Charging to Room w/ Dining Plan?

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

Sorry - this may belong in the Restaurant forum! But it really is a theme park strategy if you think about it.

For our trip in October we will have the Dining Plan. In January it was such a pain to dig out cash everytime we stopped for a snack I would prefer to charge everything either to the dining plan or back to the room. Does that get complicated? You just use the one card for everything, correct? Has anybody tried to charge food back to their room with the card as opposed to using dining credits? Too much room for error there?

I don't think it would be the least bit confusing for non-food items, but I think with food it might get confusing pretty quick. Better to just carry cash for those out-of-pocket munchies?

 

[JudicialTyranny]

You can do it (and we did), but you have to sign two receipts.

For example, today at Epcot I used 3 snack credits to get 3 sodas and charged soft pretzels to the room. So I only used one card, but I had to sign one receipt for the snack credits and a second receipt for the charge to the room. I'm pretty sure the cashier enters the transaction as one transaction, and two slips print out.

It gets dicey when you are not sure what is a "snack" and what isn't. You have to rely on the cashier, and in some cases, it seems to be a little subjective or at least inconsistent. For example, I got Doritos in Epcot as a snack, but in my hotel counter service restaurant, they would not give me chips as a snack.

 

[Mady/Sophiemom]

We did last month. Only one time, did we have a problem, and the server at the restaurant caught it before we left, and had it corrected before we got back to the resort.

Just tell them how you want things split- You will have 2 separate reciepts, with the room charge amount, and the meal plan credits used.

It is a good idea, to go to guest services, every couple of days, and get a printout. They will give you printouts, of your meal plan meals, and snacks and of your room charges. We did this a few times throughout our 9 days. Once we were sure it was right, we had them go ahead and charge our CC. That way we would start fresh with a new $500.00 limit, and did not have to worry about going over, at a cash register.

 

[dani12]

We've done it also. Just make sure you tell your server if you want it on the dining plan or on your room charge. You will be able to tell on your receipt if it was done correctly. If it is on the dining plan the charges will be zero, simple enough. But I have to tell you that we had MORE than enough food so you may not have to spend too much out of pocket!

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

I was thinking maybe we would just carry the credit card with us to the parks along with the room key, but then I would feel like a dork charging a bottle of soda. We'll probably give it a try with the room key and just be diligent about checking to make sure the charges are allocated properly. And with the snacks it won't matter much if it is a dining credit or room charge - it probably all equals out in the end. Thanks again!

 

[dani12]

Everytime you use your dining plan you will receive a receipt with how many services you have left. And on the day of your check-out they give you an itemized list of what was on your plan and what you charged on your card. Once you see how much money you save, you will see that the Dining plan is the only way to go!!

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

Oh, we are absolutely getting the dining plan!

But I know there will be times when we will want an extra drink or something, or we might want to pay for a counter meal instead of using a credit from the plan if we think we might have a more expensive CS meal later on. It was just a huge hassle to dig cash out of the backpack. And DH would ask me every 2 minutes "Did you zip the backpack?" He was wearing it and wouldn't take it off to get things out - he would make me get things out then bug me about whether it was zipped. He also claimed he was starving the whole trip but he was afraid to say anything because DS and I wouldn't want to stop. I figure having more food than we can shake a stick at will be good.

We would have saved over $150 if we had the plan last time, but we would have had to pay rack rate for the room and buy MYW tickets when we already had PHP tickets which would have wiped out our savings. I tracked our food costs closely and charted it all out when we got home, so I know it will be a great deal for us!