Character Breakfasts — Will we make out?

[have2getaway]

We are going to Disney in January for a week and will be staying at both the Beach Club and Polynesian. We will have the regular Disney Dining Plan and are hoping to reserve mostly character breakfasts for our TS meals. We are considering Via Napoli and maybe BOG for dinner. Overall, we are trying to limit our TS ADR’s at dinner. My question is, cost-wise, will we benefit from the DDP without many dinner TS meals?

On our first trip in 2017, we did the Deluxe Dining Plan with our boys (who will be 9 on this trip). We did way too many ADR’s—4 signature meals. We enjoyed the character breakfasts, but found that the dinner ADR’s really limited us. We stayed at the Polynesian and there were a couple days in the 80’s that the boys wanted to swim and we had to get dressed up and ready for an expensive sit down meal. The one at Artist Point took over 2 hours!! Anyway, my DH loved our time there and leaves the planning up to me, but just asked that we not do so many ADR’s this time, and I agreed. We both want the flexibility for our boys to enjoy the hotel pools and other amenities and just want an overall less scheduled trip. (As much as is possible at Disney). That said, I also don’t want to lose out by paying for a Dining Plan if we won’t benefit financially from it. We did all agree we’d like to try Via Napoli for pizza one night.

Does anyone have suggestions for us? It’s really hard in January, because you don’t know what days, if any, are going to be warm. I suppose it’s possible we could schedule ADR’s and cancel them when we have a better sense of the weather, but we really just don’t want to have fancy sit down signature means this time. For a frame of reference, here’s what we did on our last trip:

Crystal Palace - Dinner
Tusker House Breakfast
Artist Point—Dinner
Garden Grille—Breakfast
Akershus—Breakfast
CRT—Breakfast
O’Hana Breakfast
Hollywood Derby—Dinner
T—Rexx—Dinner
BOG—Lunch
Grand Floridian Cafe—Dinner
1900 Park Fare—Dinner
California Grille—Dinner
Hollywood & Vine Character—Breakfast
Tony’s Town Square—Lunch

Yes, way too much, and the tips added up quick as we always tip at least 20%.

I may have missed one, but I thinks that’s it.

TIA

 

[sharonabe]

We will have the regular Disney Dining Plan and are hoping to reserve mostly character breakfasts for our TS meals. We are considering Via Napoli and maybe BOG for dinner. Overall, we are trying to limit our TS ADR’s at dinner. My question is, cost-wise, will we benefit from the DDP without many dinner TS meals?

Since your boys are 9 and still Disney kids, even with mainly breakfast ADRs, you'll still save some money by using the DDP. A kid's character breakfast is around $20 and the plan only cost you $25.

You may want to pay OOP for Via Napoli. When using the DDP there, everyone has to order something. You cannot use just the adult credits to order pizza to share among the family. However, it's a pretty inexpensive meal to pay OOP if you want to get a larger pizza to share among the four of you.

ETA: Forgot to mention that BoG dinner will be a signature at the end of this month, so it will "cost" you 2 TS credits.

 

[Pumbaa_]

This is a math exercise. Set up a spreadsheet and put in the meals you plan the; compare.

 

[BMAEC]

The best way, like Pumbaa mentioned, is to make a spreadsheet to calculate your costs. There’s a sticky on the restaurants board with current prices for adults and children at buffets and fixed price restaurants. For the others, just look up the menus on MDE and estimate what you would order. In general, doing a lot of character meals will help boost the value of the dining plan. We are doing exclusively character meal dinners for our TS credits and do come out ahead using the DDP, although I know we wouldn’t be eating as many QS and snacks if we paid OOP so it’s hard to know for sure. You can also figure in the cost of the resort mugs, if that’s something you would have purchased if not on DDP (we would not have). The sticky with prices also lists which meals include gratuity in the price (like CRT). I basically compared what we will be paying on the DDP- cost of dining plan plus what gratuity would be for each meal- versus paying OOP for each meal/snack plus gratuity for TS restaurants. When doing your calculations you will have to take into consideration that CRT lunch will be 2 TS credits per person. As sharonabe said, Via Napoli seems to be a good one to pay OOP so you can share.

 

[DisBuckMan]

Keep in mind that breakfast, even including character breakfasts*, are generally a poor value on the DDP.

As said earlier though, you may be able to make it up due to the age of your kids.

*Akershus and Chef Mickeys are exceptions, but most others are poor "values" on the DDP.

 

[eileen2664]

It varies so much family to family. We like the fancier dining and dh's only requests are that we get the DxDP and that we dine at Artist Point as many times as possible (this coming trip will be twice, which is my limit and since I"m the one doing the planning..... ). Others would rather go, go, go and grab some QS along the way every day.

Start by figuring out a rough schedule (ie: 2 days at MK, afternoon breaks, relaxing evenings, etc) then figure out where you'd want dine on those days, then decide what you each might order at said meals, total it up and compare it to the dining plan. Keep in mind that unless you're on a promotion that has the DP in it (free dining or a similar plan) you can add the dining plan later so you don't have to decide before you make your hotel reservations or even your ADRs.