7 day dining plan review

[seajoker]

Just returned yesterday 11/12/06 from 8 nights at the AKL. Here was our dining plan restaurants. 4 adults/3 kids

Lunches:
Sunday - Flame Tree Barbeque
Monday - Sunshine Seasons
Tuesday - none. early dinner
Wednesday - San Angel Inn(Mexico)
Thursday - Mickeys Kitchen & Cosmic Ray's
Friday - Restaurant Marrakesh
Saturday - The Mara

Dinners:
Sunday - Jiko
Monday - Rose & Crown
Tuesday - Mama Melrose
Wednesday - California Grill
Thursday - Le Cellier
Friday - Teppanyaki(Japan)
Saturday - Boma

We ate like kings. All were great except for Rose & Crown which was OK. If you do your homework, you can really make the most of the dining plan.

Seajoker
1st visit Nov 4-11 AKL

 

[cybrkitn]

Just returned yesterday 11/12/06 from 8 nights at the AKL. Here was our dining plan restaurants. 4 adults/3 kids

Lunches:
Sunday - Flame Tree Barbeque
Monday - Sunshine Seasons
Tuesday - none. early dinner
Wednesday - San Angel Inn(Mexico)
Thursday - Mickeys Kitchen & Cosmic Ray's
Friday - Restaurant Marrakesh
Saturday - The Mara

Dinners:
Sunday - Jiko
Monday - Rose & Crown
Tuesday - Mama Melrose
Wednesday - California Grill
Thursday - Le Cellier
Friday - Teppanyaki(Japan)
Saturday - Boma

We ate like kings. All were great except for Rose & Crown which was OK. If you do your homework, you can really make the most of the dining plan.

Seajoker
1st visit Nov 4-11 AKL

And I bet you definately saved money as well! We went from 10/25-11/1. We did the following:

Lunches: Everything Pop (10/25 & 11/1)
Coral Reef (10/26)
Teppanyaki (10/27)
LTT (10/29)
Toy Story Pizza Planet (10/30)
Flame Tree BBQ (10/31)

Dinners: Planet Hollywood (10/25)
San Angel Inn (10/26)
Cosmic Ray's (10/29)
50's Prime Time Cafe (10/30)

Breakfasts: Mostly at Everything Pop using the DDP
Play N Dine (with JoJo, Goliath and Little Einsteins)

We also had an extra full day's worth of credits to use because we spent one of our days at SeaWorld. However, even with that, we still went over on our DDP credits and had to pay oop for Donald's Breakfastosaurus on 10/31. But we did manage to plan it right so that we had two CS's left on our last day; one was used for breakfast and the other for lunch.

Our cost for dinner at Planet Hollywood would have been $101 and Coral Reef $111 (had it not been for the DDP). SAI didn't give us a receipt that had the totals on it, but we're guestimating about $70+. So in a day and a half we already spend $300 (+/-). With all the TS credits we used on our trip, DH and I agreed that the DDP was definately worth it.

However, we did agree that next time we go we will be cutting back on the number of TS credits. The only reason why I had wanted to do so much was that on my prior visits to Disney, the DDP didn't exsist yet. My parents didn't have the money to spend $200 per day for lunch and dinner like that. So this trip with DH and DS4, I was making it up.

 

[seajoker]

I agree, the DDP is well worth it. I will post savings once I go through the recepts, but each dinner's tab was over $135 for the 4 of us. At roughly $100 a day for a family of 4, we saved $245 just on dinner alone. That does not include out lunches and ice cream snacks each day. I figure we saved over $600 in food using the DDP, with 2 counter and 5 snacks not used.

 

[cybrkitn]

Wow! That does sound like a great savings. I still have to tally up our receipts as well to see how much we saved on lunches and dinners.

 

[saschab]

We must have made poor choices. We were there 11/5 -11/10, and with my kids now Disney adult age, we only saved about $182 for 5 nights. Just a bit over the 18% gratuity...but hey...money is money, right?

I think our problem had to do with having less quality ADR choices as our trip was last minute. Our average was brought down by 2 buffets (clambake and breakfast) as well as a signature(2TS) meal.