Deluxe dining with toddlers?

[lilpnutmama]

Do you think it's worth upgrading to deluxe with a 2 and 4 year old. they don't eat much (they do like snacks though)... and probably couldn't go to too many signature places i would think???
we want to do breakfasts every morning though, or as much as possible anyway and then dinners as well.

 

[jcemom]

My kids as toddlers and preschoolers would never have tolerated two TS meals per day. My DD is now 6 and even one per day every day of our trip is a bit much for her. She just gets bored with them and would rather be doing something else, anything else, LOL. She likes the character meals but I get tired of those. I don't feel as if I enjoy my meal when it's buffet and I have to keep jumping up and down for my food and hers, and when I have to keep stopping to take photos, etc.

We're not big breakfast eaters though and would prefer to sleep an extra half hour then just grab a cereal bar and piece of fruit as we're heading out the door. We like to do either an early CS lunch and then a TS dinner, or a TS 'brunch' and a CS dinner. We alternate. On the days that we do two TS meals in one day we leave DD at kids club.

 

[jenjersnap]

Well, DxDDP worked out fine for us, but, of course your mileage may vary. We did either a late character breakfast or early lunch every day in or near the park where we were, then a signature meal after a nice long nap. Servers know, usually, that you'd like brisker service. My kids are used to eating out though a couple times we had to break out the trusty iphone for the little one to keep him occupied (there are little touch drawing games and he even plays games like Bejeweled) ... come prepared with some special distractors.

Anyway, we enjoyed it very much and considered it a success.

 

[tnd]

We're doing it with our 3.5 year old in January. We have a few signature meals planned (CA Grill, Jiko and Narcossee), but our son is really used to eating out, and is usually very well behaved. We'll also have 5 adults to amuse him, and we picked earlier dinner times. We always pack small toys to amuse him, like Hot Wheels cars or wooden Thomas trains. And we're not afraid to ask the servers to box up our food to go if he starts acting up and we need to leave. We try really hard to be sensitive to other diners.

For us, the DxDP meant doing more character meals than we'd ordinarily have done (3 booked so far: Chef Mickey's, Crystal Palace and Tusker House), which our son will really enjoy. We may even add a couple more since we have credits to use up.

 

[katieam1]

I upgraded to deluxe dining and I have a 2 year old and a will be 1 on trip. We did that not only because we wanted to try a lot of different restaurants but because with the ages my kids are at, they are not going to have their own meals we would buy them so this way we eat three times a day and they eat off our plates and everyone is happy. My 2 year old is a kid that eats a lot through out the day. She does not eat a lot all at once but she does like to eat every couple of hours. So this works out well for us, we all share. But before we upgraded we planned out the restaurants we would want to try figured out if the plan would work for us and then we upgraded. So maybe that would work for you. Hope this kind of helped!

 

[Pakey]

I'm going on my first trip in Jan where I will not be doing 2 sitdowns or any signatures because we are taking our adult children/families which now includes a 3 year old toddler. I'm already miserable at the thought but he cannot sit still for 90-120 min at the signatures. Having had a few meals ruined in prior trips with misbehaving children, I'm not about to subject others to my little guy. So I'll be waiving the napkins at Chef Mickeys and the like this trip with only one sit down per day.

 

[lilpnutmama]

Thanks everyone for the insight. It sounds like those that are doing the DDP have kids that can sit well in restaurants. Mine kind of can't really.. they are not poorly behaved but they do get very restless sitting for long periods of time. We do enjoy character breakfasts, so will be doing one most days. So probably 2 TS meals a day, plus CRT one day. then maybe some will have to be used on *gasp* CS. The snack credits we will definitely use, just get any fun thing we can think of.
So I think it is worth it, maybe just this once, we are travelling with my parents and who knows when that will happen again, so I wanted to do as much stuff with them as possible. *They* will be doing signature dining anyway, if not us