Disney Dining Plans

[Catgyrl]

My friends and I have booked our vacation package thru AAA for October, and we just did the basics (hotel and park tickets). We're trying to figure out what to do for food. Our options are (1) order in from Von's or Albertson's (great idea for breakfast and "stand in line" quick foods) or (2) purchasing one of the dining plans. We'll be there 5 days but don't want to pay for a 5-day dining plan, so we were contemplating getting the Donald's 3 Days of Disney Dining plan which, according to the Disney site, contains "8 Disney Dining Choices per person". Does anyone know if these are like Disney Dollars, or are they vouchers in certain amounts, to certain restaurants, etc.? TIA

 

[Catgyrl]

Bump - anyone?

 

[DBBean]

When we did the Meal plan at WDW it worked great. No vouchers, everything was on our room card. The DL uses vouchers. It comes with a character breakfast ticket. DH wanted to use it. I'll be trying it out at the end of this month.

 

[Catgyrl]

When we did the Meal plan at WDW it worked great. No vouchers, everything was on our room card. The DL uses vouchers. It comes with a character breakfast ticket. DH wanted to use it. I'll be trying it out at the end of this month.

Cool - thanks for the info.

 

[twinspluscade]

We debated getting them for our up-coming trip, but I then decided against it, for the main reason that they don't give you change back. So, if your bill comes to $5.99 and you hand them a $10 voucher (vouchers come in $5, $10, and $20 denominations, I believe), then they don't give you any extra change! You either have to carry around cash anyway (so you could give them a $5.00 voucher and then pay cash for the 99 cents), or you're out some money on the vouchers. I thought it was just too much work for something that should be simple, LOL!


However, I've read on here of several people who have used--and loved--the meal plan at DLR, so obviously it works for some!

Also wanted to point out that it's very different from the dining plan at WDW (which we've used and loved).

 

[ballarinamom]

We purchase vouchers from Getaway Today for all of our charater meals- Goofy's for Dinner, Breakfast with Minnie and Lunch with the Princesses. There is an actual savings with that. But the DL meal plan has no savings. In fact I've read several threads on folks wo have had unused vouchers. Thta's just throwing $$ away. If you want to pre purchase things, buy the character meals from GAT and get a Disney gift card and put money on that now and then or buy Disney Dollars. That way you can use coupons or discounts or use the extra $$ you over budgeted on TOYS!!!!

 

[Catgyrl]

ballerinamom and twinspluscade - I bow to you!! (I just love that smilie!!)

No meal plans for us, then! I went with a family of four in 2004 and with all those mouths to feed, we STILL had leftover vouchers, so I guess it's ixnay to that idea. We'll probably go with groceries delivered (for breakfast and snackie things) and meals elsewhere. I wouldn't mind doing a character breakfast (I've already done Goofy's and Lilo and Stitch), but I'm not sure about my traveling buddies. Technically, my friend is unemployed at the moment... but you see where our priorities are, right? She said "I might be homeless by October, but I'm still going to Disneyland." I told her "Then you won't be completely homeless - you'll have a nice hotel room to stay in for 5 nights.

This site is just a wealth of information - thanks to everyone!

 

[JadeDarkstar]

we loved the meal plan we are getitng the 5day plan. we used it last time and it was awsome never did we lose more then a doller from no change back we just knew how to use them my family loved it and will egt it again makes sure we get what we want and see the charcters

 

[Queenbillabong]

We did this in May because we had a refund that would have taken a long time to process if we had not added it to our package (we had changed our hotel...) and I thought it would be good to just have that expense out of the way, but we won't do it again.

We got a mixture of Character Breakfast (good), specifically Goofy's Kitchen for dinner (did not want that, but no face value on the voucher, so too bad so sad or lose the cash), snack (with a face value of $6.56 or thereabouts), breakfast in the park (with a face value of about $10.59), $10, $15, and $20 vouchers (I think the kid's ones come with $5 instead of the $20).

It is not convenient (or it was not for us), because for almost everything except a corn dog and a drink, we had to add money to get what we wanted or order something extra that we really did not need so we would not lose the change. We actually ended up ordering more than we would have normally because we had the vouchers - ie. at Cafe Orleans we each ordered the pommes frites (very good - but WAY too big for one person and we wasted more than half each) and a Monte Cristo each (again very good - but WAY to rich to eat a whole one). We would have ordered one each to share if we did not have the vouchers and would not have wasted both food and money that way.

We still have several vouchers left over as well that need to be used before January 2009 - but that's okay because we are going back in October and will use them up then. But we will definitely not buy the plan again.

 

[JadeDarkstar]

they had 20$ vouchers? they only had up to 15$ ones like 2 of them and 3 of the 10 for us and 3 for the kid and then he got extra snacks and 5s to make up for the 15$ ones he didnt have. We combined them all used 2 15s and one his 10s at one the places we went. i also got alot of the suviner cups