinner in Epcot so you'll have an ADR and then call to change it to a CP package when July comes for the restaurant you want. CP package is only one dining credit. Are there kids in your party that would be too little to sit through it?

Day 4--I think I would skip Tusker House for breakfast, mainly b/c of the park time it will eat up. What are the ages of other kids, if any? Do another snack credit breakfast, then a CS lunch, the Yak and Yeti CS looks pretty good if you like Chinese. We're going in Dec. and I assume Flame Tree is open year round if you want to stick with it. Since AK closes early (dinner time), you could park hop or make a reservation at a resort restaurant. I think I would do a resort restaurant, there are so many good ones! Kona is great, Boma at AK Lodge. Grand Floridian Cafe is really good and you could see the Gingerbread House and decorations.

Day 5--You may want to do Magic Kingdom again, since it usually takes more than one day to not be rushing. You could make an ADR at Kona at the Poly, so if you're somewhere else, it would still be easy to get there from any park by bus, or by monorail from Epcot (switching to resort monorail). Or you could make an ADR at an Epcot restaurant for dinner and park hop there (just a boat ride from MGM) or monorail from MK.


Day 6--I probably wouldn't make any ADRs this day, either, so you're open to do what you want. You could go to Downtown Disney if you've had enough park time, or just pay for CS OOP anywhere you decide to go.
There's no way to stretch your five days of credits to six full days unless you want to do a LOT of math trying to split CS between people. Sometimes it's just easier to pay for a couple of snacks and one meal out of pocket.

I know this was long winded, but it's fun planning!
 
Long winded is good!! The more information anyone can share, the better!

Love the ideas so far. How did I get picked by our whole group to do this????

Just so you have a better idea of our group ( should have included that before!)

4 adults - 2 of us are not seafood fans
3 kids - a 6 year old girl - kinda picky, but not as bad as the 12 year old
two 12 year old boys - one will eat anything you put in front of him and then some and the other (mine) eats chicken fingers, pizza and fries. You can cram a steak in him.

I love planning, my husband hates me for it - he thinks I'm spending way too much time on this trip - especially because it's not til December and we've never made reservations before. We've always gone on non-peak. But this time with the dining plan, I'd like to make sure we get the most for our money. Money is too precious to be wasting!

Our 5th day would probably be saved for going back to Magic Kingdom and maybe Epcot. You can't see this parks in one day. I will talk to my husband about eating those bigger meals at dinner time. He always liked doing a big lunch, but maybe we can do something different this time.

I love breakfast out - that's why I wanted to do one table service breakfast, maybe a buffet but it seems like a waste to do that with the dining plan. Maybe we'll do that one out of pocket.

Keep the ideas coming - thank you all so very much for your help. My ADR day is June 5th!
 






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