Concierge OR Gold add on?

[wasabi girl]

I am planning a December 2005 visit to WDW. We plan to stay at either the CR, Poly, or AKL. My question is this. I'm going to stay Concierge level at one of the three resorts with the Silver Plan add on, or stay in a regular room with the Gold plan add on. Which one is the better deal? We plan to do full service restaurants for lunch and/or dinner daily esp the resort restarants. Bkfst...is not that important as we barely will have peeled our eyes open when it is time to get up and hit the parks. DH golfs, DDs want to do the tours ( age 17 &19). I just want to have fun!

Any suggestions? Experiences with the gold or silver plan? Concierge? (I've never done concierge anything so not sure what it entails).

I'd like to do Concierge plus gold but that is SO out of my budget!

 

[CharlesandCamilla]

Just got back yesterday. Did the Silver plan and will never do it again. It was way too much food and using the wishes on other things took away from time in the parks. Plus WDW is starting to try to enforce rules that will make you use one wish per person at the table even if they aren't hungary. Doesn't matter on the gold but a pain on the Silver.

It seems to me if you aren't doing three meals a day the gold isn't worth it, and if you are doing three meals a day you will be eating all day and not have time or energy for the parks.

 

[katienyc]

First of all - Wasabi Girl - I love your screen name. I love wasabi!!!


I've never done any of the plans, so I can't speak to that. We just book our dinners on our own, and it is nice because we have great flexibility. Sometimes with the concierge service, we don't even need to go out (you can really fill up sometimes). If you don't do breakfast, concierge is great because you can grab coffee and a muffin or something to go. All of the snacks and stuff the put out is great. (Breakfast in danish, cereal, coffee, tea, etc. They have coffee cups you can take on-the-go. During the day - light snack stuff. PB&J sandwiches, chips, cookies, etc. Evening was our fav. At the YC, they had humus, dips, chicken tenders, mac & cheese, and an assortment of wine. We would get so full before going to dinner! Night is cordials (Bailey's, Amaretto, Kaluha) and desserts.
What is really nice is the feeling of being "pampered". If you need to change reservations, help locating information - they're great. They were able to pull up a recipe for us we had requested. Also, we went to see La Nouba on our second to last night. On the last night we realized we wish we would have purchased the soundtrack. We asked about it (not having time to go back to DTD), and sure enough - the cd was placed in our room in just a few hours! They also arranged dry cleaning and other things.
Concierge isn't necesary - but it is a nice perk if you don't mind a little splurge! If its out of your budget, you could always consider doing it for a night or two, and change rooms in the middle of your trip. That was you could try it out for a bit.

 

[mousebrat]

I think a big factor is how long you will be there. Our upcoming trip is 7 nights on the gold plan and then 1 more night before we head back home. After looking at everything, that was the shortest trip I would really want to do for the gold plan. That gives you plenty of time to do everything in the parks and take advantage of the other recreation and dining opportunities.

We have a pretty ambitious plan, but I think it is very do-able. We plan on doing a trip report when we get back. At any rate, we should be saving a lot of money on the gold plan, at least as compared to doing the same things and eating at the same places.

The real thing with the gold plan is that it prevents us from being cheapskates since everything is prepaid. You don't get that with concierge. The other factor that pushed us to go with gold over concierge is that DW and I are both planning freaks that don't like to give up control.

 

[Beaker74]

My husband and I honeymooned at WDW in May of this year on the Gold Plan. If you're interested I've attached a link of our trip report just to give you an idea of what all you can do on the plan and how we really it was money well spent. Good luck in your decision making!


http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?threadid=578555

 

[dansyr]

I've done the gold plan and loved it. I've also done concierge and loved it. However, I wouldn't do the 2 together. It would definitely be a waste of money. I would do concierge with the silver plan if you wanted to splurge a little. You could get in couple nice meals a day or tours and still have a lite breakfast in the concierge lounge. My personal choice however would just be to do the gold plan without concierge.

 

[CindyKansas]

We have done all three plans, Silver, Gold and Platinum. We have been to the parks enough times that we like having the opportunity to do other things, like tours, parasailing, fishing, boating, golfing, etc. Platinum is overkill we decided. Gold plan still way too much to eat. The past 2 times we have used the Silver plan. Last summer we stayed at the Boardwalk Inn for 7 nights, concierge level and had a terrific time. It was DH, DD and myself. We used some of our wishes for Cirque (we had seen it before, but love it), we went parasailing, did Spa treatments, ate at Yachtsmens steakhouse (which takes 2 wishes a piece). DD isn't a big eater and a lot of times we wouldn't use her wish for the meal. That's not saying that sometimes we were charged the 3 wishes for a meal, but concierge would take care of the matter for us. At the end of the 7th day last summer we had enough wishes left over for breakfast, lunch and dinner on the day we checked out. (We had reservations at another Orlando resort on the 8th night).

Now this year, I have reservations, room only. I'm going to buy some of the meal vouchers from Hotwire. We have days left on some of our hoppers and I have purchased a AP. We will see how we like this. Good luck with whatever plan you choose to go with.

 

[wasabi girl]

This is wasabi girl....thanks to all for your trip report, experiences, and helpful information. The cheapskate factor is a big part of wanting to do this vacation right. My entire family, 2 DDs & DH all accuse me of cheapness....sadly they are right. I have great intentions but when it comes time to part with money, I'm inclined to look for cheaper options ( gee honey we don't need to go to the California Grill, we can just eat in the food court, I know it's our Anniversary but it'll be okay....)...but not this time, I want this to be fun for all of us. The food is part, the convenience and no hassles is part, and the recreation options & tours are all factors. Thanks again all of you.

 

[Chicago526]

I've never done the plans or stayed in concierge, but for what it's worth...

If you have a good idea of the activities, tours, recreation, etc. that you want to do durring your trip, then price out those individual things, and add it all up. Estimate your meal cost (again it helps if you have a good idea of what restaurants you'll want to eat at), and add that to the total. Then compare it to the cost of the silver and gold add ons. I bet you'll save money if you book the concierge room and pay for meals and activities individually.

But, if you really want to use a plan (to me the main bennifit is that it's pre-paid) I'd book the Silver plan in concierge. The silver plan gives you two wishes per day, so you can use them to eat twice a day (for 1 wish places) and use concierge for the 3rd meal, or you can use your wishes for other activities and use concierge for 1 or 2 meals, especially if you're light eaters.

I think the gold is a waste unless you plan on doing a lot of non-park activites and eating 3 big meals a day (and if that's what you want to do, go for it!). But if you plan on spending lots of times in the parks, and only doing a few activities, then I'd either skip the plans all together, or just do the Silver plan.

Whatever you decide, you'll have a great trip! That's the magic of Disney!

 

[RAV]

As someone who has done gold with conceirge, and conceirge without gold I firmly believe that conceirge without the plan is the way to go. If you tell yourself that you will eat what you want and do the activities that you want, I would bet that your expense at the end of the trip would less than the gold plan. Three full meals a day on the gold plan, prepaid, made us feel that if we didn't sit down and eat we were wasting money. We also felt that with a lot of time spent in restaurants you waste a lot of pool and park time. The only time the gold plan was good for us was when we treated my father to a week at the YC. We did not want the hassle of fighting over the bill at every meal so the plan was a way to avoid that. As I said, now we eat what we want, rent boats, usually play golf at least once and always spend less than the plan. Just my opinion.