A lesson in sharing or how to turn 12 TS credits into 14 meals (COMPLETE)

[NoOrdinaryPrincess]

Excellent DR! Really useful.

 

[elaine amj]

Excellent DR! Really useful.

Aw....thanks!! It helped me so much to read dining reviews when planning my trip...I hope this in turn helps others.

Even though we had plenty of food on our last 10 day trip with free dining, I still stressed a bit for this 12 day trip because I wanted to overindulge more than we had the previous trip. Doing all my planbing and tracking my credits each night really helped me feel more in control of it all. I ended up feeling thrilled with how we spent our crefdits this trip.

 

[elaine amj]

Okay - I've been a super slacker about finishing this. My memory has faded a LOT by now so hopefully these will still be useful. Just 3 days left to go!

Day 10
Breakfast: Everything Pop
Lunch: Wolfgang Puck Express at DtD Marketplace
Snacks: 2 popcorns from DQ and 2 candy treats from Goofy's in DtD
Dinner: Planet Hollywood & Wolfgang Puck Express West Side

Day 10

Breakfast was again at Everything Pop.

Lunch today was at Wolfgang Puck Express. We were here already for brunch early in the trip. This time, we hoped the kids would like their food better. I got a Roasted Beet Salad. What can I say...it was big, it had beets (which I love), it was green. Not the "foodiest" experience, but a very decent foodie salad. My DS got the Cavatappi Chicken Alfredo and my DD got the 4 Cheese Macaroni. Overall, we didn't "LOVE" our meals the way we did last year. Must be getting a bit jaded by this time LOL

Good, will happily eat here again

For snacks we grabbed a couple of packages of candy from Goody;s - sour patches I think from the kids.

Dinner was at Planet Hollywood. We had two $15 gift vouchers that they give you in the WDW packages. We sat and asked our waiter if we could combine the vouchers. It was a yes...and they were valid on anything other than alcoholic beverages.

My DS got the World Famous Chicken Crunch. (chicken tenders in a cornflake batter). He also got a drink in a light up Planet Hollywood glass. (it was the first time we've ever let him buy one - and he LOVED it). However, he didn't much like his chicken tenders - didn't care for the coating. Still, he atea fair bit of it. his sister polished off the rest. However, the FRIES were the best things in the world. Both my kids went nuts for them. The best they've had in their opinion.

My DD got a Tomato and Mozarella Caprese (with the vinegar on the side). She didn't much like this although she loves both tomatoes and mozarella. I enjoyed them though

My DH ordered a Key Lime Pie. YUMMY. Seriously yummy. I was very, very impressed. (we later had the Key lime Pie at Wolfgang Puck Express...and it was blah compared to this).

The bill was very small as our $30 vouchers covered most of our order. The tip was the biggest expense as we tipped as if we had ordered for all of us. GREAT deal!

The atmosphere was a blast. Heavily themed with lots to look at. A first meal in a Planet Hollywood for all of us. The food is decent - like a Red Lobster. The theming was lots of fun. The value with those vouchers is EXCELLENT.

Loved it!!! Highly recommend this!

After this, we dropped our kids back in Disney Quest and left them to get some adult time and our own meal in Wolfgang Puck Express (West Side).

I timed it JUST before the Cirque crowd let out. I had 3 people in line....then immediately afterwards, the place was swamped. It made service very slow - but this was rather unavoidable. We managed to snag an outdoor table.

I had the Rotiserrie Turkey Cobb Salad (had salad on the brain) which was very yummy and hit the spot. DH had the BBQ chicken pizza he had been craving. YUM! Dessert was a fruit salad for me and key lime pie for him. The fruit salad was what it was. The Key Lime Pie was blah compared to what he had earlier in Planet Hollywood.

Good, will happily eat here again

 

[elaine amj]

Day 11
Brunch: Cinderella's Royal Table @ the Castle
Snack: 1 smoothie from Auntie Gravity's, 1 frozen carbonated drink from The Lunching Pad, and 12 treats from Main St candy store to bring home as gifts (and snacks for school!!)
Dinner: 1900 Park Fare

Day 11

We skipped breakfast this morning and headed to MK. Brunch today was 10:30am at Cinderella's Royal Table.

The food IS good.

I started rolling in laughter after I saw the kids portion though!! $30+ and THAT is what they came up with??!!

OK OK - I have to be fair...my kids ate one of the bacon strips before I could snap a pic. This was RIDICULOUS! Thankfully, from the Dis, I knew that it was all you care to eat. My waiter certainly did NOT make that known.

When we sat, I told him I was dithering between the Cream Cheese Stuffed French Toast and the crepes. He said nothing. I finally told him I wanted both. He "would see what he could do". He did show up with both The lobster/crab crepes were very good. The white sauce they came with were delish. I was thoroughly happy with this order. I gave most of the French Toast to my DD who said it tasted just like cheesecake. I would have said a Cheese Danish. DH ordered the Filet Mignon & Eggs. I only took a nibble of DH's steak and eggs. I don't think they were as good as the various filet mignon's we had for dinner, but a very nice choice for a fancy breakfast and he enjoyed it.

Halfway through we asked for more bacon which our waiter ungraciously got for us. Near the end, we decided to ask for a Quiche (which ended up being good). By this point our waiter was seriously unhappy with us - but after spending that much (well..2 TS credits anyway!) we were certainly getting our money's worth!! Besides, his attitude annoyed us and he disappeared for long periods of time.

To be honest, little of my attention was on the food. They move the characters very quickly through and most of my time was spent jumping up and taking pics.

Despite all our dithering and extra orders, we were out of there after a little more than an hour. Our VERY quickest meal in WDW by far! We were pretty much the very last to leave the restaurant LOL.

All in all, glad we did it - in no hurry to go back.

Good, will happily eat here again (not for this price though!)

We needed smoothies in the afternoon to fuel us up so we grabbed a smoothie and a slushie at about 2pm then left for an afternoon break.

At 5pm, we were back at 1900 Park Fare for dinner. Our cell was dead - but we lucked out with a table that had a plugpoint right beside it!

I booked this for the characters. They weren't as good as I had hoped. We were near the entrance. It was REALLY loud and we heard 2 words in 10 of what the characters said. My kids don't know Lady Tremaine and the stepsisters well and most of what they said went over their heads partly because they couldn't hear them properly. For our family, the characters were a bust.

However, the food was surprisingly good! We enjoyed it all. My DD LOVED the pizza there - and I took a nibble - much better than regular Disney pizza. There was a curry dish I pigged out on. The famous strawberry soup...tasted like a strawberry smoothie to me. It was fine. I was surprised with the variety. The food was buffet quality. Our waiter was sweet enough to pack some cookies to go for us when we were too full to eat much dessert. I might end up back here again just to eat!

Good, will happily eat here again

 

[elaine amj]

Day 12
Breakfast: (whatever we had left in the room)
Lunch: Landscape of Flavors at Art of Animation

Day 12

Our last day at WDW Even after 12 nights, we were not ready to leave at all. Oh well, all good things must come to an end. We slept in after staying up for a late EMH at MK the night before.

Breakfast was leftover snacks and desserts in the fridge.

This morning, the kids wanted to hit the pool. I left them with DH so I could go to DtD to do some shopping and spend the last few snack credits we had and pick up lunch from Earl of Sandwich and Wolfgang Puck Express. However, I was running late after some issues with our check in luggage (overweight so I had to repack!). After waiting 15 mins and still no bus, I decided it was a waste of time and turned back. After they were done swimming and were showered, we headed over to Art of Animation for lunch at 11am.

We had 6 CS credits left to burn because we didn't end up getting breakfast and I had to strategize!! The kids got a medium pizza to share (2 CS credits). They couldn't finish their pizza. We brought home more than half of it and they had the fun of bringing it for lunch for their first day of school along with Mickey Pretzels. For dessert, they each got packable snacks for us to take home (we did this for all our CS credits). For drinks, they got 1 wildberry foam drink to share and a Nesquik for the plane ride later.

Then DH discovered cans of coconut water (our new fave drink) in the food court! This was exciting! Our last 4 drinks were cans of coconut water. DH drank 1 can there and we packed the other 3 cans for home.

DH got the surf and turf burger. He said it was good. I was so busy scrambling around getting our orders settled I didn't even get a bite! At this point, I got miffed with DH. My DD was dissolving into tears because I made her stand in line and order food by herself(she was being a baby). My DS was being silly and annoying his sister....I was scrambling around, and my DH sat and enjoyed his meal in peace.

We got a sushi and an order of penne alfredo to go. I brought this on the plane home and we had it for dinner.

After all this, I finally got my meal - a tandoori chicken. It was decent. Hit the spot as I don't get Indian food often enough. By now we were running late. I chased everyone off to meet ME while I wolfed it down in 5 mins.

My DH thought Landscape of Flavors was cool. Plus it was nice getting a variety of food we didn't have at Pop. We might have come over for breakfast once or twice if they had more in the way of unique breakfast offerings.

We got almost 3 meals out of our 6 credits here. Lunch, dinner at home for all of us, and lunch the next day for my kids.

Good, will happily eat here again

 

[elaine amj]

Now I am officially FINISHED my Dining Review. Whew - can't believe I made it all 12 days.

Before our trip I was worried that:
- We wouldn't have enough to eat. I expected (and budgeted) to buy a few extra CS meals.
Reality: It was plenty - we even left with takehome food and had meals the next day. We were stuffed most of the time.

- Sharing would get annoying. Our trip last year we shared too and felt like sometimes we didn't get enough and that we had to compromise too much.
Reality: We had plenty of credits to share. Times we didn't want the same thing, we would just order our own. We had some small compromises, but it didn't get annoying.

It was so much fun trying out so many restaurants. We really explored the "World" hopping around to different resorts, etc. The food is overall just decent...rarely mindblowing, but our frugal mentality LOVED the psychological factor of free dining. it made everything taste better. It would have been much more stressful without it.

 

[nanienamou]

Loved reading your reviews! Thank you so much for sharing! And I can't believe they are so cheap portion-wise at CRT!

 

[elaine amj]

Loved reading your reviews! Thank you so much for sharing! And I can't believe they are so cheap portion-wise at CRT!

Awww..thank you!! Really helps to know when people enjoy the review.

And that's my biggest takeaway from CRT...how dreadfully awful their kids portion size was. Hilarious that they put it in such a big plate!! I was also annoyed that we weren't even allowed to order for our kids. If I hadn't known it was all you care to eat I would have been furious paying $30 for that. My DD doesn't eat eggs...so she would only have had 2 tiny french toast sticks and 2 of the smallest pieces of bacon I have seen! Oh..and the pastries of course. I really felt it was unacceptable at a place like CRT.

Hmmm..I think my waiter's crappy attitude colored my perceptions a lot too LOL!!

 

[Wills Mom]

I have absolutely loved reading your review!! Well done on doing so well with all your credits And thanks for sharing your experience! Its definitely given me food for thought for our next trip

 

[elaine amj]

I have absolutely loved reading your review!! Well done on doing so well with all your credits And thanks for sharing your experience! Its definitely given me food for thought for our next trip

Thanks for reading! Sharing turned out to be much more pleasant than I had anticipated...especially since we were in an indulgent mood. Keep in mind though, we are used to being frugal and maximizing value and are very used to sharing.

 

[makingplans4WDW]

What a wonderful review! Thank you for taking the time to write it all down. The details of your sharing adventure are going to help us a great deal in the spring when we travel with my parents. They eat like birds, and we were wondering if they would be able to split some of their TS meals... Now we know!

 

[elaine amj]

What a wonderful review! Thank you for taking the time to write it all down. The details of your sharing adventure are going to help us a great deal in the spring when we travel with my parents. They eat like birds, and we were wondering if they would be able to split some of their TS meals... Now we know!

I knew we wanted to do some sharing but had a bit of a hard time figuring out how we could make it work. There were a small handful of sharing reviews on here which really helped me in visualizing how it would work. The trip before this we had shared CS meals but didn't share any TS meals.

Glad it was helpful for you!

 

[Grammy4Lizzy]

How did you get food through the security check? I thought that you could have food but it has to be purchased after security.

 

[elaine amj]

How did you get food through the security check? I thought that you could have food but it has to be purchased after security.

You cannot bring WATER through security check. But you can bring any and all kinds of food. I've bought sandwiches to eat on the plane. Whatever you'd like really. I always travel with snacks in my bag of some kind.

A tip for flying: I always bring an EMPTY water bottle through security. Then I just get the air hostess to fill it on the plane. One trip I was smart and I filled it at the fountain in the terminal before I boarded. This means I'm not reliant on their serving me small cups of water and I don't have to keep annoying them. We really try to keep hydrated when flying because it's very drying. Plus it helps with jet lag when we cross time zones.

 

[GMU MOM]

Thank you for sharing your experience. We are also a family of 4 (2A and 2 kids) and we usually like to share meals as 3 meals is more than enough food for all of us. On our last trip we shared all our CS meals but never did so for our TS meals. However, for our August trip, I already have it planned out to share some TS meals (where possible) and I was able to get 8 TS meals out of the 7 credits per person. I just made sure to go over all the menus and try to guess what we would probably order and if it could be split or not.

 

[elaine amj]

Glad u enjoyed the review! I think it will be a good reference for me for future trips too. What I did find is that it is not always that easy to share credits. If u are not careful, u can easily end up with leftover credits that are too hard to use. It takes some planning especially when juggling kid and adult credits. For us we had many days and lots of TS credits to play with, which helped a lot.

 

[pumba]

thank you for taking the time to do this review...
I am STUFFED...hahaha...sounds like you had a
great trip to the House of the Mouse...
Some of your restaurants I havent been to yet.
and we are going on almost 30 trips...
Thanks again

 

[elaine amj]

thank you for taking the time to do this review...
I am STUFFED...hahaha...sounds like you had a
great trip to the House of the Mouse...
Some of your restaurants I havent been to yet.
and we are going on almost 30 trips...
Thanks again

Lol! So were we!!! We're all about getting the best bang for our buck and man did we get it! We had so much fun trying so many different restaurants. We did a lot of resort restaurants too and managed to explore many of the resort hotels, which was a blast.

 

[Krisi616]

Thank you for sharing your plans and reviews. We are planning our trip for next October. Hubby and I have had gastric bypass and always share a plate but was concerned about using the dining plan with sharing. This has made me feel better that it is ok. I know the buffet and dinner show places wouldn't allow sharing but that will not be a problem.

 

[elaine amj]

Krisi: I'm so glad you found it useful. I'm an over-researcher and sometimes felt nervous when I couldn't find out a lot of details of what to expect when sharing. I was honestly very impressed with how well it all went. The only exception was T-Rex, but that was okay.

The only drawback is remembering to juggle your credits so you don't get left with too many excess credits you cannot use (or the wrong combination of adult to child credits).

I created a simple credit tracking table on my spreadsheet (there are lots of templates out there for printable ones too) and made sure I kept track each day.