Comments on my recent trip to Bay lake Tower and Hilton Head Island

[Lizzim]

My boyfriend and I have been going to Disney for the last few years and we bought DVC on our last trip.

We have just got home from our first DVC stay firstly at Bay Lake Tower and Hilton Head Island. I have been posting updates on my blog (which is aimed at a non DVC audience so is more about the holiday than the DVC aspect) and have linked to my blog in this post if anyone is interested - you need to start at the bottom and work your way up.

http://floridaandsouthcarolina2011.blogspot.com/

From a DVC perspective: I had debated buying the QSDP before our trip and finally decided against it as we don't eat desserts with every meal and I had two table service meals planned which would have cost extra.

I kept a record of all meals (although I may have missed a water or two) to see if this decision would work out best for me:

24/09/2011	Dinner & Mugs	     Contempo Cafe	50.00
25/09/2011	Breakfast  	     Contempo Cafe	18.50
25/09/2011	Snack	             Animal Kingdom	6.80
25/09/2011	Water	             Animal Kingdom	2.50
25/09/2011	Dinner   	     Earl of Sandwich	21.87
26/09/2011	Breakfast	     Sunshine Seasons	20.84
26/09/2011	Drink	             Lotus Blossom	7.18
26/09/2011	Dinner	             Contempo Cafe	18.94
27/09/2011	Breakfast	     Chef Mickeys	72.19
27/09/2011	Early Dinner	     Pecos Bills	26.48
28/09/2011	Lunch	             Backlot Express	22.75
28/09/2011	Snack	             Contempo Cafe	5.42
28/09/2011	Water 	             Hollywood Studios	2.50
28/09/2011	Snack	             Fantasmic	        9.51
28/09/2011	Dinner	             Contempo Cafe	16.54
29/09/2011	Lunch	             Pecos Bills	24.35
29/09/2011	Snack	             Liberty Square	6.43
29/09/2011	Dinner	             Cosmic Rays	22.97
30/09/2011	Lunch	             Earl of Sandwich	19.75
30/09/2011	Dinner	             Via Napoli	        77.22
30/09/2011	Snack 	             Ireland Booth	3.00
			                                455.74
			
QSDP 34.99 per person per day			        489.86

So, I saved $35 by not getting the plan - and that included my two TS meals! Just goes to show that the dining plans often don't work out cheaper - especially if you are not big eaters!

We were generally very pleased with our first DVC stay - no complaints about the room at BLT at all.

We did have a slight issue with keys as they were doing a system upgrade when we arrived and so it took until day 3 to finally get keys which opened our door, did room charging and had our names on!

Hoping next year to go to California and Las Vegas so a break from Disneyworld

 

[auntsue]

We no longer get the dining plan unless we are doing a split stay, then we get the DeluxeDP for the first part of the trip, usually just three nights. Your accounting was so precise that you were able to see exactly what you saved. I tried to do that for about four trips, and always lost receipts, forgot what we had, etc., so finally I just gave up. It must have felt great to see you made the right decision.

In the day, and when we had the kids with us, we thought it was worth it, but once they took away the app & tip, it became less worth it, and now it really makes no sense to us anymore. We are even leaning toward doing away with the 3 day DDP because it is a lot of food, and we always get the TIW card so if we are not in the mood for an app or dessert, we won't feel like we are wasting money. We also no longer eat every dinner inside the World. We've discovered that there are many nice, reasonably priced restaurants offsite.

 

[Anal Annie]

Thanks for confirming! We've never done a meal plan. I've never written it all up like that but I've saved receipts & tried to get a rough estimate. We had the TIW card one year and since we didn't do a TS meal every day and sometimes we wanted to eat at places that didn't take it so it took us 2 trips to get past the investment cost of the card. Anyway, we always do breakfast in our villa (we use studios) and we take our own snacks & water to the parks so the difference would be even higher for us!!

 

[castleri]

Just went through my charges for our last trip for our lunch and dinner CS meals and occasional snacks. It came out to $28 a day per person and we ate good meals. There may have been a snack or two that I missed but it was still better than the QSDP. We did the DXDP for one night and it definitely paid for itself since we ate at CM for breakfast and had dinner one night at CR and one at Kona. The snacks and mugs were just extras. Will be doing the DXDP again in Dec for one night. We will be doing dinner at the new Mexican restaurant, lunch at the Princess Lunch in Norway and the some will have dinner at Boma and some at Raglan Road. The rest of the time will be CS or meals in villa and breakfast is usually in the room also.