Disney Dining Plan

[signtalker]

Is this worth the money??

Were having a weeks trip in september staying onsite(without a car), so the majority of the time will be eating in the parks and onsite hotels(apart from 2 days).

whats the cost of this, and the best way to book, thinking this might be a good idea for us (3 adults).

any info, help would be most appreciated.

jules

 

[kkymmy]

you guys are in exactly the same situation as we will be next june (3 adults, onsite, no transport)....and I think we're going to go ahead with it. We don't have many other options than the ones offered by Disney, and while you're there you might as well eat well! Plus you can use your TS credits for character and signature meals in the evenings, counter service for quick grab lunches and snacks for breakfast/drinks in the park.

I think if you were staying onsite and eating onsite the individual cost of each meal would easily go over what you will pay for dining plan. Plus you would be less likely to try out some of the more expensive restaurants to favour the budget.

 

[arieliwish]

I agree, we did the dining plan last year and even though DD, then aged 10, had to purchase the plan as an adult, we certainly got our monies worth.

We also got to eat in fab disney places like Cali Grill, Boma, Ohana and Le Cellier which we otherwise would not have. We had about 12 snack credits left when we came home as we couldn't seem to use them up!!

Its also a good excuse to have a meal in other onsite hotels and have a good look around!

 

[Dislifer]

We did the dining plan on our last visit 12/23 - 1/1/06 and LOVED it!!! I would always do it. It was so nice having this portion of your expenses already figured. Sometimes things like this annoy me and I don't bother because there are too many stipulations, but not with this. There were no problems, no limits...it's GREAT!!! It's not like they say "Oh, you can't order that....it's not on the plan". I mean maybe there are some cases that they do, but we didn't come across any!
Loved it!

 

[arieliwish]

It's not like they say "Oh, you can't order that....it's not on the plan". I mean maybe there are some cases that they do, but we didn't come across any!
Loved it!

Exactly!! We actually had some waiters/waitresses telling us what was available to us so we didn't lose out - DD 10 was adult on the plan but eats like a mouse, so sometimes she shared my starter/dessert as she didn't want to order one for herself. The CM's were advising us to order something that we'd never had just to try!!!

Cynics out there would say this was to bump up their tip percentage on the bill, but we like to believe it was for our benefit! We tipped on top too if the service was good, as it usually is. Our waiter in the Cali Grill, Gary, tried to give us our tip back explaining it was included in the cost of the meal!

 

[Laurafoster]

What does the DDP actually include? Does it include the tip too??

 

[taylorl25]

Yes the DDP incudes 18% gratuity, so if you want to tip extra it's entirely up to you. We normally tipped a little more, mainly because we had alcohol with most meals so had to tip for that anyway.

We really liked the dining plan, we were two adults and it was definitely good value for money. We'll be using it again for our January visit.

 

[Rain]

Really wish we could do this but we are booked with VH and they no longer sell the Dining Plan

 

[arieliwish]

Really wish we could do this but we are booked with VH and they no longer sell the Dining Plan

Really?! That's not very good when they are booking you into Disney accommodation. I wonder what the reasoning behind that is?

I picked up next year's First Choice book and they are still selling it at 20 per adult and 6 per child - we booked it through them last year.

 

[paulh]

luckily we hav got it on the free offer for august .Booked througth disney to get it and you have to buy a least one day base ticket fo the parks for each in room.Have been looking at paying for it in future as in dvc we dont have to pay for the base ticket for the parks think in $ its $39.99 per adult
Paulh

 

[Richard Bruvofetc]

Really wish we could do this but we are booked with VH and they no longer sell the Dining Plan

We booked with BA - £22 per person per day (it was £27 at the time with VH).

We found it a great way to visit all those restaurants we never would have gone to due to the expense.

As for the value when we visited in 2001 and stayed on site it cost us about £1300 in food bills for two weeks. This year it cost us £924 (on the DDP) for 2 weeks and the cost of just our table service came to £870. Add to that the snacks and counter service for the two weeks and you can see its pretty good value for money. (When we stayed off site in IDrive in 2003 the total cost of meals came to about £950).

 

[Howard412]

My brother and I are booked into the C/Beach for 2 weeks at the end of January. The DDP looks to be great value for money, and a great way to try new food and new restuarants.

My brother and I, however, are not on the DDP. I had forgotten to mention it when booking the holiday through my travel agents (Thomsons), and they purchased the lowest price 14 Ultimate Tickets that were available at the time. They were from "Attraction World" (at a VERY good price too i might add). When i went back to ask about the DDP, i was told that Attraction World do not sell the DDP, and the tour operator i booked with (JetSave) said they were not able to sell me DDP as i had not booked the Disney Tickets through them with hotel/flights etc So, to get onto the DDP, we must lose the deposit we paid for the tickets, lose the low low price tickets and pay full price for new ones = more expensive than paying OOP for all the meals we have budgetted for.

The only thing that slightly put me off about the DDP was making 14 ADR's for the Table Service meals - you'd lose alot of the benefit that park hopping brings; you're tied down to be in a certain place at a certain time.

Regards,

 

[Andrew DEREK UK]

Got mine for free through Dreams so yes really worth it, off to use it in a few weeks!

 

[signtalker]

LOL, iforgot it works out cheaper with my CM discount when we dine(% off food), and seeing as i get all my tickets free, It would be a waste to buy a base ticket for us all to take advantage of it, plus i would loose the cm discount on my disney hotel, which is considerable!!!, so im just gonna eat as and when, safe in the knowledge that im probaly $$$$$ in my pocket doing it my way.

thanks for all your replies guys.

jules

 

[crux]

We've booked the DDP for our stay on October, basically to enable us to try some of the resturants that we wouldn't usually try. We've already made 14 ADR's for the table service meals - one is at lunch time, 5 are breakfasts and 8 are for dinner. If we'd booked 14 dinners then we could probably get more value for money, but we'll still 'save' money on the plan and have more flexibility on choice of parks during the day if our Table Service meal is at breakfast. I still think that we'll both be putting a stone on each during the holiday even though we're limiting the number of three course meals.

Ian & Judith

 

[jns]

Really wish we could do this but we are booked with VH and they no longer sell the Dining Plan

You could always ask when you are booking in at the resort if you can add it on

 

[jns]

Can you just walk in to any of the restuarants and use the dinning plan or do you have to make reseverions first

we like to be felixable

 

[Dicky Knee]

Can you just walk in to any of the restuarants and use the dinning plan or do you have to make reseverions first

we like to be felixable

You could just walk straight in, but with the popularity of the Disney Restaurants you'd probably find that the majority of them will already be booked up. I would recommend booking up the most popular before you go.

 

[PaulaSB12]

Got mine for free through Dreams so yes really worth it, off to use it in a few weeks!

Another one here for the free dining, got to love dreams.

 

[Andrew DEREK UK]

Another one here for the free dining, got to love dreams.

Well done Dreams did my ADR's first then we swapped over to the free DDP it caused a bit of work but i got it and can use it in a few weeks.