Advise for Avoiding the Segmenting Pitfalls

[mjstaceyuofm]

When I go to Disney, I don't want to eat in the room or cook--its vacation for me and that to me is not vacation.

Amen to that. There's no cooking for us either, but it's nice to be able to do cereal, coffee, juice and toast a few mornings when you don't have breakfast reservations or plan to eat at a park or the like... We usually keep a few snacks around for those afternoon trips to the pool too.

In reference to the APs, I know that they don't make sense when you're only going once for a short trip, but it only takes one AP to be able to purchase the TIW card.

For those of you on the DDP (segmented or not), I'd love to see a running total of what the meals would have cost if paid for out of pocket vs. your DDP costs vs. what it would cost if you applied the 20% TIW discount. It might be worth the cost for an AP to have that savings. Again - more math problems ti figure out.

For us the big thing is the TIW card also covers alcohol. Saving 20% on cocktails or a bottle of wine is huge. I believe alcohol is not covered on the DDP unless you get the wine add-on. If you add on a cocktail and a glass of wine to each meal, that will completely drive the price up.

 

[Sandisw]

Amen to that. There's no cooking for us either, but it's nice to be able to do cereal, coffee, juice and toast a few mornings when you don't have breakfast reservations or plan to eat at a park or the like... We usually keep a few snacks around for those afternoon trips to the pool too.

In reference to the APs, I know that they don't make sense when you're only going once for a short trip, but it only takes one AP to be able to purchase the TIW card.

For those of you on the DDP (segmented or not), I'd love to see a running total of what the meals would have cost if paid for out of pocket vs. your DDP costs vs. what it would cost if you applied the 20% TIW discount. It might be worth the cost for an AP to have that savings. Again - more math problems ti figure out.

For us the big thing is the TIW card also covers alcohol. Saving 20% on cocktails or a bottle of wine is huge. I believe alcohol is not covered on the DDP unless you get the wine add-on. If you add on a cocktail and a glass of wine to each meal, that will completely drive the price up.

No, the dining plan doesn't cover alcohol but you can still use TIW for it when you are on the dining plan.

I can give you an example of why we did it. The plan will be $78.99 for adults and $21.99 for the child. The two main meals will be CRT and 1900 park fare. Those meals alone would be $84.53 adult and $ 49.10 for the child. So, for $5 less, we get a mug and 2 snacks. For the child, the deal is even better. It saves $27!!

Now, even if you figure the TIW card in to the mix, it would cost us $67.25 for those same meals. In that case, we are paying about $13 to get a mug and 2 snacks--basically, still making the snacks for free.

Granted, if we could not do this just for one night, TIW comes out ahead, but in this case, it doesn't.

 

[mjstaceyuofm]

No, the dining plan doesn't cover alcohol but you can still use TIW for it when you are on the dining plan.

I did not know that. That may completely change the equation in the future. Thanks for the information.

 

[sixisenough]

Well, I have good news to report on the segmented dining plan. We stayed 7 nights starting 7/23-7/30 at OKW. We did 4 of those nights deluxe and the other 3 no plan and it was plenty of food for us. We took our family with us, who had their own room and this was thier first disney experience.
I have to give the OKW staff kudos, they made it very easy, We never had to change keys other than the 2nd day because our first night was on a cash stay.. We got new mugs also 3 different times, so they made nice gifts for people back home. We only had one error where our family;s room's credits did not load last day while we were at another resort eating. So, they just charged to room and fixed as soon as we checked in at desk.
In fact, we ended up with extra credits at end of trip and they said to enjoy!!!! That is Disney for you.
It worked great for our group of 12 and I think OKW's layout of hotel makes it easy because we were always in the area of the front desk, so it just took a few minutes to checkin and out. They always gave us a a printout of what credits we had available. There was never issues in the restraunts. We got the feeling that Disney liked this option for the guests.
I am not sure I would do at a resort like Kidani because of the front desk being so far from rooms. But I have to say Disney sold us on this plan and we hope to continue in the future. Our family loved this option giving you 2 days to spread out 3 meals and 2 snacks.
Good luck and hope it continues to work out the kinks

 

[csmommy]

Well, I have good news to report on the segmented dining plan. We stayed 7 nights starting 7/23-7/30 at OKW. We did 4 of those nights deluxe and the other 3 no plan and it was plenty of food for us. We took our family with us, who had their own room and this was thier first disney experience.
I have to give the OKW staff kudos, they made it very easy, We never had to change keys other than the 2nd day because our first night was on a cash stay.. We got new mugs also 3 different times, so they made nice gifts for people back home. We only had one error where our family;s room's credits did not load last day while we were at another resort eating. So, they just charged to room and fixed as soon as we checked in at desk.
In fact, we ended up with extra credits at end of trip and they said to enjoy!!!! That is Disney for you.
It worked great for our group of 12 and I think OKW's layout of hotel makes it easy because we were always in the area of the front desk, so it just took a few minutes to checkin and out. They always gave us a a printout of what credits we had available. There was never issues in the restraunts. We got the feeling that Disney liked this option for the guests.
I am not sure I would do at a resort like Kidani because of the front desk being so far from rooms. But I have to say Disney sold us on this plan and we hope to continue in the future. Our family loved this option giving you 2 days to spread out 3 meals and 2 snacks.
Good luck and hope it continues to work out the kinks

Yeah, good news!

Two questions - did you do the dining plan every other day? If not how did you structure it?

 

[sixisenough]

This is what we did
Sat- late check in, cash night, no plan
Sun- Deluxe....Got credits around 10am
Mon- No plan
Tues-Deluxe
Wed-Deluxe
Thurs-No plan
Fri-Deluxe
Sat- checked out 1130am

WE did some character meals amd some nice dinners, even used a couple of credits as counter service. It worked great I hope to do it again!

 

[lauralw]

We segmented our dining plan back in March having the deluxe plan some days and nothing on others.
One of the problems we had was the wait staff would come back with our cards and say we did not have any dining plan at all. Midway through our trip, however, we figured out what the problem was.

First (and less importantly) our cards said "DVC-Multi" rather than "dining plan." This confused them because they hadn't seen it before.
Second, and more importantly, they kept trying to run it through the regular DP. The card would get rejected and they would insist that we did not have the plan. In addition to being annoying, this was embarassing. We finally realized that we had to very specifically tell them to run it through as the Deluxe DP.

I don't know if they fixed this problem but once we figured this out, things went more smoothly.

Good luck!

 

[Castillo Mom]

I'm getting more and more concerned about segmenting during our upcoming trip. Right now we don't have anything too complicated. We've got 1 night DxDDP and the remainder of the 10 nights regular DDP.

My concern is that with a larger group (8 of us) we may have problems keeping track of credits. Second, my son has decided that he'll be able to join us mid way through the trip. I can add him to the reservation and pay for the DDP before we leave but that will trigger another segment.

The last thing I want is to have any issues. If it was just my immediate family, no big deal but I have extended family coming along this trip and I don't want to cause them any undue stress.

 

[disneydreamingdebby]

I chickened out of something more complex. I simply did Day 1 at Jambo Qsp; then day 4 when we checked into BLT Qsp.

Check-in at Jambo looked confusing to the CM, but I explained and she quickly understood.

I did not experience any issues with credits and we still had a snack credit carry over on day three and another on day six.

We did not need to get new cards either. At BLT, we had a message about getting a new room key. Dh listened and told me about it, but since we never got locked out of our room, I never went for a new one.

We are going again in Dec, and I will look at all of our receipts to see what kind of plan I want to design for that trip.

It seems that the resorts are getting used to this and some of the kinks are being eliminated.

 

[csmommy]

Just got back & it was a toal success!!! YEAH! Check my thread out here:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?p=42293838#post42293838