We are new DVC members and taking our first trip in March 2012 and saying at BLT. My question is do we buy the dining plan and if so, which one. We have 4 adults. Two are 21 year old college age children.
There are many threads / spreadsheets / etc. over on the Restaurants board (sub board Disney Dining Plans) discussing this at length. It's a very individual decision that will depend on how your family likes to tour the parks, which restaurants you would be eating at, what you would be ordering, etc. I don't think anyone can tell you what would be best. My family does not do DDP, but we often have APs and that allows us to get the Tables in Wonderland card / discount.
Only you can make the final descision but IMHO when staying in DVC villas and being able to cook in your room can reduce your food costs. What size room are you staying in? There are different options for the dining experience and you will have to cost out your OOP cost vs what the cost of the plan you are looking at. Do you want to eat at a sit-down meal all the time or are you happy doing CSs?
Buying the dining plan really depends on how much you want to eat. The standard dining plan ends up being more food than we want to eat on vacation. We really don't want dessert with our CS, but the DDP does not offer an alternative option for that entitlement. We generally do a TS every day, but we don't eat that much food the rest of the day. We often can share 1 or 2 CS meals between the 3 of us (Me, DW, and DS5). Both plans are fairly expensive, so you really need to look at your eating habits to decide if the DDP works for you or if you would be better off paying cash. If you plan to buy annual passes, you may want to consider buying the Tables In Wonderland card. This will get you 20% off at most of the TS restaurants and includes alcoholic beverages. We have been using that over buying DDP and we are definitely spending less, and eating less, when visiting WDW. There are some meal discounts with the DVC card, but it is a little limited. Having done DDP in the past, we know that we can save $$ paying cash and using TIW and we end up eating less. I don't know if this helps, but it really is a personal decision.
Every year Disney reduces the DDP offerings and raises the price. IMO this year was a break even and next year there is little value to the plan verses paying out of pocket. Bill
I feel like i always comment on the ddp. We love it. I'm a pastry chef and we are foodies. We love eating atall the higher end "signature" dining establishments. I will break it down real easy. we do the ddp delux (i think) this is 3 sit down or TS meals a day, and 2 snacks, per person per day. We always do a character bfast with my 2 and a half year old DS. we never eat lunch and we eat a great dinner at signature. The signature takes 2 TS blocks from your daily stash. By not eating lunch and using our snacks we can easily make this happen. And by eating the character bfast, we have plenty of food in us. A few weeks ago i planned out a few menu's at the restaurants we would be eating at just to see how much we would save. The character bfasts are a price regardless of what you eat. But factoring in a high priced meal consisting of App, Dinner, and Desert (which is what you are entitled to on the DDP Delux) and a low priced meal of the same options. Eating cheap, we saved about $54 dollars for the week. Eating expensive we saved about $160. It was a lot of work but i found it worthwhile doing this as i love to see what i save. You save either way on that plan. Besides on average it comes to about $72 a day for food, and i know at some restaurants i could spend that easily for just dinner. Hope this helps.
All this informatin has been very helpful. We still have time to decide and appreciate all the input. Thanks,
