DDP or TIW card?

[disneyobessed]

Next summer my husband myself and 2 sons 9 and 10 and daughter 3 are going down. My 10 year old is very picky eater.. and I cant see him ordering too much off of adult menu.. would we be better off getting the TIW card? We are DVC members, not sure if that counts for anything... thanks.

 

[Pakey]

Do you have APs? The TIW is only a good deal if you were already planning to have APs.

We much prefer the flexibility with the TIW over the various dining plans. We don't particularly care if it's a money saver or not; we want the flexibility.

 

[Luv4Disney]

We've only done the DDP when it was free. That was also when gratuity was included as well as an app. Even though it was way too much food for us, the included gratuity made it worth it. Now we have the TIW card and we love it! We can order exactly what we want without feeling like we're wasting food and it technically saves us 2%. We're usually 20% tippers, but the 18% gets added on automatically. We'll probably never do the DDP again.

 

[clanmcculloch]

If your 10yo will be ordering mostly kids meals then you're better off with TiW over DDP, unless you'll be eating at a lot of fixed priced restaurants. At fixed price restaurants, you'll have to pay for him as an adult regardless of what he eats.

If you'll be using your kitchen much for food then TiW makes even more sense since you won't be wanting all the meals that the DDP dictates you use.

 

[bangzoom6877]

We're DVC members too, but not FL residents, so that being the case, one of us had to get an AP to qualify for the TIW card. I upgraded my park ticket to an AP (only one AP is necessary, not the whole family!), and I purchased the TIW card. We like going to more TS than CS meals, and the TIW card fit more into our plans than the DDP. We had our 2 sons with us, ages 3 and 5. This was this past July.

We are very happy that we went with the AP and TIW card. First of all, as a DVC member, the AP is discounted by $100. Second of all, there were so many shopping discounts for AP members, that as it turned out, everything I bought throughout our trip was 10% off! Including the Mickey ice cream bars I bought at the Screen Door General Store at BWV! This was a plus, since I bought some Christmas gifts for close friends who simply love Disney, and I had planned to buy their gifts in DTD at the Christmas Store. I did just that, and I got 10% off of everything!

Also...my DS3 is not so much a picky eater as he is an indecisive eater, if you will. At any given moment, he will decide not to eat a certain meal, or to eat something very small. For example, at our lunch at Chefs de France, he only wanted the kids' cheese puff app. So that's what we ordered him for his lunch, whereas DS5 ate the hamburger. Sometimes my kids would even share a kids' meal, as it was enough food for both of them. So the DDP would not have fit into our plans for these things either.

DH and I also like to have wine with dinner, or an alcoholic beverage sometimes. It was a bonus that the TIW card also gave 20% off of alcohol. Sometimes I would order an app as my lunch instead of a whole entree, and no worries about it being included as a component of a dining plan.

 

[TDC Nala]

The TIW is only a good deal if you were already planning to have APs.

In fact, if you don't have an AP you're not eligible for TIW membership. Only annual passholders and Florida residents are eligible.

Are you planning on doing more than this one trip in a year? Will you be spending more than $375 on eligible food and beverages? Do you like a lot of TS restaurants or do you really prefer CS? (Only 9 CS restaurants in all of WDW accept the TIW discount). Are you traveling over major holidays (TIW blackout on major holidays)? How many buffet/fixed price restaurants (including character meals - they're all buffet or fixed price) are you planning?

 

[pixarmom]

Also...my DS3 is not so much a picky eater as he is an indecisive eater, if you will. At any given moment, he will decide not to eat a certain meal, or to eat something very small. For example, at our lunch at Chefs de France, he only wanted the kids' cheese puff app. So that's what we ordered him for his lunch, whereas DS5 ate the hamburger. Sometimes my kids would even share a kids' meal, as it was enough food for both of them. So the DDP would not have fit into our plans for these things either.

DH and I also like to have wine with dinner, or an alcoholic beverage sometimes. It was a bonus that the TIW card also gave 20% off of alcohol. Sometimes I would order an app as my lunch instead of a whole entree, and no worries about it being included as a component of a dining plan.

I'll second all of this! We've tried both the dining plan and TIW (with our APs - we're not FL residents.)

Our three boys are very similar in age to OP's children, so we now have two pre-teen "Disney adults." Our youngest is also an indecisive eater, our middle son is a picky eater, our oldest son likes to order appetizers as entrees or share an entree with me. Unless I'm sharing with him, I usually order an appetizer instead of an entree, too. We rarely eat desserts at the same time as our meal, and my husband and I like to have wine or beer with dinner. We prefer two ADRs per day, so TIW also gives us the flexibility to eat at TS without ordering big meals at every TS restaurant or having wasted desserts. So just like bangzoom6877 and others, we found the TIW card to be a much better deal for our specific circumstances.

When we first made the decision to switch from the dining plan to TIW, I made all our ADRs first. Then I looked up the menus and current prices here and on allears.net. I guessed what each of us might order for each meal and did a general cost comparison. It was a bit time-consuming, but well worth the effort to see which would be better for us. OP, that could also help you decide which way to go. And like TDC Nala mentioned, the decision whether to get an AP would come first, and if you decide APs are cost-effective based on the factors she listed, then the cost comparison between the dining plan and TIW for your specific ADRs enters the equation. If your plans are light on TS restaurants, TIW doesn't work as well.

 

[missminniemouse]

We are DVC members and AP holders. As someone else mentioned, AP's are discounted by $100 for DVC members.....one of the great benefits of having DVC!

We've had the DDP twice when we got it for free. We weren't impressed and still ended up paying OOP for a number of things anyway. We normally order appetizers, but not as much dessert, so the DDP doesn't work well for us.

Our children (ages 11 and 15) frequently do not order their own meal, but share with us. Most meals on our recently completed trip, we ordered 3 entrees for the 4 of us to share. Again, this would be a huge waste with the DDP.

On a trip 2 years ago I did a cost comparison of what we ordered using the DDP and what we would have actually ordered without it. We were far better off with the TIW card. Plus, if you like to indulge in adult beverages, you also get 20% off on those as well with the TIW card.