any1 saved receipts? whats better deal? ddp or cash?

[kkolbusz1]

So we've usually done the free dining in the past but since we'll be taking our 1st dvc trip this fall we were going to purchase the ddp. Its a lot of food and i did use that calculator that was on one of the threads that has u put in all our meals & where you're going. Came out pretty similar. But how accurate is that really? We do know 1 thing; If we didn't get it we wouldn't get desserts usually & we're light eaters & sometimes we'd share a meal. We usually bring cereal pop tarts for the kids too cause they like having those sometimes in the morning. Anyways, has anyone paid cash & added up all their receipts to see if it would've been cheaper to go with it?

 

[winniedapooh]

First let me say, we have five children ages 15 to 24 that eat like pack mules.... I have saved receipts on several trips and when we take the kids, hands down the dining plan is the way to go for us!!

I do not like to cook on vacation. We love to spend as much time as we can in the parks and cooking blech!!

Now, when DH and I have gone alone, no meal plan. It is not cost effective for us. We eat one meal a day and maybe a snack or yogurt or so. It is a total waste!

I would figure out where you would normally eat, add in a snack, a quick service estimate a day. Then compare the two. I do not even figure in the mug until the end. The pro to the meal plan would be that it is all paid for ahead of time, sans alcohol and/or tips. Good luck and have fun.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

I did! I'll find the trip report where I listed everything we bought versus the dining plan costs. For us it was way cheaper without the dining plan, but we typically eat breakfast and lunch in the room and one counter service meal and snack each day. We don't drink soda and try to limit desserts to once per day. We bought my son lots of snacks for the parks because that's all he tends to eat on vacation. I don't know how to link to threads on my phone, but if you search for my dvc trip report about traveling with a potty training toddler, the last entry contains a detailed list of our expenses vs the dining plan.

I would never do a deluxe dining plan because eating out with my 3 year old is torture for us.

Sent from my phone using DISBoards Ap, please excuse any typos and autocorrect mistakes.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Okay well I can't figure out how to link to it, but here's a copy of it:

So I took a few minutes to figure out exactly how much we spent this trip and how much we spent on food. In particular I was interested in whether or not the meal plan would have been cheaper based on the way we would naturally eat. The counter service meal plan is most similar to our eating style as we don't like to sit for long with our toddler. The counter service plan for 2 adults would have been $419.88 for two adults, which includes 2 counter service meals plus a snack each day. We ended up spending a total of $438.00 on food. I think we made out better than the meal plan because we ate 3 full meals a day, fed a toddler, and ate at least two snacks a day per person. The $438 also included 2 beers. This confirms for me that the meal plan is not for us right now, and I have been wondering this for a while so I'm glad I took the time to figure everything out.

Including food we ended up spending $1067 this trip. This includes a rental car, Blizzard Beach tickets, gas, and copious amounts of souvenirs. This does not include regular park tickets because we have annual passes, nor does it include the expense for the room/dvc dues. Our flights this trip were free on Southwest using miles.

Here is the complete breakdown for a family of three (toddler 2.8) Sorry that its a little ugly:

Food
Grocery Winn Dixie 167.00

Counter Service
Kidani Pool Bar (2 Tandoori Chicken Salads) 20.01
Earl of Sandwich (2 Sandwiches, 1 BPJ, 1 Strawberry Shortcake) 19.13
Mara (1 Chicken Pita, 1 Bacon Cheese Burger, 1 Chicken Tender Meal) 28.83
Mara (Child Mac N Cheese) 6.38
Mara (Chile Meal) 6.33
Epcot La Cantina 20.76
MK Pinocchios 18.51
Mara (1 Bacon Cheese Burger) 10.01
Room Service (Seafood Stew, 2 Desserts) 59.69
SubTotal 189.65

Snacks
HS Beverly Sunset ( 2 chocolate marshmellow sticks) 10.63
DTD Goofy's Candy (Rice Crispy Treat, PB Cup,Graham snack, pretzels) 18.51
Epcot Germany (Rice Crispy Treat, Sea Salt Choc. Caramel Square) 9.04
Epcot Germany (Rice Crispy Treat, Sea Salt Choc. Caramel Square X2) 13.29
MK Cart (Popcorn Bucket) 5.25
SubTotal 56.72

Alchohol
Kidani Pool (2X Safari Amber) 15.85

Drinks
Kidani Pool (slushie) 6.32
Epcot Icecream cart 2.50
SubTotal 8.82
--------------------------------------
Food Total 438.04
--------------------------------------
Souvenirs
Kermit Hat 23.91
Nemo + Daisy 41.12
Mickey Baseball Hat 20.83
Mickey Ears + Embroidery 19.12
2X Oswald Ears 32.50
2X Oswald Embroidery 14.91
Bath Toys 17.20
Minnie Mouse Plush 25.52
Leather Bracelet 10.60
SubTotal 205.71
-------------------------------------------
Transportation
Rental Car 109.00
Gas 35.00
------------------------------------------
Park Tickets Blizzard Beach x2 110.76
------------------------------------------
Miscellaneous
Swim Diapers x2 3.95
Locker + Towerl Rental 21.00
Walgreen etc 20.00
-------------------------------------------
Grand Total 1067.46

Sent from my phone using DISBoards Ap, please excuse any typos and autocorrect mistakes.

 

[dianeschlicht]

Several years ago we tracked 3 trips. Two where we used DDP and one where we just used the TIW card. We saved more than $250 using the TIW card over buying the DDP. I HATED having to always track points and making sure the credits were used. We never did use even half of our counter service credits except the time we had teens with us, we used more of them then.

Our best value is to buy the TIW card and use it over the 2-3 trips we take each year. We tend to eat at several signature restaurants each trip plus we always eat a good breakfast in the villa. I HATE breakfast out, so we will have things like oatmeal, bacon, pancakes or eggs in the villa before we head out for the day. Our other "value" method is to have several "main" meals midday instead of evening. Places like Teppan Edo (which we love) have the same menu but with a slight discount midday, and they also give an AP discount midday, so we choose to go there at those times. The only counter service we use much is Flame Tree BBQ at AK. On the days we eat a big meal midday, we tend to just have something light in the villa again for the evening.

While we don't always do a lot of cooking on vacation, we do find that buying things like staples for breakfast and salad fixings are great to have on hand. Occasionally we will make one big meal in the villa and use the left overs the rest of the trip. Often it's in the form of a ham dinner that can be used later for baked potato topping, omlets, sandwiches etc. We also buy things like ice cream and fruit to have on hand in the villa. It keeps not only our food budget on track, but we eat healthy instead of junky.

 

[Missyrose]

We've done the comparison and we come out way ahead with TiW over DDP. We like appetizers more than dessert and a drink with dinner. So saving money on all of it works much better than having to supplement the dining plan for us.

 

[SpaceMountain77]

I have purchased the quick service dining plan on 4 occasions. Each time, I saved my receipts and tallied my total at the end of the trip. Not including the resort refillable mug, I generally saved more than $50 per trip, per person.

Now, two things I do to maximize the savings:

(1) select participating dining locations with higher-priced menus

(2) always order one of the most expensive offerings

From our experience, I can tell you that it is easy to break even or lose a few dollars if someone, like a member of my family whose name will not be mentioned in this post , regularly selects chicken tenders and fries.

 

[Dean]

So we've usually done the free dining in the past but since we'll be taking our 1st dvc trip this fall we were going to purchase the ddp. Its a lot of food and i did use that calculator that was on one of the threads that has u put in all our meals & where you're going. Came out pretty similar. But how accurate is that really? We do know 1 thing; If we didn't get it we wouldn't get desserts usually & we're light eaters & sometimes we'd share a meal. We usually bring cereal pop tarts for the kids too cause they like having those sometimes in the morning. Anyways, has anyone paid cash & added up all their receipts to see if it would've been cheaper to go with it?

You didn't give your group makeup. In general the DDP works best for higher costs 1 credit meals, shorter stays, larger eaters and when you have kids 3-9. We'd gotten all 3 plans and different lengths with various groups and always track out spending. About the best you can do with the QS plans is break even unless you find the high costs meals like WPE, combo meals (AoA, Cosmic Ray's) or for the higher cost items at PM. For the basic plan, it largely depends on the value you get from the QS plan and character meals. You can get the best $$$ value from the Dlx plan but it requires using most credits to TS.

We too rarely get dessert, usually get water, are light eaters and often share a meal. We find we get our best value when we have multiple villas and break the group up into the heavier eaters and lighter eaters.

IMO one needs to either save at least 20% of get an extra and desired value of at least 20% to make it worth it since there's risk that if someone is ill or you had some type of emergency, you'd be out the total $$$. Don't forget you have the tips on the extra $$ as well.

 

[Minniesgal]

We can purchase and eat food to a higher cost than the cost of the dining plan in fact about 27% higher cost. Note that i did not use the term saved 27%. the reason for this is we got that value by eating way more than we would have if we had been paying OOP. We took desert because it was paid for not beacise we needed it. We converted 1 QS credit each to snack credits and bought a load of sugary rubbishe we could have happily lived without and i found myself ordering the most expensive thing on the menu just because I could. so although we got the value of the plan we would have spent less OOP.

This trip we are doing TIW and I am convinced this is the best option for us. We are not big QS eaters we tend to snack in our villa and just do a TS most days.

If however you like to have 1 Qs and 1TS per day and would eat desert at every meal then you would probably save money with the DDP.

 

[hakepb]

There's an awesome spreadsheet linked here:
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=3050182

It lets you quickly estimate Cash to DDP to TIW based on where you dine.

 

[ML_LovesDisney]

So we've usually done the free dining in the past but since we'll be taking our 1st dvc trip this fall we were going to purchase the ddp. Its a lot of food and i did use that calculator that was on one of the threads that has u put in all our meals & where you're going. Came out pretty similar. But how accurate is that really? We do know 1 thing; If we didn't get it we wouldn't get desserts usually & we're light eaters & sometimes we'd share a meal. We usually bring cereal pop tarts for the kids too cause they like having those sometimes in the morning. Anyways, has anyone paid cash & added up all their receipts to see if it would've been cheaper to go with it?

We have done it several ways and I've added the receipts up each time. Paying cash is definitley cheaper, and one year we got Tables in Wonderland which was very much worth it ONLY because we went twice that year. The DDP only saves money if you order most expensive thing, and usually order dessert in my calculations.

 

[kkolbusz1]

You didn't give your group makeup. In general the DDP works best for higher costs 1 credit meals, shorter stays, larger eaters and when you have kids 3-9. QUOTE]

It will be my husband & I and our two boys, 6 and 3. They don't eat much. /
I was going to go with the deluxe plan. I like the sit down dinners but yes, the kids normally order the typical chicken fingers & fries. Only reason I was thinking of not doing it, is because our family is staying with us and I was going to see if I could change to a 2 bedroom instead of 2 rooms and they don't want to do the dining plan. So if they don't, we can't. I'm all about saving, and not eating too much, so I'm still weighing my options. We just don't eat that much but sometimes it's nice to have also. I'm still torn.

thanks for all your input everyone!

 

[hakepb]

For kids, most of the extra value is the character buffets (which cost more OOP than the daily plan cost)

I don't think there is as good of a value ordering TS on a kids menu.

 

[nalajms]

Only reason I was thinking of not doing it, is because our family is staying with us and I was going to see if I could change to a 2 bedroom instead of 2 rooms and they don't want to do the dining plan. So if they don't, we can't.

I would figure out which places you want to eat at and whether reservations are available. Based on that, decide whether or not DDP works.

If you have 2 rooms you don't all have to get the DDP. We do that when my mom joins us for trips. She's not a big eater and will sometimes just cook. Our last trip, I did both TIW and DDP. TIW was for my mom when she joined us and the first half of our split stay trip when we did not have DDP.

And on our last DDP meal, my 3yo fell asleep before we went to lunch. Slept in the stroller through lunch. It was a 2 credit restaurant. We ended up buying 2 QS sandwich meals to take on the flight back, which worked in our favor since we had time.

 

[Dean]

It will be my husband & I and our two boys, 6 and 3. They don't eat much. /
I was going to go with the deluxe plan. I like the sit down dinners but yes, the kids normally order the typical chicken fingers & fries. Only reason I was thinking of not doing it, is because our family is staying with us and I was going to see if I could change to a 2 bedroom instead of 2 rooms and they don't want to do the dining plan. So if they don't, we can't. I'm all about saving, and not eating too much, so I'm still weighing my options. We just don't eat that much but sometimes it's nice to have also. I'm still torn.

thanks for all your input everyone!

Unless you're going for a very short stay, doing meals where you have to pay more for the kids (shows, Character meals) or you can use up part of the extra dlx credits yourself instead of the kids, it's unlikely this will be a value to you. If your traveling group won't have it, just forego the DDP so you don't have the tension related to where you're going, etc.

 

[dsneygirl]

Last trip it averaged out to $85/day ($850 for a 10 day trip) with the TiW discount. We did some F&W booths, some adult beverages and a mix of TS and QS and breakfast in the room. (we also did pizza delivery one night). The DDP would have been about $125/night before tips and alcohol. We definitely cam out way ahead. Even factoring some groceries and the cost of TiW we were at least $200 before the extras.

 

[TagsMissy]

answer == it depends. I can only speak for us -- for us cash is better, we never have used all the credits on the dining plan and we tried 3x to make it work for us.

 

[BirdsOfPreyDave]

This is from a few years ago, but here's a spreadsheet I used to capture every single receipt from our trips that year. I used it to compare the discounts we actually received to what we would have paid had we been on the DDP.

http://www.birdsofpreydave.com/DDPvsTIW2011.xlsx

The prices have changed since 2011, but the concept of the comparison is still valid. For us, when we ordered what we wanted to eat instead of what the DDP allowed (forced) us to order, the TIW was much more cost effective.

For me, this is a much better comparison than checking the prices the other way around (using the DDP, then checking what the price of the food would have been if you were paying OOP). You'll notice that we had a lot of unused notional DDP credits at the end of the spreadsheet. That's one of my major issues with the DDP -- it forces you to eat more than you may want to. And paying for food I don't really want, even if it's discounted, isn't really a savings in my book.

 

[BirdsOfPreyDave]

Although we'd given up the DDP long ago and became true TIW converts, I must admit that I've added it to one of our upcoming reservations. It isn't because I think it will save us any money, but because it will be more politically correct. We've invited my stepson and his family to join us at BLT for their first-ever trip to WDW. We've said this trip is totally on us, and I don't want there to be any arguments about who's picking up the check after each meal. The DDP makes that all quite simple.

 

[AmyB2006]

So we've usually done the free dining in the past but since we'll be taking our 1st dvc trip this fall we were going to purchase the ddp. Its a lot of food and i did use that calculator that was on one of the threads that has u put in all our meals & where you're going. Came out pretty similar. But how accurate is that really? We do know 1 thing; If we didn't get it we wouldn't get desserts usually & we're light eaters & sometimes we'd share a meal. We usually bring cereal pop tarts for the kids too cause they like having those sometimes in the morning. Anyways, has anyone paid cash & added up all their receipts to see if it would've been cheaper to go with it?

I didn't read the other responses, but yes. We've kept our receipts twice now and added it up and it definitely is cheaper to pay cash. HOWEVER, that is compared against the TIW card.

But, I still think it's cheaper because the DDP 'forces' you to order food we wouldn't normally ever get, like dessert. And sometimes I feel unless you specifically order the most expensive meal on the menu, which I may not want, I'm not getting the full value from it.