For our first trip last year, I seriously considered using the silver plan. However, I added the cost of all the character meals we had planned (we did a bunch) plus the Hoop Dee Doo plus Cirque de Solei tickets and a huge amount of money for food each day for the other meals and still ended up spending less money than the silver plan would have cost.
Also, we were there in July as well and with it being so hot, we didn't eat that many big meals as we just didn't get as hungry. We found ourselves snacking more.