We just got back from WDW and did the DDPlan. I have mixed feelings about it; I agree with one poster about the pressure of needing to use up the table service credits. We actually lost 2 (ouch)! And we almost had 10 counter service credits left but were able to use them up to buy a whole pizza for the girls. I thought I was going to have to stand in line to buy strangers their lunchs so as to not waste them! I would have a made a few friends though!
You get ALOT of food at those places (remember, you get 1 appt., 1 entree, 1 dessert and 1 drink for a table service.)
Honestly, you could easily split a meal between 2 people, maybe even 3 depending upon the entree and tummy sizes on your own money.
BUT the nice part is is that you can use those meals on whomever is joining you for dinner. Meaning if family or friends join you for dinner but are not staying at the resort with you, it doesn't matter they just deduct the number of table service meals you used for that night. Remember, you can use these credits in any order. You could use all table service credits (or counter service) at one time! We ate at Spoodles at the Boardwalk once and between 4 people the bill was close to $200.00!
Beacuse we were already paid for we easliy tried new things we might never have tried before because we would be worried about the price and wasting it if you didn't like it. So by spending 37.99 per person to get one snack, one counter service and one table service PER DAY - it makes sense, IF you can eat that much! We've pretty much decided that we really don't eat that much while on vacation for our family. And I've always averaged $20.00 for dinner, $10.00 for lunch, $5.00 snack(if you do food & drink) and about $10.00ish for brakfast (if you have 3 meals a day). And that's not eating at table service priced places!
I thought we could do the counter or table for breakfast, have a snack to tie us over till dinner and then use the remaining table/credit service.
It sounded like a good plan but we're from CA and dealing with the time change is a little tougher, we managed to get out by 10:30 in time to eat lunch but were not all that hungry by dinner time. Might work out better for east coast people.
We also didn't make any restaurant reservations because our schedule was up in the air and we paid for that! Couldn't get into our Favs like the 50's Primetime Cafe or SciFi, couldn't even try the Brown Derby. Otherwise we may have struggled for more table credits ;-) Same with Cindrella's everything - those take 2 ts. (Should have called in Member services as soon as I was told no to walk-ins to see if we could have squeezed any ressies in!)
All in all I will go with the plan again; I liked not having to deal with money, more credit card charges and not having to figure out tips! We just had to pull out our key to the world card. We'll just get a little more savvy about using our plan. It's a matter about figuring out the bumps in the plan for your family!
(By the way, you just need to use one card for all transactions at one time, so if daughter went to get snacks for all of us, then she just needed to show her card-it deducts from the whole plan, not individually.)
Also, as a side note, my husband attended a convention at the Grand Cypress Hyatt just down the street and the dining plan would have been useless for him; he had to network with his cronies while we got to play and eat at WDW.
DVC member services were very accomodating and authorized the BW a guest key for him since he was sleeping there only.
Whew! I'm hungry! Wish I were back at Epcot!
