Disney Dining Plan ---- Can it be shared/split??

[Jen D]

mickman...you never answered my question, only were quick to get your 2c worth in about how you think its wrong.....so my question was how do you use child credits for adult meals???????

I believe, and someone else can correct me if I am wrong because I have limted experience with the dining plan, is that once you have paid for the plan all the credits look the same on the card, so for seven nights if you paid for 2 A 2 C you get 28 table service credits, and when you use those credits they are not valued as child or adult. So, if one night you go to a signature restaurant (which requires 2 credits per person) and leave Joey and Billy at the kids club, you can use the four required credits for dinner, including two that may have been ordinarily used as child credits.

This is how I understand it but this is only what I've learned reading here.

To my knowledge, while many a DISer and a couple renegade WDW servers have opined that this is dishonest or shady, Disney has never prohibited or done anything to discourage this practice.

 

[5boyz]

Jen,


Thank you so much, that was all I wanted to know!!! I didn't know what people meant when they kept saying it in the other converstions! IF someone corrects you I am thankful that you tried to answer my question!!!

Caroline

 

[Zoemakes5]

I wish there were more options. If I'm staying on Disney property for 6 days, but only doing the Disney parks for 4 of the days and other things for the other two, it's a real shame that I can't have the pre-paid benefit of the Disney Dining Plan for the 4 days I'm doing the parks but not have to have it for the other two days.
Also, we have a little "princess" who is very interested in the character meals, and two "big guys" who aren't. I wish I could buy the plan for DD and I and not for everyone sometimes.
Another thing that we've come accross is going to WDW with grandparents with us who aren't doing the parks everyday. It would be really nice to be able to not get a package for her/them.
However, having traveled extensively, frankly it's almost impossible to be on vacation or on a business trip and spend $37 or less on two meals and a snack per day. Traveling away from home, it's not been unusual for us to spend $20pp for lunch alone for the adults. I think where it gets murky is that our family of five, having to pay for three adult meals and two children meals, to "break even", we'd be needing to pay $70.05 per each of the two meals. Easy to do when doing character meals and buffets, but CS at the parks usually runs us $40-45. So if we have a day where we do no sit downs or character meals, we'd be taking a loss of about $60 or more per day. It totally depends upon the ages of the kids, the eating habits of everyone, and the other general plans for the trip. If we were doing a "budget" trip, I think the Dining Plan would be a luxury because we could eat significantly cheaper. If I'm wanting to have a "fuller experience", then I could easily see the dining plan being a great deal because I would be coming out ahead or at the very least breaking even.

 

[5boyz]

zoe, you made excellent points, too bad they didn't do the meal plan similar to the park plan! They may possibly get more people using the food plan. I would love to use it but it is just way to expensive for my family!

 

[1of6]

5boyz,

What really worked for us was to have 1 room on the plan and 1 room off. We were a group of 8, DH, me, DS9, DD7, DS4, DD2, DM & DA (aunt). We had connecting rooms at Pop. Disney had us listed as DH & I in 1 room with 2 kids and Dm & DA with our other 2 kids. We were there 6 nights so we had 24 TS credits, 24 CS credits & 24 snack credits to split between the 8 of us. We did a total of 4 TS meals during the week. The rest was CS and breakfast in the room.

Our 1st TS was H&V in MGM. I handed our CM my card and he took off 7 TS credits (DD2 was free). Now we had 17 TS credits left. 2 character meals @ 7 credits each left us with 3TS credits. Our last TS was in DTD at PH. We had 2 vouchers that came with our room package + the last 3 TS credits, and we paid OOP for 2 meals.

CS was interesting. We generally ordered 4-6 meals each time and shared food. DH always got his own meal, DM & DA always split a meal, and the kids and I shared the rest. No one ever went hungry. We completely paid OOP for our 1st meal at the food court (we were getting the mugs) and some fries here and there. The rest was all covered by the food plan.

 

[RADOPT]

I have never read a positive review for Akershus.

I have seen a few. We love eating here BUT we are danish so we make some of this at home and we love trying different food. It is not for everyone but if you check out http://www.allearsnet.com/menu/menus.htm#ak you maybe able to tell whether or not you would enjoy it.

 

[Carrie Ellis]

When we used the dining plan last fall we did have a couple of places that looked at the fact that we had 1 adult 4 children on my card. Some CMs don't care and a few really do look at your card. I don't like having anxiety about what someone "might" say so I would rather just do it right. I guess if you had 4 adults or 3 adults with some child credits on your card it would be more difficult for a CM to figure out what you are doing. But your card does say the # of adults and the # of children on your plan. I just don't think the credits are seperated.

 

[RADOPT]

Does anyone else feel that Disney overcharges for just about everything?? $3 for a bottle of water that would cost me .21c at home, $7 for a hot dog, and the list goes on. I personally feel a bit taken advantage of by Disney and will continue to cut corners or go to other amusement parks (although, unfortunately, they probably are just as bad!!!).

From our experience at other parks, food at disney is one of the most reasonable and better quality if not quanity. We just watch what we eat & spend - and save where we can. We never buy water at the parks. We bring one bottle with colored sports caps (one for each person) and add free ice. Always cold and there is always water. We would never do the dining plan because we would never eat enough - we ate alot less then I thought we would while at WDW both times.

 

[mickman1962]

I wasn't asking to do it!~!!! Everyone kept talking about it and i didn't know what they were talking about, so I was asking someone who was talking about it not someone that came in half way thru. I never asked for your permission by the way....I already have a dad and a husband!!!!!

Just because I came in halfway thru does not disqualify me from a discussion. You asked a question "I don't get the using child credit for adult meals????? What is the difference what you use........you paid for all of it anyway!!!!!!" that is what your multiple question marks indicate, a question. If you don't want responses from fpeople that might frequent these boards every couple of days, then maybe you should just send a private message to the only person you want an answer from. Believe it or not when you put a question on a public forum, more than one person might answer it. I also wasn't giving you permission, I said it is a choice that everyone must make for themselves. You obviously need some reassurance that what you are doing is OK. I am not the person to give it to you.
discussion

n 1: an extended communication (often interactive) dealing with some particular topic

 

[5boyz]

1of6,

That sound perfect what you did!!!! I was on mousesavers today and got some good ideas there too!!!! For all you people out there that think people that do these things are cheaters and liars.....it's right there in the how to use your credits!!
thanks

 

[5boyz]

micman

Like I said before I was not planning on using it!!! I just wanted to know how they could use children's credits as adult credits.....I didn't know that the credits were not put down as such and that is the type of anwser I was looking for! If you had of read more before this one you would have seen that I said I was not doing it as it was too expensive for my family!!! I am not into paying $1850. for food for 6 people for 10 days!!! Thank You!!!!

Radopt

your reason for not taking the dining plan is exactly why I didn't take it, we barely ate while we were there.....too hot and drank alot of water just like you....took our water bottles and filled up at the fountains or with ice!!! Great Idea!!!

 

[kayebee]

zoe, you made excellent points, too bad they didn't do the meal plan similar to the park plan! They may possibly get more people using the food plan. I would love to use it but it is just way to expensive for my family!

I don 't think they could possibly get more people using the dining plan--we just got back yesterday morning and EVERYONE was on the dining plan. We had dinner one night at Le Cellier and the tables on both sides of us were also on the dining plan. I asked our waitress (Sheena, from Ottawa. She was terrific) what percentage of patrons were on the plan and she said at lunch time 75-85% of the people were using it and at dinner it was near 100%.

While it's interesting to read about all the arguments on the ethics of how to use the plan, Disney is counting their money all the way to the bank. I'm not losing sleep over anyone using child credits for adult meals--if your look at what you're "paying" for the meals (especially for counter service, where the food is almost universally cheap and mediocre), you realize the plan isn't a great value.

If I did it again, I'd probably skip the dining plan, make reservations at a few of the nicer table service restaurants (Le Cellier, Crystal Palace, 1900 Park Fare) and try some of the local restaurants off site.

Karen

 

[LakeAriel]

I know I'm probably going to get bashed for saying this, but I've been wanting to get the dining plan myself sometime and wondering the same thing. What I was thinking of doing is tell them there is only an Adult and child in the room...instead of two adults and a child. Since we all have our passes and only live 2 hours from Orlando, I'm thinking I can just check in with my daughter and my husband can stay in the car and pretend he's not there. We would never eat that much food and share meals so often. I know it's probably "illegal" to do that, but that's the only solution I've been able to come up with. Of course that probably doesn't work for anyone who is flying in because you're buying a vacation package with everything.

Any opinions on that?? (Ducking so I don't get pelted)

Rachel

The missing adult would be unable to use EMH or even swim at the pool if they check ID. He wouldn't be given a key!

 

[Lewisc]

I did answer your question, you just didn't like my answer.

The answer to your question is you don't.

It would more accurate to say you can't use child credits for adult meals because there is not such thing as an adult or child credit.

The computer system keeps track of TS, CS and snack credits. They are not broken up into adult or child because Disney has chosen to aggregate them.

We can discuss and debate if customers that plan to, legally, use all or most of the credit paid for at the child rate to purchase adult meals are greedy or are just smart consumers

 

[5boyz]

Lewisc,

I like the way you think!!!!!!

 

[Lewisc]

Lewisc,

I like the way you think!!!!!!

Don't get me wrong, the people who want to omit guests are 100% wrong. The rules are very clear. I'm sure Disney priced the plan assuming some guests would "get their monies" worth and some guests might not even use all their credits. Omitting an adult and then using credits paid at the child rate to order meals for that adult is 100% WRONG. Even skipping a person who is a light eater is wrong.

If a family doesn't think they'll get their monies worth with the plan their option is to decline the plan and pay for their meals out of pocket.

 

[FayeW]

5boyz, there are some things in this life that are guaranteed: death, taxes, and that the morality police will show and try to tell everybody what disney MEANS instead of what disney SAYS! The credits are pooled, at least for now, and you can use them as you wish.

As someone else posted, with your group and needing 2 rooms anyway, I would just make one reservation with 4 people/ dining plan and one with just 2 people. You will have enough credits to spread out between the 6 of you over the 10 days, if you are sharing meals and buying the odd kid's meal OOP.That way, you can take advantage of the awesome ticket prices at ticketmania (through mousesavers newsletter link) to buy most of your park tickets as well, and just buy the 4 one day tickets you are required to buy with the dining plan.

 

[Brian Noble]

I'm with you right up until:

That way, you can take advantage of the awesome ticket prices at ticketmania (through mousesavers newsletter link) to buy most of your park tickets as well, and just buy the 4 one day tickets you are required to buy with the dining plan.

I *think* that will end up costing more---in most cases, it will be cheaper to buy an N-day ticket from WDW than a ticket for N-1 days from TM, and a single-day ticket from WDW.

 

[aka-mad4themouse]

I'm with you right up until:

I *think* that will end up costing more---in most cases, it will be cheaper to buy an N-day ticket from WDW than a ticket for N-1 days from TM, and a single-day ticket from WDW.

Agreed! The price of a 10-day hopper (A), advance purchase thru Disney is $257.73. The cost of a 1-day Base pass (A) is $67.10. The cost of a 9-day Hopper from Ticketmania is $244. Total cost = $311.11. It's much cheaper to just get the 10-day hopper from Disney.

 

[5boyz]

Lewisc,

Yes that is true they can decline but there are loads of people who want it for the convience but can't afford it Disney's Way....if there (as i've said in previous posting) was more than 1 plan to choose from then it would make it easier for some people to use it!!! Again like i said before....It is suppose to be MY WAY!!!!


When I said I like how you think I meant the part at the end about "debating if people are greedy or good consumers", I don't know how to do the quote!!!

Thanks!!!