Amount of food on Dining Plan--anyone think it it just enough or not enough?

[goofy4wdw2]

Everyone keeps commenting on how much food is included in the plan, credits left over, and I'm wondering if everyone is a light eater. My DH and I like to EAT when we're on vacation, even though we are on Weight Watchers maintenance while at home. We have pretty big appetites when we put our minds to it The plan does actually sound like a good amount of food, but I was just curious if anyone felt differently. Thanks!

 

[pepperw23]

I am so glad you asked that, I was wondering the same thing. All year long I am on SouthBeach so come vacation time I am going to be ready to EAT...LOL

 

[PrincessTrisha]

I think it depends on where you eat and what you order.

There are places where it was too much food (Planet Hollywood - the servings are huge - good food - but really huge) but there were places where we left only a few bites (we are good eaters though).

At Le Cellier I managed to consume most of my appetizer (cheese plate - I couldn't eat all that blue cheese - one bite was just enough) my whole filet mignon with the mushroom risotto and about 1/2 of my cobbler for dessert. Was I full? - Oh Yeah! Would I have wanted any less? - No, it was pretty much the right amount.

At Alfredo's my mom order the tomato and mozzeralla appetizer (which was smallish) and the special which was Salmon with Lemon sauce (an "average piece which came with a few pieces of potatoes and a few veggies) and we pooled the credits to have the dessert sampler (a bite of this and a bite of that). While she was full, there were not any leftovers. The calamari appetizer though was HUGE and along with my pasta there was no way I could have finished it all.

At the more upscale restaurants there are smaller portions (but still enough for a larger eater to be full). I think it is at the more "family" or middle of the road restaurants where the portions are very large.

And of course, at buffets - you choose your own portions!

 

[cocodog]

We are big eaters, and it is ALOT of food ;o)

 

[byoung]

It's worth the price.

 

[pezpam]

Most of the time it was fine for us. A couple of places wound up serving too much food, but that was usually because we ordered an appetizer that we hadn't realized was huge. lol. The only other problem for us was when we didn't schedule enough time between meals.

In general, it was fine, though. We usually tried for one of these options:

Character breakfast with a mid to late seating, snack in teh afternoon, CS dinner at a normal hour

Small breakfast item from the food court or our room, CS lunch midday, TS dinner at a normal hour

With teh second option, we often didn't have a snack. However, those came in handy to pick up a few sodas and snacks for the trip home.

 

[disneymagic02]

MY Dh and I are bif eaters and it was plenty of food, on the CS we sometimes had dessert left over, but we would take it with us(if we could).

 

[luv2nascar]

we are big big eaters. IT was DH, myself, dd9 at the time & youngest dd2. So we didn't pay for little one and mostly split meals with her and still had plenty. I especially found the desserts to be too much. We would never order that much dessert. We certainly did our best to put the food away and we had some really great meals. Doing it again this summer and youngest will not yet be 3 so we will be sharing again.

 

[Princesa]

I had wondered about that too....never fear...I was stuffed!! Actually too stuffed part of the time, and we know how to eat! I had taken snacks along in our luggage too just because we usually try to skimp along through the meals just to save money and then enjoy a snack later in the room. Had to drag back all those snacks...which was quite annoying

We weren't used to ordering appetizers and desserts at every meal too, so even where fine dining provided smaller portions the amount you had was usually too much. By the end of the week, I wasn't even debating if the meal plan was worth it for us. Especially since we often try to stay on the inexpensive side of dining....it was great for us to order what we wanted and not worry about pricing. And had I paid $4.95 for that slice of cheesecake I bet I would have finished it...sigh...

 

[patsal]

We eat well. That said DS is 14 and I'm not sure what he won't eat! DD just turned to "adult" pricing so it is iffy at best we will break even on her plan--I figure the two kids will balance that out. DH enjoys good meals and doesn't like to skimp on the apps and desserts when he is on vacation. He doesn't drink, smoke or have any other expensive habits so when he is on vacation I indulge this! Usually I watch what I order to keep the bill balanced--I have to say I enjoyed the Dining Plan in December--I didn't have to pay attention to prices I could just get what I wanted. We did often have CS desserts left over and teh kids enjoyed them later in the day. Teh only thing we found was that often DD just wanted a hot dog so I would pay OOP for her hot dog and save a CS credit for another time. Becasue of that we had a few CS and many snack credits left over at the end--but we did manage to use everything before we left. I will balance the snacks out a bit more the next time. The only thing I didn't care for was teh CS breakfast policy. I can understand the no dessert but it would make sense to just separate the "what is included for breakfast /what is for lunch/dinner" It would be nice to be able to add fruit to breakfast replacing the dessert. Of course this will not affect me in July as we will be at OKW with a kitchen so we will not use credits for breakfast, but I didn't like having to pay for fruit OOP when we had breakfast in December. If you enjoy breakfast, the CS offerings will come up short--just a breakfast entree or platter, no bread servce and no fruit.

 

[Nanabug02]

I can personally REALLY put away some food. I love, love, love food....(hence the weight loss ticker below!). And I felt the dining plan was plenty of food. In fact, by the end of our trip, both me and DH were actually tired of eating! We were always very full and sometimes stuffed by the end of our meals!

 

[goofy4wdw2]

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate your feedback. It really does sound like a good amount of food, especially since I didn't realize you also get a dessert with the CS credits. I think we'll just have to pay out of pocket for a few extra bottles of water throughout the day and the occasional dole whip or something not included on the plan...but it sounds like we won't have much room for those anyway! Thanks again!

 

[MomofKatie]

Use your snack credits for bottled H2O!! We tried to save our snack credits for ice cream, popcorn, etc at the beginning of our trip and brought in our own water bottles. But, between the amount of food we got with each meal, and the desserts at each CS meal, we were unable to use up our snack credits (we had 21 for the week, and only used about 11 or 12 of them). You really won't use up all your snacks on stuff to eat- you will be too full- so use them on drinks and water!!!

Oh, and someone reported being able to get a Dole Whip with a snack credit- we didn't try, but they might be allowing it now!!

 

[TexasErin]

Okay, I guess I'm the lone dissenter.
We found it to be plenty of food at one sitting- no question about that. But most days, we need 1 TS and 2 CS. For example, on our next trip, we have several counter service breakfasts that we will have to purchase out of pocket. A typical day for us would be Main Street Bakery, Pecos Bill, LTT. There will be a few days where we don't need 2 CS, but those days will be when we have character breakfasts and then a snack and then counter service for dinner.
I know I won't be able to finish an appetizer, meal, and all of my dessert at table service meals, but I do wish it wasn't just 2 meals a day. I have tried having a late counter service breakfast, snack, and then table service for dinner, but that doesn't work well for us since we are starving by breakfast time. We are not huge eaters, but are used to three small meals per day.
With all that said, I am still getting the dining plan again for my next trip since I feel it is still cheaper. But we will be paying OOP for breakfasts at Main Street Bakery, Tusker House, Fountainview Espresso, and ABC Commissary.

 

[princesslisa]

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate your feedback. It really does sound like a good amount of food, especially since I didn't realize you also get a dessert with the CS credits. I think we'll just have to pay out of pocket for a few extra bottles of water throughout the day and the occasional dole whip or something not included on the plan...but it sounds like we won't have much room for those anyway! Thanks again!

Oh, dont worry . . .I definitely STUFFED down the Pinnaple Dole Whip anyway

 

[Lewisc]

You can eat in buffet restaurants like Boma and restaurants that serve all you care to eat such as the skillet meal in Whispering Canyon and LTT and eat all you want.

If I wasn't on the plan I would have skipped dessert most of the time in favor of eating dessert later in the day.

 

[MomofKatie]

Okay, I guess I'm the lone dissenter.
We found it to be plenty of food at one sitting- no question about that. But most days, we need 1 TS and 2 CS. For example, on our next trip, we have several counter service breakfasts that we will have to purchase out of pocket. A typical day for us would be Main Street Bakery, Pecos Bill, LTT. There will be a few days where we don't need 2 CS, but those days will be when we have character breakfasts and then a snack and then counter service for dinner.
I know I won't be able to finish an appetizer, meal, and all of my dessert at table service meals, but I do wish it wasn't just 2 meals a day. I have tried having a late counter service breakfast, snack, and then table service for dinner, but that doesn't work well for us since we are starving by breakfast time. We are not huge eaters, but are used to three small meals per day.
With all that said, I am still getting the dining plan again for my next trip since I feel it is still cheaper. But we will be paying OOP for breakfasts at Main Street Bakery, Tusker House, Fountainview Espresso, and ABC Commissary.

Hey, TexasErin!!

What worked well for us was sharing the larger CS meals- the 3 of us (me, DH, and DD7) would share 1 CS breakfast platter- plenty for us, since we aren't big breakfast eaters. At that time, we were still allowed the "dessert" with b'fast- DH and DD would share the platter, and I would have a muffin or some fruit. Then, at lunch, we would share 2 CS meals (usually the larger combo meals). We never felt overfull, and we didn't have to spend extra $$ OOP for 3 meals a day.