Debating Dining Plan Upgrade...Is it enough food?

[jas0202]

Hoping some veteran diners can help me out here! I will preface the post by saying that we are a family of very traditional, American food, picky eaters. Burgers, chicken, pizza, plain jane. I will also say that I have two young girls that I know would LOVE character meals. We are debating about two different options and I wanted some advice.

Here's plan one...this is what is currently on our reservation:
Free QSDP, paying OOP for Donald's Breakfast Safari, Akershus Breakfast, and Play and Dine late brunch. We figure that for us and for our kids, breakfast and buffets are the "safest" options. by my math, that's just over $200 in oop dining costs for the buffets, tax, and tips OOP.

What we are considering:
Upgrading our Free QSDP to the regular DDP...the way I do my math, it will be just over $150 to upgrade, and most of the above three character meals will be erased, just leaving the tips. I am able to get reservations for 1900 PF and Crystal Palace, so two more character meals, then adding in WP in DTD and hopefully Via Napoli when it opens up and if it takes the DDP.

Here are our concerns:
1. With paying for the tip, we will obviously have an oop expense...what do you estimate for 7 TS meals is an average amount to leave for tips (two adults, one child + one under three to share with)
2. Is it enough food? On the QSDP, we were confident that we could eat breakfast in the room (bring muffins and such from home), then split the 2 CS and 2 snacks between the 4 of us and have plenty of food. I worry that if we have a character breakfast TS in the morning, one QS and one snack won't be enough to feed our family for the rest of the day. Other days, the meals are for lunch or brunch, so that's more feasible, but will I still end up buying MORE meals OOP?

This is so hard! I know that the character meals are a huge draw and would be awesome for my kids, but also don't want to make a stupid decision and still end up having to pay for a ton on top of the upgrade.

If it will help, here is what our ADRs look like:
Sat - Donald's Safari Breakfast
sun - Crystal Palace lunch
mon - Akershus breakfast
tues - 1900 PF dinner
weds - Plaza @ MK dinner
thurs - Wolfgang Puck Lunch
fri - Play and Dine @ 10:20

 

[ncc1701]

You can still do muffins etc for breakfast on the days you don't have a character TS breakfast scheduled. We had the regular DDP and we paid OOP at our food court for breakfast and only used the DDP once for a CP breakfast . You can also use your QS credits at Wolfgang Puck Express in DTD. We ate 4 meals(2 dinners & 2 lunches) there, the quality and size was closer to TS than QS. You may want to look to changing your meal at Wolfgang Puck Cafe to dinner to get more bang for your buck.
Using the menus at this site and others (www.allears.net & www.wdwmagic.com) you can get an idea what the your meals might run and estimate your tip expense.

 

[hacknsuit]

If you do the DDP, you'll have tons of food!! My wife and I did that for 6 days in April and left with 3 meals and 2 snacks still left, and we took pizza and sodas when we checked out. Keep in mind that you not only get three meals a day, but also 2 snacks. The snacks could be a muffin and a drink, 2 drinks, or an ice cream and popcorn. You'll have lots of options.

As for tips it depends on how nice you are! Honestly, though, we found the service wasn't all that great. Now, there was one or two execptions, but for the most part...nothing spectacular. So, 15% was generous!

 

[fairestoneofall]

we've done both the DDP and the QSDP. neither time were we ever hungry. the great thing about the QSDP is the extra snack per person per day. that helped a lot. however, we still had a few meals and snacks left over (spent those snacks at the candy store though).

 

[amyr1]

We did the DDP with 2 adults and 2 kids (an 8 and 4 year old).

I packed some granola bars and we did breakfast in line for the parks about 3 days. About 3 days we stopped by the food court and ate breakfast (we split 2 CS meals and had plenty of food) and later in the day we split the last 2 CS meals (still plenty of food.)

When we checked out we used 3 CS meals to get food to go in DTD and still had 2 CS meals left in our account (food court cashier let me trade those for a couple of snake-type things we took with us on the plane).

Look over the menu's and see what looks good in each park. I think you will have plenty of food on the DDP--and you will also have a pretty good snack each day to use.

Amy

 

[robinb]

Keep in mind that you not only get three meals a day, but also 2 snacks. The snacks could be a muffin and a drink, 2 drinks, or an ice cream and popcorn. You'll have lots of options.

That is the DELUXE DDP. The OP has the QSDP and would be upgraded to the regular DDP which includes 1 QS meal, 1 TS meal and 1 snack.

OP, I think if you are eating a lot of your TS meals as breakfasts then yes, you will probably have to buy another meal that day. Is there any way you can move some of the breakfasts to dinners or lunches?

 

[jenseib]

WE have done the ddp 3 times. We always have way to much food for 3 of us.
WE usually bring a few sancks stuff too. I bring granolas for DD and gummie snacks and a few juice boxes. We also rarely do breakfast ADR's. In the past 3 trips we have only done 2 breakfasts. Usually dinner for us. Sometimes we are stil lfull from the previous days ADR too. LOL! WE also try to share some of the CS meals with our little one.
Tips wise, it depends on the price of the meals, but for us, a family of 3, we are usually between 10 and 20 in tips for each meal. I would say more like between 10 and 15 for the most part.

 

[robinb]

As for tips, if you look the restaurants up here: http://personalpages.tds.net/~rb/DIS/MYW Dining/2010/DisneyDiningRanking2010.htm you will get a good idea of the pricing. There is a tab (at the bottom) named "Averages and Medians" which has the average and median pricing of all TS and CS meals. Dinners are an average of about $31 with tax or $29 pre-tax and kids meals are about $8 so your total would be about $66. You will be charged 18% tax on that amount so your average tip will be about $12 per meal. Since you are eating cheaper meals like breakfasts and lunches you will probably pay less than that.

 

[minniebeth]

This is just my personal opinion from doing the dining plan a handful of times~

It is all too much food, but not always what you want, when you want, does that make sense?
Having said that, the traditional DDP does leave gaps in the day when we've had to buy food oop. Little ones just can't eat enough at a meal to satisfy them for a longer period of time like adults can.
At regular TS restaurants, if they are not a buffet or family style meal, we split entrees and have snacks later on.

My personal opinion, if you are worried about having enough food, is to:

Go with the QSDP and pay oop for a few of the TS that you want.
For your ADR plan, you have a lot of character dining which takes up a lot of time and they tend to get "same thing, different venue" after a while. You will appreciate the ones you do more if they are just a few. And, tips add up quickly.

I think that's the best of both worlds, will give you more flexibility and you won't have to worry about paying oop much for the little things like drinks, additional snacks, etc. and a third meal of the day. For breakfast, I know that many say to use your snack credits for pastries, etc. but my kids are just not sweet eaters. They need a real breakfast.

I've run the numbers each time we did ddp and we always end up paying more oop for the little things that add up quickly than we do for a few TS believe it or not!

It's kind of hard to know what works for your family until you do it~
I'm sure it will be great whichever way you go and use the tips from others to help you make the most of the plan you go with!

 

[mybabesuz]

Sat - Donald's Safari Breakfast $70 OOP
sun - Crystal Palace lunch --- $75 OOP Breakfast in the room... CS Dinner
mon - Akershus breakfast $95 OOP
tues - 1900 PF dinner --- $115 OOP Breakfast in the room...CS Lunch
weds - Plaza @ MK dinner --- $50 You could change this to a more expensive meal... Breakfast in the room...CS Lunch
thurs - Wolfgang Puck Lunch --- Breakfast in the room...CS Dinner
fri - Play and Dine @ 10:20 --- $87 OOP Change this one to LUNCH and have Breakfast in the room... CS Dinner

That comes to almost $500 for 6 meals...
My figures include tax and 18% TIP.
So actually about $400 for meals.
It would be about $90 for tips...

Don't forget with a 2 yo. you might need to pay OOP for a few QS meals for her.
You might say she can share... but she might cry for her own kids meal when you are there.
Most of the meals above she would eat for free.

I say go for it and upgrade...

 

[mad hatter fan]

When we do the regular dining plan, we share some CS meals to stretch them to cover when we use a TS for brkfst. I did see a thread about CS meals large enough to share. I forget right now which CS restaurants, but some have a half chicken meal or half chicken and ribs combo meal. Some days we do a TS character brkfst at one of their latest seating of the morning and call it an early lunch. This next trip we have 1030 ressies at 1900 PF. That meal will be our lunch that day.

 

[happycamps]

Cosmic Ray's in MK has a chicken/ribs combo plate that easily feeds two people in our family.

 

[jenseib]

Cosmic Rays meal is a great one to share.
Also alot of days, my DD and I would sahre a kids breakfast meal at Pop and then share a CS later that day. Also a shck each day set off the hungrys, and we had big TS meals each day.
Like I said before, we also did bring granolas for breakfst for her some days and 100 pack muffins for me and DH. And I also borught a caprisun for each day for DD and some gummies. We also pack little chip bags for the plane, and had so many left we ate those here and there as well. We still went home with alot of the snacks I borught along. She did drink al lthe capri suns though. I had packed at least one for each day, but some days I would go out of the room and DH would just give her one here and there. So we ran out of those early on. But we had refillable mugs at the resort.
A little off topic, but when I pack capri suns in the luggage, I put them in a ziplock so that if anything happens they don't explode on the clothes. We've done it 3 trips and never have had a problem.

 

[sarsah]

If you did a later CB, you could probably stretch it with a mid-afternoon snack and then a somewhat early dinner.

The two times we've done the dining plan, it's always been more than enough food. We usually only do one CB/trip, however.

 

[williamson_ja]

We found it to be almost more than we could eat... and we are big eaters! My suggestions would be much the same as the others. Move more of your TS meals to lunch or dinner. We usually use our snack credit or instant oatmeal from home for breakfast. Then that leaves the TS and QS meal for lunch and dinner. We've never once had to buy anything extra over our usual 7 night trips. I travel with many teenagers and a young dd. No one ever went hungry. The year I brough my dd when she was too young for the DDP, I just shared my meals with her. It was too much food for me, so it worked out. Also, if you take them to a buffet then they get to eat whatever they want for free. I found almost all QS meals are big enough to share with an adult and child... some of them are big enough for 2 adults.

 

[worm761]

We did the DDP last trip and are planning on doing the DxDDP on the next big trip. The reason is, the DDP on covered two meals per day. We eat three meals every day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It is a lot of food on the dining plans but you don't HAVE to eat all that food. I didn't order dessert a lot last time. I was full. We are not a sharing family. I want my own meal. I don't want to eat what someone else wants. Nor do I want to have to compromise what I want. It is vacation. If you regularly share at home at restaurants, then this might not be a problem.
I think you need to run the numbers and see what works for your family. Are you a three meal a day family? How much will you have to purchase out of pocket to cover? At what point do you break even?