diznyfanatic
Officially a Moosehead
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2005
- Messages
- 951
It had been several years since our last visit to WDW and we decided to include the Dining Plan on our most recent trip over this past Christmas/New Years for 2 Adults/1Child (age 3). We had gotten a really good deal on the package, when Disney offered the general public discount codes for our dates.
I offer this report to you, knowing that our large gap between visits, some things probably could have been done differently with some recent experiences under our belts.
While it was great having everything prepaid on the Dining Plan, and loved the plan in theory, it ended up being too much food for us and I kept wondering if we could have done it cheaper on our own, as it is a substantial amount to add on to an already very expensive vacation.
The Dining Plan is an awesome deal IF, you would normally have a TS meal every day AND you would normally order the same amount of food included in the Plan. If the answer to both of those is yes, then the Dining Plan is such a good deal that it virtually pays for all of your TS meals. CS meals and Snacks end up basically free! The food is obviously plentiful, and in most cases, very good. We didnt really experience any problems on the Dining Plan.
However, as others have said, we don't normally order an appetizer and dessert, and in fact, skipped ordering those items on several occasions. Doing that however, I kept getting this nagging feeling that we had somehow wasted money on the plan. My granddaughter also grew tired of the children's menu as they all pretty much have the same thing. We also aren't ones to have a Table Service meal every day, as we prefer to keep things more spontaneous when something just sounds good, or we are just too darn tired!
The Dining Plan required quite a bit of advanced planning too, particularly if you don't have Hopper passes which is how we started out. Many of our ADRs required entry into a park, so it required quite a bit of advance planning to schedule park days based on our ADRs or vice versa. It can be done, but ADR's were a definite must and so I'd suggest getting a Hopper pass if anyone is thinking of using the Dining Plan. Otherwise, you could end up burning a day on your passes when you would rather be in a different park. We feel it really is a necessity to avoid having to spend the whole day in a park that you really dont want to because that is where your ADR is. Traveling when we did is also the busiest week of the entire year at WDW, so switching ADRs at the last minute was out of the question as you could not get another with any amount of certainty.
As we were traveling with a 3 year old, the other thing that we had not taken into consideration was that she would end up falling asleep just as our ADR was approaching. For anyone who has ever had to awaken a sleeping child in order to eat, you know that the dinner experience will not always be a happy one when this happens. In fact, on a couple of occasions, she awoke long enough to put in her order, and then promptly fell asleep again, never eating her meal resulting in a total waste of her credits.
For our upcoming trip in March, we decided to get an Annual Pass to take advantage of the great AP room-only discounts and use the DDE card which gives us a 20% discount while dining. We will then have the opportunity to actually compare these two methods in order to make the best decisions for our family on future trips.
I offer this report to you, knowing that our large gap between visits, some things probably could have been done differently with some recent experiences under our belts.
While it was great having everything prepaid on the Dining Plan, and loved the plan in theory, it ended up being too much food for us and I kept wondering if we could have done it cheaper on our own, as it is a substantial amount to add on to an already very expensive vacation.
The Dining Plan is an awesome deal IF, you would normally have a TS meal every day AND you would normally order the same amount of food included in the Plan. If the answer to both of those is yes, then the Dining Plan is such a good deal that it virtually pays for all of your TS meals. CS meals and Snacks end up basically free! The food is obviously plentiful, and in most cases, very good. We didnt really experience any problems on the Dining Plan.
However, as others have said, we don't normally order an appetizer and dessert, and in fact, skipped ordering those items on several occasions. Doing that however, I kept getting this nagging feeling that we had somehow wasted money on the plan. My granddaughter also grew tired of the children's menu as they all pretty much have the same thing. We also aren't ones to have a Table Service meal every day, as we prefer to keep things more spontaneous when something just sounds good, or we are just too darn tired!
The Dining Plan required quite a bit of advanced planning too, particularly if you don't have Hopper passes which is how we started out. Many of our ADRs required entry into a park, so it required quite a bit of advance planning to schedule park days based on our ADRs or vice versa. It can be done, but ADR's were a definite must and so I'd suggest getting a Hopper pass if anyone is thinking of using the Dining Plan. Otherwise, you could end up burning a day on your passes when you would rather be in a different park. We feel it really is a necessity to avoid having to spend the whole day in a park that you really dont want to because that is where your ADR is. Traveling when we did is also the busiest week of the entire year at WDW, so switching ADRs at the last minute was out of the question as you could not get another with any amount of certainty.
As we were traveling with a 3 year old, the other thing that we had not taken into consideration was that she would end up falling asleep just as our ADR was approaching. For anyone who has ever had to awaken a sleeping child in order to eat, you know that the dinner experience will not always be a happy one when this happens. In fact, on a couple of occasions, she awoke long enough to put in her order, and then promptly fell asleep again, never eating her meal resulting in a total waste of her credits.
For our upcoming trip in March, we decided to get an Annual Pass to take advantage of the great AP room-only discounts and use the DDE card which gives us a 20% discount while dining. We will then have the opportunity to actually compare these two methods in order to make the best decisions for our family on future trips.
