riomaggiore
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2010
- Messages
- 23
Well, I thought I'd post my experience with DDP and QSDP vs OOP as it may help out others with their decisions.
We just got back from a 6 night trip, split stay between the Yacht Club and AKL, 3 nights each. At the YC we signed up for DDP, and QSDP at AKL.
I would guess we don't eat as much as others do, often when traveling we split a single meal between the 2 of us, never get desserts and would choose orange juice over soda. I personally like a lot of fruit and vegetables in my diet and eat smaller meals several times a day as opposed to 3 larger meals.
With that said, both plans just seemed to be too much food for our group of 4 adults. Portions for the one non-buffet table service restaurant we did (Les Chefs de France) were quite large for a lunch, especially the desserts. We were expecting a small ramekin of Creme Brulee, but it was more than double the size and there was no way we could each finish off one of those after the entree. Generally for CS lunches we could share 2 CS orders between the 4 of us, and for dinner 3 CS orders.
For snacks, often it just made more sense to get pastries for later, or fruit/yogurt or something light and healthy to balance some of the richer meals.
In the end, we used up our DDP last 4 snacks at Kringla in Norway on tasty pastries, before heading off to Yakitori CS in Japan to split the last 2 CS between the 4 of us. We had more than enough food on the DDP, and only had to pay about $10 out of pocket for a pastry plus some drinks that didn't qualify for a snack credit at the French Bakery in Epcot.
We did our other TS at Biergarten for dinner and Akershus for Breakfast. Neither I thought were that great or worth the high prices, my group enjoyed the princesses though. Tips for 3 TS added up to around $70.
With the DDP we basically purchased about $650 worth of food. Would we have spent that much OOP? Certainly not I think, as we would have never ordered the included desserts and most of the time would have definitely split meals. However the DDP did allow us to experience some TS buffets and character dining without feeling like we were being gouged on prices.
The DDP price @ $46.99/person peak season would have saved us 12% and I think we would have saved more than that just paying OOP how we normally eat, so it's a hard call. DDP is definitely very convenient, was very handy for our first trip to WDW, and allows you to experience some restaurants one probably would not otherwise consider.
The QSDP may have worked out for us if we didn't have any other activities planned and if we had started using it the first night of our AKL stay. As it was, our DDP credits lasted through dinner of our YC check out day. That in addition to our Wanyama safari dinner while at AKL definitely made it a race to try to use up all our QSDP credits before we left WDW. In the end we had around 10 extra snack credits and 1 extra CS left when we had to head to the airport. The other half of our party had a later flight and were fortunately able to use up all the credits.
QSDP definitely is a lot of food, and we did often split meals at the parks and at Mara, our AKL CS location. We didn't pay a single OOP for any extra food or drink and half the time felt stuffed. The refillable mugs were a waste unfortunately, as I think only my spouse actually used it more than once in our party, to get water. It's large to carry, and we were often not at the resort all day so it didn't make sense to lug it around. I can definitely see how they would be a nice convenience though, but since all our meals came with drinks we really never needed the refillable ones.
In the end at the regular price of $31.99/person we would have saved 15% over the OOP cost. However if the refillable mugs that never saw much use are not included in the OOP cost, we would have saved less than 2%.
At $13.50 each it seems that unless you get a lot of mileage out of the refillable mugs, eat many desserts every meal, it makes more sense to just pay OOP for CS meals.
Just quickly glancing at my numbers, it looks like CS breakfast averages ~$12 (meal+drink), lunch/dinner ~$16(meal+drink+dessert) and snacks ~$3.50 ea. This seemed to be the same avg across all the different WDW theme parks for us.
If you can get a CM discount on the meal plan, then it pretty much doesn't make sense not to sign up for DDP or QSDP. You would pay double OOP in comparison.
A few things I did like about being on the dining plan though was the freedom to not have to order soda to save money, not worry about paying for mediocre and overpriced fruit and being able to try just about anything without thinking it might be nasty and a waste of money.
We just got back from a 6 night trip, split stay between the Yacht Club and AKL, 3 nights each. At the YC we signed up for DDP, and QSDP at AKL.
I would guess we don't eat as much as others do, often when traveling we split a single meal between the 2 of us, never get desserts and would choose orange juice over soda. I personally like a lot of fruit and vegetables in my diet and eat smaller meals several times a day as opposed to 3 larger meals.
With that said, both plans just seemed to be too much food for our group of 4 adults. Portions for the one non-buffet table service restaurant we did (Les Chefs de France) were quite large for a lunch, especially the desserts. We were expecting a small ramekin of Creme Brulee, but it was more than double the size and there was no way we could each finish off one of those after the entree. Generally for CS lunches we could share 2 CS orders between the 4 of us, and for dinner 3 CS orders.
For snacks, often it just made more sense to get pastries for later, or fruit/yogurt or something light and healthy to balance some of the richer meals.
In the end, we used up our DDP last 4 snacks at Kringla in Norway on tasty pastries, before heading off to Yakitori CS in Japan to split the last 2 CS between the 4 of us. We had more than enough food on the DDP, and only had to pay about $10 out of pocket for a pastry plus some drinks that didn't qualify for a snack credit at the French Bakery in Epcot.
We did our other TS at Biergarten for dinner and Akershus for Breakfast. Neither I thought were that great or worth the high prices, my group enjoyed the princesses though. Tips for 3 TS added up to around $70.
With the DDP we basically purchased about $650 worth of food. Would we have spent that much OOP? Certainly not I think, as we would have never ordered the included desserts and most of the time would have definitely split meals. However the DDP did allow us to experience some TS buffets and character dining without feeling like we were being gouged on prices.
The DDP price @ $46.99/person peak season would have saved us 12% and I think we would have saved more than that just paying OOP how we normally eat, so it's a hard call. DDP is definitely very convenient, was very handy for our first trip to WDW, and allows you to experience some restaurants one probably would not otherwise consider.
The QSDP may have worked out for us if we didn't have any other activities planned and if we had started using it the first night of our AKL stay. As it was, our DDP credits lasted through dinner of our YC check out day. That in addition to our Wanyama safari dinner while at AKL definitely made it a race to try to use up all our QSDP credits before we left WDW. In the end we had around 10 extra snack credits and 1 extra CS left when we had to head to the airport. The other half of our party had a later flight and were fortunately able to use up all the credits.
QSDP definitely is a lot of food, and we did often split meals at the parks and at Mara, our AKL CS location. We didn't pay a single OOP for any extra food or drink and half the time felt stuffed. The refillable mugs were a waste unfortunately, as I think only my spouse actually used it more than once in our party, to get water. It's large to carry, and we were often not at the resort all day so it didn't make sense to lug it around. I can definitely see how they would be a nice convenience though, but since all our meals came with drinks we really never needed the refillable ones.
In the end at the regular price of $31.99/person we would have saved 15% over the OOP cost. However if the refillable mugs that never saw much use are not included in the OOP cost, we would have saved less than 2%.
At $13.50 each it seems that unless you get a lot of mileage out of the refillable mugs, eat many desserts every meal, it makes more sense to just pay OOP for CS meals.
Just quickly glancing at my numbers, it looks like CS breakfast averages ~$12 (meal+drink), lunch/dinner ~$16(meal+drink+dessert) and snacks ~$3.50 ea. This seemed to be the same avg across all the different WDW theme parks for us.
If you can get a CM discount on the meal plan, then it pretty much doesn't make sense not to sign up for DDP or QSDP. You would pay double OOP in comparison.
A few things I did like about being on the dining plan though was the freedom to not have to order soda to save money, not worry about paying for mediocre and overpriced fruit and being able to try just about anything without thinking it might be nasty and a waste of money.
