Dining package - make sense for us? No lunch, just 2 character meals a day + snack

[kmwilson98]

I'm trying to decide if the dining package will save us money, or cost us money.

(Please don't tell me not to have so many character meals, they will be central to our trip.) We will be there 3N/4D. We are only doing one park, MK. It is DD's first visit, to celebrate her 5th birthday. I will (hopefully! hopefully!) be pregnant, and we want to have a late character breakfast each day, and an early character dinner each day. In between we'll have a snack at the park. We will have fruit and bagels in our room to supplement, maybe some other stuff like pudding packs, wheat crackers, etc. We'll have a bit in the room before we leave in the morning to tide us over until late breakfast, and we can always have another snack in the evening if dinner doesn't tide us over until bedtime.

So...with not doing lunches, AND doing the character meals twice a day, does the dining package make sense for us?? I'm so confuzzled.

 

[luvmarypoppins]

I thought you are allowed 1 counter service meal and one sit down meal each day unless you combine 2 counter services into 1 sit down. Your two character meals will count for 2 sit downs a day if I am not mistaken. How many days are your purchasing the meal plan for.

 

[kmwilson98]

I *think* the meal plan is for however many nights you're booked. Since we're booked for 3 nights, that will leave us paying outright for meals one day anyway.

 

[javaj]

We love the character meals too! We do at least 4 or 5 per trip

It doesn't sound like the dining plan would work well in your case, you would be wasting most (or all) of your counter service meals, plus you are only allotted 1 sit-down meal per night per person. Even if you paid cash for your child's meals and used her sit down options as adult options, it doesn't seem like you would benefit.

Good luck and have a great time!

 

[maggiew]

I can't really comment on the meal plan thing, but I wanted to say that we usually do a late character breakfast and then an early dinner when we are at WDW. We may have a snack somewhere in there too (like Dole Whip ). It has always worked out well for us.

Maggie

 

[WDWBetsy]

I thought you are allowed 1 counter service meal and one sit down meal each day unless you combine 2 counter services into 1 sit down. Your two character meals will count for 2 sit downs a day if I am not mistaken. How many days are your purchasing the meal plan for.

Each person receives one counter service meal, one table service meal, and one snack per night. You cannot trade 2 counter service meals for a table service meal or character meal.

Each person can trade 1 table service meal for 1 character meal. Or trade 2 table service meals for 1 signature restaurant meal.

Even if the OP pays for meals on 1 day of the 4 separately, the dining plan would not cover the amount of character meals they are wanting to have. Basically, for 2 adults and a child, you'll have a total of 9 counter service, 9 table service and 9 snacks to use from the time you check-in until midnight on the day you check-out.

Hope this makes sense.

 

[kmwilson98]

I think I'm starting to get this figured out.

Ok, the dining package would cost us an additional $240. The question becomes:

Would we spend more than $240 on 9 character meals (3 people x 1 table service meal allowed per day x 3 days) and 9 snacks (3 people x 1 per day x 3 days)?

I understand that the other character meals and the 4th day of meals will cost us additional, regardless of whether we do the dining plan or not.

Our tastes tend to run in the middle when it comes to stuff on the menu - we don't order the most expensive, nor do we order the least usually (unless it really appeals to us). DD is perfectly satisfied with kids' menus.

Thank you all so, so much for helping us calculate this!

 

[WDWBetsy]

I would definitely try to use the counter service meals, if nothing else for breakfast at the foodcourt or in the parks. You would have 9 of those to use.

Here's what I would do: go to www.allearsnet.com and look through the Dining section. Using the dining plan brochure I mentioned, look up the participating restaurants to see which character meals, possible counter service meals, and snack locations you would visit. Usually the character meals are a set price, but also take into consideration that tax and tip is included.

If you consider 9 character meals averaging say $25 per meal (perhaps more), then an average cost of $2.50 each for the snacks (I'm guesstimating tax & tip in this), you'd come out at about $247.50 - and that's not even including the value of the approx. $10 for counter service meals (if used for lunch - breakfast would probably come out a little cheaper). So if you used them, the value would probably be $337.50. The dining plan would probably save you more than that.

The deciding factor is going to be you looking through the menus and picking out what you might order. The character meals are going to be easier to calculate, but it should give you an idea if this will work for you.

Hope this helps!