Dining Plans

[Indee96]

We currently have the Disney Dining Plan booked. However my kids are pretty good eaters and I worry that with only 1cs and 1ts we I will end up buying extra food for them. We go in April so I know they will have 2 snacks a day too. I was considering getting the Deluxe Plan but everyone I mentioned it to said that it's a lot of food. I priced it with my agent and for the 4 of us the Deluxe Plan is an additional $600 (so $100 a day). I'm just wondering what plan most families choose. Especially with children around the ages of 6 & 9. TIA

 

[Melwhit16]

I would suggest not upgrading and taking the extra $600 for additional food with you. If you use it great, if not you can get an extra souvenir.

 

[rwdavis2]

I would suggest not upgrading and taking the extra $600 for additional food with you. If you use it great, if not you can get an extra souvenir.

^^^^ This ^^^^
You will be lucky to break even on the regular plan as it is. It's not designed to save you money. The DxDP is waaay too much food and time sitting in restaurants. On the DxDP you would be spending at least 2-4 hours a day eating.

 

[Alice777]

When we were at WDW in April, 4 of us had CS dining plan. I didn't think it would be enough food but when you are tired, you don't get hungry as you think you would. One of my son is BIG eater (he's 22) and he had plans to eat much as he can eat but when we were actually there, he wasn't just hungry.

We end up having so much CS and snack credit left over, we end up getting tons of candies to bring back home.

One of the reason why we didn't get 1C and 1TS in April was we didn't want to waste time in restaurants when we wanted to ride much as we can (April was first time for us). I don't know how many times you've been to WDW and what is your goal but if you get Deluxe Plan, you'll be spending alot of time inside the restaurant which will cut into your "ride" time.

If you are going in April, you'll be there for Flower and Garden time? If so, there's alot of food booth you can sample using your CS or cash you saved (addition $600).

 

[shortnsassy730]

The regular plan will be fine. Table service meals are all pretty big portions. If you're worried about them no liking the kid's meal options then stick towards more buffets. Tusker House is my favorite character meal for both quality and character experience. Biergarten in Epcot is good and your kiddos will probably enjoying the entertainment. Also, even though they are listed as kids on the dp, counter service credits aren't earmarked as kids or adults. They're all pooled together. So you can order them adult meals at all counter service locations.

 

[loves to dive]

The QS meals are actually pretty large, personally I order a kid's meal for myself when I'm eating QS so you shouldn't have any issues there. The TS meals are also pretty large portions. You can use one of the snack credits for breakfast if you want, something like a parfait or muffin (the muffins are so huge I can't eat the whole thing). Then you have one more snack credit to fill in with. As another poster said, if you are there during F&G you are going to want to snack around Epcot at least one day of your trip. I agree, take the extra money and use it toward the extra food but you might find even the regular DDP includes too much food. We don't use it any more and my son is an adult, one of the reasons is it's just too much food, plus it doesn't save us money. We do tend to do one TS meal a day but we never know when or where as we book it on the fly and sometimes I just want a salad and an appetizer and we share a dessert since neither one of us are big dessert eaters.

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

I myself as an adult do not need more than the regular dining plan.
I would never be able to eat the amount of food that would come with the deluxe plan.
We are not breakfast eaters so we usually just bring granola bars and juice from home for breakfast.
Then we eat a QS or TS for lunch, have a snack, then QS or TS for dinner (whichever we did not have for lunch).
I am always stuffed from the meals.
I really would not recommend getting a deluxe plan based on having a 6 and 9 year old that are good eaters.
My suggestion would be buy QS breakfasts at the resort OOP. Breakfast is quite inexpensive.

 

[BaseballMoM2007]

We are doing the DxDP on our next trip but still plan to just eat two meals a day. We love the regular dining plan but are wanting to try some of the Signature Resturants. We plan to do a Big late Breakfast/early lunch and then a nice meal in the evenings. If it is a first trip and you are trying to cram alot of park time in I agree that the DxDP puts you spending a lot of time sitting down at resturants. We have been several times and we enjoy the down time/ breaks at the resturants and do feel the need to spend every second inside the parks. We have a Son that will turn 10 on the Trip and a Neice that will turn 16 on the trip. That is also part of us wanting Deluxe for some nicer meals to celebrate their birthdays 2 days apart and Christmas.

 

[Moliphino]

If anything you'll probably find it's too much food on the regular dining plan. You can get a lot of mileage out of snack credits, too (like a huge funnel cake). We always wind up hitting up the Caramel Kuche on our last day to use up leftover snack credits on things we can bring home.

 

[_auroraborealis_]

You can also get a lot of mileage out of CS credits. Use the kid CS on adult meals when possible. This works extremely well at places like Pecos Bill's and Pizzafari.

A Pecos Bill nachos splits well between two adults, let alone two kids!

 

[Indee96]

Thanks everyone. I think I'm just not understanding the size of a lot of the portions and that the snacks are more than just a granola bar. haha I'm taking note of all your suggestions for getting the best bang for our buck at the cs but I'm wondering what is your favorites with big portions for each park? I may try to do our park plan around your suggestions, at least for the first few days, just to see how we do with sharing the meals.

This is our first trip and our girls are 6 & 9. I don't want to spend a lot of time just sitting in a restaurant so I feel better with keeping the DDP as long as I can make sure no one is hungry. And I'll bring extra money just in case.

 

[JenLT]

The first time we went I was sure it wouldn't be enough food. Everyone said it was enough but I was still concerned. I didn't need to be. Even my teenage nephew and nieces had more than enough food. We often didn't finish our meals or dessert. The food is also mostly high calorie food (restaurant food tends to be higher calorie than home cooked food). Also every table service has dessert and then you have your snacks. We don't usually eat dessert plus a big snack at home.

We did bring food to eat for breakfast. We brought a box of cereal and bought small bottles of milk from the resort. We also brought granola bars, bottles of water, and other little snacks. We didn't need them at all (except the water!). We took home tons of candy from left over snack credits (The Goofy Candy Company in Disney Springs - it was downtown Disney then - has tons of great snacks).

 

[Moliphino]

You can also get a lot of mileage out of CS credits. Use the kid CS on adult meals when possible. This works extremely well at places like Pecos Bill's and Pizzafari.

A Pecos Bill nachos splits well between two adults, let alone two kids!

The toppings bar at Pecos Bill's makes those meals go a very long way! All the guacamole and shredded cheese you want. My sister and I split a burger there and both wound up uncomfortably full.

 

[Hopefully]

Thanks everyone. I think I'm just not understanding the size of a lot of the portions and that the snacks are more than just a granola bar. haha I'm taking note of all your suggestions for getting the best bang for our buck at the cs but I'm wondering what is your favorites with big portions for each park? I may try to do our park plan around your suggestions, at least for the first few days, just to see how we do with sharing the meals.

This is our first trip and our girls are 6 & 9. I don't want to spend a lot of time just sitting in a restaurant so I feel better with keeping the DDP as long as I can make sure no one is hungry. And I'll bring extra money just in case.

I would Never plan my park days around the size of a QS meal in a park. It just isn't necessary.
If you are really worried you can do a grocery delivery order and eat breakfast in your room, saving your snack credits for filling in between big meals.
We order from Garden Grocer and we eat breakfast in our room.
We order: Fruit, juice, breakfast foods, case of water, soda, beer, wine, cheese and crackers and other snacks. They have a $40 minimum order and a $14 delivery fee. I found that I saved the delivery fee over the cost of buying in the resort store.

 

[cramtoer]

You can use some of your TS meals for AYCE buffets to make sure the kids get full. Also, QS credits can be used for adult QS meals. I think you'll be surprised how much food you get with the regular dining plan. We order a Prime Pantry box from Amazon with waters, sodas, breakfast foods and some room snacks so that we save our snack credits for special treats.

 

[blrem]

I echo what everyone has said - way too much food! I went in Aug with my 24 yr old son (big eater!) and my 22 yr old daughter. We had the "regular" ddp with 1 qs and 1 ts daily along with 1 snack. We had so much leftover food. Granted we always substituted the "dessert" at lunch/dinner (which has now been eliminated for 2017!) for another side, and often substituted the drink for another side when we ate at our resort (we used our refillable mugs for our beverage), but still I couldn't imagine it not being enough food.

I agree with another poster who said they like the deluxe plan if trying many signature restaurants (that require 2 ts credits each) but my "kids" weren't even interested in that kind of high end dining, let alone a 6 or 9 yr old wanting to go to a lot of "fancy" restaurants.

We also bought breakfast food, drinks to bring into the park, and extra snacks at a nearby Walgreens. The only thing we used were the drinks and bagels with cream cheese that we grabbed on our way out each morning for a quick breakfast on the way to parks.

Two of us split a large combo meal at Flame Tree BBQ (QS) in Animal Kingdom - great food and huge portions.

Two of us split a chinese lunch buffet at "Seasons" (or "Sunshine"?) food court in Epcot (it's the one in the "Land" building, by Soarin.

Snacks were often huge cupcakes that 2 people shared or things like egg rolls at quick-serve in Epcot.

We never used snack credits for drinks - it's a waste of a snack credit - we paid out of pocket when purchased but we took advantage of the free cups of ice water at all quick serve restaurants and didn't need to buy too many.

We loved the dining plan because it allowed us to do so many character buffets that we couldn't have afforded without the free dining perk. We were always over-stuffed though after every buffet

Enjoy!

 

[HarleenQ]

We really enjoyed the DXDP. It wasn't "too much food" for us, and we aren't large people. We did a lot of buffets, so we just ate as much as we wanted. We didn't feel forced to clean our plates at regular TS meals. I liked getting an app for everyone - we tried some new things.

Our typical day was a TS breakfast, QS lunch, and a TS dinner. We did have a lot of snack credits left over so we took a bunch of snacks home.

 

[_auroraborealis_]

Another consideration with a 6 and 9 year old is that you need to consider that DxDP works best with a bunch of 2TS credit meals, or using it mainly for TS meals. Consider that a TS meal will typically take 60-90 minutes each. So that's 3-4.5 hours per day just spent eating, which is probably more time than you (or your kids) typically spend. (If your kids are like mine, they're lucky to get 25 minutes for lunch at school, after all; breakfast is rarely an hour endeavor on a school day as well.)

Some kids do fine with that much added time of "sit and eat." Others won't, especially when there are so many interesting things to do (swim! ride the Tea Cups again! Try Beverly at Club Cool!).

 

[AngiTN]

We really enjoyed the DXDP. It wasn't "too much food" for us, and we aren't large people. We did a lot of buffets, so we just ate as much as we wanted. We didn't feel forced to clean our plates at regular TS meals. I liked getting an app for everyone - we tried some new things.

Our typical day was a TS breakfast, QS lunch, and a TS dinner. We did have a lot of snack credits left over so we took a bunch of snacks home.

Sure, anyone can make the DxDP plan work. But the question is, what would have cost less? It's rare for it to save anyone money
And I'd say if you ordered meals and didn't finish them you did indeed have too much food.

 

[DrunkJam]

Honestly, the regular DDP is plenty of food. We struggled to use all our credits (2x adult and 1 x child) and took home a LOAD of snacks (YAY for mickey rice krispie treats!)
We ARE doing the DXDP this time, but NOT to get more food, just to allow us to do more 2 credit places, and make the very most of our last trip. It's harder to justify a lot of 2 credit places on the DDP.
I plugged in our plans into the site that calculates whether it is worth it, and, we will *JUST* (possibly) break even, but, that doesn't include the value to us, of not having to think about the cost of dining while we are there. (It makes a difference to what DH would choose to eat)