Concierge & Dining

[garada3]

We are booked concierge at the GF.

We also booked the dining plan with our package.

I am worried that trying to enjoy the lounge offerings will effect dinner appetites and therefore the "value" of the dining plan.

Is the combination fo concierge and dining plan just too much?

 

[Hope73]

Last year we stayed at the Poly and had the dining plan. It was a great value. I opted not to do the concierge because it was about 1000 more and I didn't think we would need all of that since we have the meal plan. I was right, even though it is fun to have and you recieve breadfast and snacks. I just didn't feel like we needed it and we were so stuffed.

 

[Ladyhawke10]

Many people book both dining and concierge and love having both...for my family it is just too much. But we're not big eaters so there are all sorts of factors that might affect which plan is most suitable. When we book concierge we usually go for a restaurant at lunchtime and maybe something light at dinner (or one of our favorite WDW desserts). Breakfast in concierge, snacks, plus snacks, a full lunch and dinner (plus dessert and appetizers) would have us too uncomfortably full to enjoy ourselves!

 

[SeaSpray]

We're staying concierge and have booked the dining plan too. For us, I don't think it'll be overkill, and here's why:

We mostly do table service restaurants. The only meal we'll have in the concierge will be breakfast. We'll do table service for dinner, and for the first time I guess we'll be trying some counter service places for lunch. (I'm still trying to determine where we should use our counter service credits!). We also plan on using some of the snack credits at lunchtime at Epcot to sample things from the Food & Wine Festival.

We're not very big eaters but because of DH's diabetes we do like to sit down and take our time during a meal. And making ADRs allows us to plan in breaks and keeps DH (and me!) on a regular dining schedule, which is what he needs to do.

We normally do not order appetizers and we usually share desserts, but this time we'll try some appetizers and desserts

We've enjoyed concierge for much more than the food offerings aspect of it, so for us it won't be a "waste", but I can definitely see where, as far as food itself goes, it is a LOT of food to have available!

P.S. We stayed concierge this past summer, and although we weren't on the dining plan, we did table service restaurants every night for dinner. What we did was we'd go to the lounge for just a taste of the night time offerings, about an hour before our dinner PS. It wasn't too much that it ruined our appetites, but at least we got to sample some of the offerings. We never did make it back to the lounge for the dessert offerings though.

 

[theostwalts]

This is our first family trip, but one of the biggest advantages that I have enjoyed so far is letting the concierge staff make all of our adrs.

 

[Threehearts]

We stayed in Poly concierge in late August with the dining plan and we are people with hearty appetites. For our family, the amount of food was truly excessive and we ended up opting out of many of the dining plan meals because we were just too full. I didn't like being on the "get to my ADR" schedule, either. We also do many table service meals but it was the lunches after the concierge breakfasts that seemed unneccesary. We would enjoy a plan that had just one TS meal a day as we already had breakfast paid for. We would not do the plan again because if you took full advantage, it would be way too much food and if you didn't, the value wouldn't be there. We don't usually order appetizers and dessert with dinner. We will not pay for the DP in the future. Hope this helps. Threehearts

 

[mlwear]

I'm glad you asked this question.
IMO, I found concierge w/ dining a waste. I would choose concierge over dining if making the choice again. Concierge is great for planning and what I like most about it, but the food offerings in the lounge looked great and we barely used them and felt disappointed. Not that we didn't get out money out of it, we just wanted to sample the food and it was too much food with the dining plan.
Breakfast was fine and we used it every day except for one character breakfast. We went to the lounge a couple of evenings during the light appetizers and it looked great, but we were so full. The idea of eating anything and then going to dinner on the dining plan made me sick. We did sample a couple of things in very small quantity. Desserts, wow, did they look fantastic. We could not eat any. We did have a few glasses of wine. The kids had some juice. They didn't even want cookies or any of the other snacks. We got glasses of the bottled water. (The whole bottled water thing annoyed me. I know people wasted in the past, but the tap water was horrid and we had to keep getting a couple of cups of water at a time, but I digress).
DS (10 years) even asked if we had to get the dining plan the next time we come! The CS meals were too much food. TS was too much food for us. We aren't light eaters, either. We had 8 CS credits left at the end of our trip. We used all of our Snack credits for water.
Obviously, my opinion is don't skip concierge, but do skip dining plan. (In fact, if you consider that you wouldn't order that much food, esp. if you may have an appetizer and/or dessert in the lounge, I don't think you save that much money. --if you went when it was free you did -- I know people say they saved hundreds of dollars, sure, but would you have spent that much, if you didn't have the dining plan/ Maybe some would. We wouldn't have. Character meals may be the exception).
Honestly, by the end of the trip I didn't even enjoy food anymore.

 

[pirateofthecarolinas]

We are staying concierge for 4 nights with the dining plan. We are eating at signature restaurants for 2 of those nights. I think feeding 2 of our children for $10 a day is a bargain. We will come out slightly ahead when I crunched the numbers. I don't want to have to run back to the lounge just because it's between 5-7! Think about the restaurants that you normally go to and see if it works for you.

lori

 

[Jpgirl]

We just got back from BWI and did the concierge w/dining. The lounge wasn't really meant for meals-just light eating and snacks. It worked great for us here's why. We ate in the lounge for breakfast-we're early risers but we don't like to rush to go and eat. The lounge is great for breakfast-we could sit and relax with coffee and cereal before our frantic day. Then we would use our TS credits for a big lunch. By 5 or 6 we had had enough of the parks so we would head back and grab a cocktail or two and sit on our balcony and watch the world go by. We would have some cheese and crackers too. Then later we could use our CS credits if we were still hungry. We did end up with leftover CS credits but that was b/c we had to cut our trip short(hurricane Rita) by 2 days-we made sure we used up the TS credits before we left. This worked for us but we didn't have kids with us so we didn't have to worry about eating at certain times. I thought it was a good value b/c we didn't have to worry about how much money to bring. The concierge is about the level of service not meal replacement. We don't do WDW often but I hope we can do the same thng next time

 

[Saphire]

I would definitely use concierge, but adding on a dining plan would be way too much food for me. We enjoyed the evening appetizers but could never think about sitting down to a big meal after that. We usually got something light in the parks later. Since we were at the hotel in the late afternoon, we never felt that we were stuck and had to use the lounge, we were right there anyway before heading out for the evening. I wouldn't like then being tied to an ADR, what if you're not that hungry? I agree with several of the other posters...too much food, and if given the choice, I would pick concierge.

 

[3littleHalls]

This will be our first time not doing concierge. We never used the lounge as a continental bkfst but not for a meal like lunch or dinner. We used it to tide us over until our PS. We decided the dining plan makes for sense for us. Concierge is nice for making your ADRs esp last minute ones. But we will give this way a try next.

 

[3littleHalls]

sorry for the typo. We used it for bkfst, not other meals.