Disney Dining PLan

[GrumpyUK]

Hi,

Virgen have just added the Disney Dining Plan Option to their website booking fomr - though they don't say anything about it.

Has anyone used it yet? Is it worth it?

Do tell
Thanks muchly

G

am thinking of booking for December next year and actually spending Christmas there. Has anyone done this - what are the hidden costs?

 

[KAC2005]

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1305783

this thread has info about the dining plan, hope this helps. We used it on our last trip and felt it was well worth the money. We have it booked for our trip in July.

Kathryn

 

[GrumpyUK]

Thank you very much for this

 

[jtlover]

We used it in February and it is great as the tip is included in the rate. You just have to work out where you want to eat your meals It makes it very relaxing at meal times

 

[natalielongstaff]

ive used the ddp once and we have it booked for our next trip its only worth it if you like eating at sit down places, we used it to visit a lot of restaurants we perhaps wouldn't have tried otherwise.
also for a planning freak its great fun working out where to eat

 

[KayleeUK]

We did the DDP in October. We found it good value but far too much food! I think we would do it again but not for the whole period of our trip.

 

[Funniebunny]

I'm so pleased I found this thread. I've just seen the update and was thinking about adding it you our holiday for November.

 

[jtlover]

You save a lot of money and have so many restaurants to choose from.

I have noted thought that Virgin are more expensive for this than if you book direct with Disney. But saying that, I believe you still save money booking it and it is something less to worry about. I always worry that I wont have not budgeted enough for food,whereas with ddp you dont need to

 

[Funniebunny]

I called Virgin Holidays and I need to call back on Tuesday. He wasn't sure if I could add the dining plan as we are staying in Disney for a week and then doing our own thing for the second week. I don't see why that should make a difference but I guess I'll just have to call back

 

[jtlover]

I called Virgin Holidays and I need to call back on Tuesday. He wasn't sure if I could add the dining plan as we are staying in Disney for a week and then doing our own thing for the second week. I don't see why that should make a difference but I guess I'll just have to call back

I understood that as long as you were a week with Disney you could get the ddp

 

[dee slack]

can you add it retrospectivly (sp) as we booked in Sept for Dec '07?

 

[jtlover]

can you add it retrospectivly (sp) as we booked in Sept for Dec '07?

Well you can make amendments on virgin holidays, but there might be an admin fee? I hope not though

 

[dee slack]

Well you can make amendments on virgin holidays, but there might be an admin fee? I hope not though

I've just been and tried that and it's really weird that it doesn't seem to add much extra for DDP but adds a couple hundred £'s for car rental and insurance!! Also, do you have to go thru Virgin for DDP or can you go direct to Disney even tho' we've booked with Virgin? (Virgin charge £26 per day which is exchange rate of 1.4996 which is pretty poor value)

 

[mikki.young]

I may be alone in this view but I don't like DDP. There are several reasons for this:
1 - It encourages folks to eat far too much
2 - It also leads to a lot of waste
3 - Makes it a lot harder to get ADRs
4 - Food quality / choice seems to have dropped as a result

 

[dee slack]

I may be alone in this view but I don't like DDP. There are several reasons for this:
1 - It encourages folks to eat far too much
2 - It also leads to a lot of waste
3 - Makes it a lot harder to get ADRs
4 - Food quality / choice seems to have dropped as a result

I certainly don't need any encouraging with that!!!!!!!!!!

I'm just trying to work out if it would be good value for us as we're intending to have a few character meals as it's a long time since we last visited and I can't get enough character interraction!
I think looking at doing it thru' Virgin would mean we're paying more than we would do so probably won't bother.

 

[AlanUK]

As DW said we did this on our last trip

I would consider doing it again in the future but there are a couple of things that I would give thought to prior to booking it.

Firstly outside of the food & wine festival what would we spend our snack credits on????

Secondly could I live with the amount of waste it creates. This was really my main gripe with it on our last trip as we ended up not using a couple of days CS credits and we also sent an awful lot of food back to the kitchens because we were just too full to eat it. I am a real 'clean your plate' person when I eat and it irks me to be sending food back to the kitchen not eaten to go in the bin. An example of this was one breakfast where I ordered some pancakes thinking they would be quite small as I wasn't particularly hungry, but when they came out they were the size of the plate and 3 of them were staked up Needless to say I sent 2 back but it really bothered me. I know you can have stuff boxed up - but then when would you eat it? I would really say that I didn't enjoy my meals as much as usual because I felt that I was having to eat them rather than wanting to eat them. If you can live with sending a proportion of the food back on a few occassions then this wont bother you too much

We diecided on it after looking into the value side of things, and it's hard to argue against if you are planning to eat within WDW rather than outside.

 

[Goofyish]

Another negative for the DP is that you a slave to your ADRs. You need to plan your days to be in the right place for your ADRs, so it does restrict you a little

 

[MrsJobba1]

We found that was great.

I made a few core ADRs but DH does not like to plan too much (unlike me) so what we did was when we were at SSR we went 2 days before to guest services and asked what they had available. We actually got what we wanted. I do think we were very lucky though.

 

[Lizzybear]

I think it will work out well for us as we wouldn't have eaten at so many TS places without the free dining plan and it'll be convenient to know that most of our food is already accounted for (we're having a few meals offsite)
One thing we won't be doing is ordering 3 courses just to pick at the starter or dessert simply because we 'can' I don't like waste either so we'll only be ordering what we're hungry for

 

[AlanUK]

I think it will work out well for us as we wouldn't have eaten at so many TS places without the free dining plan and it'll be convenient to know that most of our food is already accounted for (we're having a few meals offsite)
One thing we won't be doing is ordering 3 courses just to pick at the starter or dessert simply because we 'can' I don't like waste either so we'll only be ordering what we're hungry for

I would be interested to hear how this goes once you get back. The servers are very good at encouraging you to take home 'boxed' desserts if you find you can't eat one

Also with the days you are eating offsite, are you planning to roll up the spare TS credits in order to dine at the signature restaraunts??