A little more advice sought - Free dining

[TCO]

Hi all,

So I thought i had decided what we wanted for our trip in 2010. We had decided on staying at the CSR with the free QSDP however now /i am having second thoughts.

Do people think it is more worthwhile paying the extra £600 to stay at the animal kingdom lodge with the full dining plan?

We have only eaten in Cinderellas royal table and know little else about the restaurants in disney but I am thinking it may be worth looking into if there are a lot of good restaurants.

 

[wayneg]

Have you looked at staying at CSR but upgrading to Regular DDP? it will give you the price on Disney.co.uk to upgrade.
No way would I be happy doing a holiday with QSDP, QS is OK once a day, I like a proper meal once a day.
AKL we enjoyed last year for 3 nights only because we got free upgrade to a savannah room. Would not have wanted to pay that price and have been in a basic room.

 

[TCO]

That may be an avenue to look at wayne. I'm a bit of a fussy eater but love my food and the wife is Vegitarian, are there plenty of good restaurants around the park to make the Dining plan worthwhile?

Last time we went we ended up eating at planet Hollywood a lot to be honest.

 

[wayneg]

This August will be 1st time we have done DDP. Usually stay offsite and eat offsite so its all new to me but at the price I got (£91/night OKW with regular DDP for 3 adults) its as cheap as offsite in a budget hotel and paying for food. Half of me keeps wishing we were staying offsite but the other half says we will never get this price onsite again so we have to try it.

As for choice see this leaflet, gives you everywhere you can eat (incl Planet Hollywood) http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/me...09 Disney Dining Plan - Walt Disney World.pdf

 

[pixiepower04]

We paid an extra £600 to stay at Caribbean Beach over All Stars to get the free dining plan (table, counter and quick service a day) and we made sure that we ate in restaurants that we would normally never pay for (California Grill, Narcoosees etc) so for us it was definitely worth it, plus, there are more restaurants than holiday days so you can really go from one extreme to the other and still not cover all the places you'd like to eat in.

I very sadly printed off all the menus on the DDP and went through them to score each restaurant for food that both DH and I would enjoy but also DD10 and DS8 and then narrowed it down to the number of days we were there.

We had a great time experiencing decent food and after our second burger where we felt sick we were so thankful we'd paid the extra £600.

We're booking for next year to get the free dining and then paying for the upgrade to get the table service because there are so many other restaurants to try

 

[TCO]

After looking it would be £70pp to upgrade to the ful DP staying at CSR, this may be a good option seeing as there are only 2 of us.

 

[orangetiggs]

this year we are staying at pofq and we paid to upgrade the dining plan as it was better value for us and we dont mind staying in a mod

Next year we may try the counter service plan just for a change as we dont normally eat at table places alot

 

[pixiepower04]

After looking it would be £70pp to upgrade to the ful DP staying at CSR, this may be a good option seeing as there are only 2 of us.

A bit of a waffle here but:

I don't know how fussed you are with quality of accommodation, as in, does a mod suit just as much as a deluxe, if so then stay in the mod and upgrade the dining plan and explore the restaurants. You can find updated menus on other websites so you can narrow down your choices and most restaurants I think are happy to accommodate guests requests for things like special diets or veggies etc.

There was a meal I really liked the look of except for the beef on it (i'm not a veggie but don't really eat red meat) and I asked for the meal with chicken instead, they were happy to oblige.

We were originally going to stay in All Stars because to us the room is not that important as we never plan on being in it much but because we wanted the free dining we had to upgrade so we went for Caribbean Beach, which we now love and are so glad we had the chance to stay in a mod and experience all the restaurants.

The restaurant choices were hard to make so I chose different types of experiences like Cinderellas Castle, Wilderness Lodge, Polynesian Luau, Germany's Biergarten so that we all had different types of food and the kids got to have different experiences.

If you do it at least once and hate it then you know not to do it again

 

[TCO]

We stayed at Pop last year and loved it so we're really not too bothered as long as its a Disney resort.

The main problem being that the wife doesn't like the look of much on the counter service menus and may go mad from eating basically caeser salad and pizza for 10 days.

 

[Shooby doo]

TCO the main consideration is are you likely to want a sit down meal at least once a day? Are you willing to go off-site for it? If the answer to the first is yes & the answer to the second is no ,then pay to upgrade to regular DDP.We had it last year,which was also the first time that we had stayed on-site,before we had only ever eaten at the parks so had nothing to compare our off-site prices to.Disney restaurants are expensive compared to off-site,I would guess that entrees were at least $5 dearer,which doesn't sound alot but x3 plus 21 nights it does add up! & like a previous poster said you will more likely eat at Restaurants that you would normally decide were too pricey. We tried Cali Grill,Narcosoosses (too many o's & s' !)Jiko,Artists Point,Flying Fish all of which would have been a bill in excess of $200 !! I think also that the 2 snacks on the QSDDP would be really hard to use up,we only had 1 per day & they lasted us until check out.
SD

 

[TCO]

Thanks for all the help guys and gals, decided to go for the full dining plan, I like the look of the Sci fi cafe among others.

Now I only have one more issue to decide on before I can book but thats for another thread.

 

[jackieleanne]

Thats good. You going for the upgrade to AKL or staying CSO and upgrading dining.

Thats what we did upgraded the plan although i do want to stay at AKL if it was £600 extra for savannah view i'd pay but for a standard room I would but not for normal room, well not at current times.

 

[pixiepower04]

We stayed at Pop last year and loved it so we're really not too bothered as long as its a Disney resort.

The main problem being that the wife doesn't like the look of much on the counter service menus and may go mad from eating basically caeser salad and pizza for 10 days.

I'm with your wife on this one . In 2004 we had CS all of the time except twice when we ate at Sci-Fi and Coral Reef but by the end of the trip we were sick of burgers and hotdogs etc.

Last year we had the dining plan and only ate CS burgers twice in the whole 3 weeks but after the second time we felt sick (we just didn't want them) so we really had good value for money in terms of decent food.

We used up our counter service credits and most snack credits for breakfast every day, kids had croissants, cereals, juice, pancakes etc, DH had cooked breakfast, I had croissants and the delicious Pineapple Banana Muffin and snack credits we used in the parks for water, ice creams and juice.

So, we filled up at brekkie and then I either planned a TS lunch or dinner but the opposite out of Disney, so for example, we would have brekkie and then a TS lunch in the park but dinner was outside the world somewhere, the next day would be brekkie and then out for most of the day and then TS inside the world somewhere.

This worked really well for us as we felt that we were getting the best of both worlds and we weren't tied down to Disney every day, some days I used 2 TS credits (luau, narcoosees etc) so that we had completely free days to explore outisde the world.

 

[TCO]

We're going to go for the Coronado and upgrade to the DP I think, unfortunately it look like we can only stretch to 10 days

 

[paulh]

We stayed at Pop last year and loved it so we're really not too bothered as long as its a Disney resort.

The main problem being that the wife doesn't like the look of much on the counter service menus and may go mad from eating basically caeser salad and pizza for 10 days.

just looked on usa site for this year pop this year with full free DDP 1TS/1QS and 1 snack per night comes in at $1696 = £1130 ( 14 nights aug 2 adults)for that you only had to get a 1 days base ticket,if you could wait till April next year it surley would be out in the states
Paulh