Dining Plan...not staying on Disney property

[aubriee]

IMO, the only way you save much with the DP is when you're getting it free. Somehow we always get 2 pins a year plus the public FD, so it's not hard to do. I have a family of 5 (6 if you count the baby), and FD is without a doubt the best discount for us. It's cheaper than staying off site and paying for food by quite a bit. Just something to think about for future trips.

Even free it doesn't work out for us. We have annual passes so don't need park tickets, but even the AP discounts don't work as well for us as staying offsite. Because we have APs, parking at the parks is free. We can get a fully equipped one bedroom villa at Wyndham Bonnet Creek for just $600.00 for ten nights. I just checked and rack rate at Pop for those exact same nights is $1452.00 (and all we would get there would the counter service plan). For that extra $852.00 Pop would cost us, we can more than pay for any meals the two of us want. POFQ for those same ten nights is $2176.00, so it would cost us an extra $1576.00 to get the regular DDP and that's not even counting the two day park tickets we would have buy to get "free" dining. No thanks, that extra $1576.00 would buy the two of us any meals we want Why pay $2176.00 for a moderate room or $1452.00 for a tiny value room, when we can pay $600.00 for the same ten nights for a large one bedroom villa that's at a Deluxe resort, that's still within the WDW gates. We can have a seperate bedroom with a king bed, a nice balcony, two TVs, a jacuzzi tub, a walk in shower, a washer/dryer, fully equipped kitchen with full size stove, fridge, microwave, toasters, blenders, etc at a Deluxe resort that has six nice pools, two lazy rivers, multiple hot tubs, a free mini golf course, etc.

Nope the DDP doesn't make sense for us, even if it's "free".

 

[julie4423]

Even free it doesn't work out for us. We have annual passes so don't need park tickets, but even the AP discounts don't work as well for us as staying offsite. Because we have APs, parking at the parks is free. We can get a fully equipped one bedroom villa at Wyndham Bonnet Creek for just $600.00 for ten nights. I just checked and rack rate at Pop for those exact same nights is $1452.00 (and all we would get there would the counter service plan). For that extra $852.00 Pop would cost us, we can more than pay for any meals the two of us want. POFQ for those same ten nights is $2176.00, so it would cost us an extra $1576.00 to get the regular DDP and that's not even counting the two day park tickets we would have buy to get "free" dining. No thanks, that extra $1576.00 would buy the two of us any meals we want Why pay $2176.00 for a moderate room or $1452.00 for a tiny value room, when we can pay $600.00 for the same ten nights for a large one bedroom villa that's at a Deluxe resort, that's still within the WDW gates. We can have a seperate bedroom with a king bed, a nice balcony two TVs, a jacuzzi tub, a walk in shower, a washer/dryer, fully equipped kitchen with full size stove, fridge, microwave, toasters, blenders, etc at a Deluxe resort that has six nice pools, two lazy rivers, multiple hot tubs, a free mini golf course, etc.

Nope the DDP doesn't make sense for us, even if it's "free".

I've definitely checked into all the different places such as this, and I will say it's close $ wise. We would never get APs because we could never afford the expense of going more than once a year. I'm sure if we had them it would make a huge difference. For now, we basically do nothing but sleep in our room so it isn't a big deal to me. I've never even used a resort pool. We all travel differently I guess. Oh, an I just noticed you said the 2 of you. The more in your family, the better FD becomes. Could you feed a family of 5 or 6 for 10 days on $862? I sure couldn't. If I were going with just DH, FD would not be the best deal.