Are we making the right choice by ditching the dining plan?

[mouseketeermama]

We have a 4 night stay booked at the Poly club level in 4 weeks. We haven't really booked any dining at this point except one early dinner at Ohana since we are not doing the dining plan. I am just worried about being locked in to a reservation that we might not want because of the Club level food. I guess if all else fails and we are hungry we can eat quick service.

What would you do?

 

[LittleStinkerbelle]

A few years ago we got a surprise upgrade to Poly CL. We had booked the trip with the DDP and it ended up being way too much food! The CL offerings pretty much took the place of what we usually would use our snack credits on. The days that we used our TS at lunch, we found ourselves pretty well satisfied with the CL evening offerings so we ended up leaving some CS credits unused. On our last day we used a bunch of snack credits on Main St. for pre-packaged stuff (little bags of pretzles, boxes of cookies) to take home - not the best use. Good luck! I think you'll love Poly CL!

 

[ashleypmo]

According to the Unofficial Guide to Disney World, the dining plan is only a good value for families who are all about TS dining. I've also heard it can be a hassle to monitor the CMs and make sure they charge your credits correctly, i.e., sometimes they charge you a CS credit for a snack. Personally, I try to feed us pretty frugally at WDW, so I'd rather wing it and pay as we go. I'm the mama who orders a double burger with an extra bun on the side, puts the extra patty on the extra bun to make 2 burgers, then gives each child 1/2 a burger so that we spend $10 to feed 4 kids versus $24 on 4 kids' meals. So the DDP really wouldn't save me anything.

 

[pooh2001]

I would not do the dining plan and please eat any other meals OOP.
You will get breakfast and snacks with the Club level.

Do not be locked into a TS, CS and snack a day. You will waste money.

Get snacks at the Club level. Grab in the AM and extra orange, apple or banana to have later in the day.

You can call the Poly and ask what type of food is provided at the Club level during your stay. They may do something special duirng a holiday week - like 4th of July or Thanksgiving.

 

[Pakey]

The one time we combined dining plan with club level we left so many credits because we just couldn't eat that much.

We now don't do the dining plan ever, regardless of whether or not we do club level.

 

[vicki_c]

Title: Am I making the right choice by ditching the dining plan?

We have a 4 night stay booked at the Poly club level in 4 weeks. We haven't really booked any dining at this point except one early dinner at Ohana since we are not doing the dining plan. I am just worried about being locked in to a reservation that we might not want because of the Club level food. I guess if all else fails and we are hungry we can eat quick service.

What would you do?

You seem to have a number of different and conflicting sounding questions in your post.

1 - staying CL so you didn't do the DDP. So my answer to your title question would be "yes".

2 - haven't booked any dining but 'Ohana (sounds reasonable to me) and you are worried about being locked into that reservation. Also reasonable - if you don't want to worry about possibly canceling and being charged the $10pp penalty (only if it's less than a day ahead), then I would cancel.

3 - I guess we can eat counter service.

It sounds like you are thinking out loud - but I'm not sure exactly what the question(s) are!

What would I do? I would continue to skip the DDP, keep the 'Ohana reservation if I wanted to go there (since the CL evening offerings aren't really a full dinner), eat breakfast at the lounge, eat CS wherever for the balance.

 

[ML_LovesDisney]

I agree with not doing the dining plan. We have found it is a waste of money for us.

 

[mouseketeermama]

Thank you all for your advice!