disney dining plan

revcohea

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jul 19, 2005
Messages
109
Is the dining plan worth the money for 3 people i'd spend $105/day. Are there other perks with it that make it worth my time? Any meal suggestions would be helpful. This will be my daughters first trip and we want to make it special! :dancer: :thewave:
 
If you are planning on doing character meals and your DDs are older than 9, it is worth the money. My BIL went last Nov with his DW, DS (10), and 2 DDs (3 and 6). His meals would have been way over the dining plan amount.
 
Most definitely, I really don't see how people can eat for 35.00 per day any other way. Since it includes tax and tips and you get a counter service, a table service meal, and a snack for that cost at WDW. Well worth it.
 

Very worth it. I had booked to pay for it until I got the extra bonus of getting it for free this year!
 
I spend $120 per day for DD and myself. The plan saved us about $100 so far and we got more coming next month..
 
I think it is, we have never been able to eat for less then $35 per day per person even excluding tax and gratuity. I was going to book my trip with the dining plan anyway, it was just a perk that they offered it for free the week I am going. I will be sure to pay for it, if it is still around when we go back next year

4 more days :cool1: :cool1: :cool1:
 
The best thing to do would be to go to www.allearsnet.com and check out some of the restaurants and prices and kind of plan what your family would be eating and see how much it would cost. The $$$ sure does add up fast with sit down meals etc., but I would think that it would be worth it for you and save you quite a bit of money.
 
I don't see why people even consider not doing it. Eating at WDW is VERY expensive. We have always used it (previously we have always had the 3 TS meals per day so this is our first trip with 1 TS and 1 CS).
If you are unsure, check out Deb's site with the menus and prices and find a few restaurants you will probably visit. Add up the cost of what you would eat and you will see it easily comes out to more than $35/pp.
Hope this helps and enjoy your first trip!
 
I found a GREAT spreadsheet on DIS just yesterday that allows you to enter the CS/TS/Snack location and if you will be using your dining plan or not. If not, it enters a dollar amount (based on # of people in your party); if so, it enters $0. It was a big help in showing others that will be traveling with me how much we will be saving. I filled everything out as far as where our ADRs are and some random CS spots and then said NO to dining pkg to get $ amts. Then I went back through & changed my NO's to YES and did the same thing. BIG difference. This spreadsheet shows you that the dining plan is a no brainer.
The only problem is that I can't find it again and I don't know how to download it or whatever I need to do for you to be able to use it. If anyone can help me with that I'd be happy to share it with ya. I just did a Search for spreadsheets but can't find it. There are a couple of other good ones on here though, may be you could just try one of those.
 
No, the one I have is done in Lime Green (how nice) and on top it allows you to enter the # in your party (adults/children), arrival/departure dates, what ticket plan you have (with a gazillion options). Along the left side it shows you the day/date and what park has EMH (am & pm) that day. You enter the restaurant in one column, whether it is dining plan or not in another, the spreadsheet calculates a dollar amt if you aren't using the dining plan. there is also a column for ADR # and time. And a few others. It really worked great. I have it on my pc but how to I post a link or how do I "reshare" it here.
 
Here it is. Actually, here are quite a few. This is a great site. Hope it helps you. Remember, enter your dining info and say no to Dining Plan column for everything and let it calculate amt. for you. Then go through and change that column to Yes for 1 TS, 1 CS and 1 Snack. You will be amazed at what you save using the Dining Plan.
http://pscalculator.net/pswebtools.shtml#t006
 
I agree that the dining plan is a great deal when looked at just for the food portion. But since you have to book the hotel at rack rate shouldn't that enter the equation as well? For example if you could book the hotel at a 20% discount and then buy your food seperately would that 20% off-set the price enough so that it's cheaper than a package?

I think it's something each person should calculate before making a decision.
 
When I calculated everything (ap cost + ap discount +dde compared to rack rate + free dining) I came out about even except I can opt for better TS restaurants on free dining than I would choose on a $100 per day for three people budget.

So I picked the free dining. I'll post a review when I return.
 
If you enjoy fine dining it is definatly worth it. My family of four just returned and were fortunate to go under the "free" dining offer. However, if we went again and had to pay for the dining plan I would do it in a heartbeat. We ate of course at places that we would normally not have eaten and of course we would never have ordered an appetizer and dessert for each person at a table service menu without the plan but it was so nice that we could. Often we could not eat everything we ordered but it was great trying it all out. We totally enjoyed the experience of it all. We also found that we were able to share many of our Counter Service meals which allowed us to actually get both our breakfast and lunch everyday and our evening table service meal. For example your breakfast also includes a dessert, so one person would order the breakfast platter (Waffle & Bacon/Sausage or Eggs with Hashbrowns, Meat, Biscuit) and a large danish of some sort for desert. (Loved the chocolate crossants at POP). There was always at least one of us who just wanted a danish and coffee for breakfast and since we got both sausage and bacon we often shared that. The same for lunch, we just asked for an extra plate and the meals were huge. We were staying at POP and had the refillable mugs so we would get bottled soda or water with our meal plan and then use the refillable mugs for our actually drinks, saving the other drinks for later. We lost tally of how much we actually saved but I will say that our daily totals averaged between $200-$250 for the four of us including our daily snacks. On one day our totals topped $300!
 
matchtrader said:
This may be a dumb question, but how does one go about purchasing the Disney Dining Plan?

From my understanding you need to purchase a magic your way package (Disney resort stay plus Magic Your Way Tickets). The cost is something like $35.99 for 9 and over and $10.99 for under 9. Don't quote me though!
 
I say the dining plan is definately worth it! I would say take your daughter to any princess meals but make sure to book very very early!
 












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