Disneyland Dining Plan?

[#1minnie]

I've never been to Disneyland, but have been to WDW many times and most recently used their DDP and LOVED IT!

We want to go to DL next June, and while looking into their dining program, it seems so much different than in WDW. At DL, they give you vouchers? And dollar amounts? If you don't spend the full dollar amount per meal, does it still act as a credit, or do you lose it?

I loved the DDP where you knew you had so many snacks, table service and counter service meals and they just depleted as you went along.

Has anyone had good/bad experience or reviews of the DL dining plan? Thanks!

 

[thevirgens]

I am curious too... Does any know if its worth it to get the DDP?

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

DLR's dining plan stinks. Think of it as giving Disney a zero interest loan for the amount of the voucher. And if you don't use that amount, the loan becomes a gift.

 

[#1minnie]

oh, that's too bad, I was afraid of that by the way it was set up. I was doing some math on it and figured it was just a prepaid plan.

At WDW last Christmas, I kept track of the actual dollar values that we "would have" spent for the meals we consumed. It was almost double what the DDP cost us. Oh, yeah, we ate way more than we ever would have, but hey, it was Christmas and we had a wonderful trip! Normally, I would not order an appetizer and dessert, especially individual desserts for each family member, but the plan allowed us to. That way, we all got to sample each other's desserts!

I think just general eating in the parks, even if it's all counter service, adds up to about what the DDP initially costs. So for us, it worked out quite well.

Too bad Disneyland isn't quite the same.

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

oh, that's too bad, I was afraid of that by the way it was set up. I was doing some math on it and figured it was just a prepaid plan.

At WDW last Christmas, I kept track of the actual dollar values that we "would have" spent for the meals we consumed. It was almost double what the DDP cost us. Oh, yeah, we ate way more than we ever would have, but hey, it was Christmas and we had a wonderful trip! Normally, I would not order an appetizer and dessert, especially individual desserts for each family member, but the plan allowed us to. That way, we all got to sample each other's desserts!

I think just general eating in the parks, even if it's all counter service, adds up to about what the DDP initially costs. So for us, it worked out quite well.

Too bad Disneyland isn't quite the same.

We took the free food the last two years at WDW and they lopped off our dates. The plan would have cost under $40 a day just for me. But I ran up over $70 at Spoodles (They've since changed the menu to where I could only run up over $50.) I ran up over $60 at Le Cellier. Even Chef Mickey's was over $35 by the time I added Tax and Tip into it. And the rest of the crew ran up similar. And that's not counting the counter meal and snack where I know I averaged about $15 a day between them without even looking. Great Deal if you're eating Character meals and sit downs anyway. We would have found it well worth buying the plan instead of just scraping by at the counters.

There isn't quite as much demand for a good meal plan at DLR because
1. The proximity of outside restaurants is very close
2. WDW's non-local percentage is much much higher.

But the food is good at most places. There isn't quite the selection of WDW.
But there are some good places to eat. And when you see many of the rides and attractions that are notably superior to their WDW counterparts, you'll have a great time.

 

[bjsmom]

We love the DDP! By the time we leave for our trip the only money we need is for fun stuff!

 

[bumbershoot]

The last poster made a good point. If you want to prepay your meals, it's a good way to do it.

But if you, say, are buying something for $4 and you have a $5 voucher, you do NOT get change back. So then you add something else, and then you have to pay the difference between the $5 voucher and the total.

To us, that sounded like it would get complicated. So I'm spending time with the menus I've found online, figuring out what we'd likely eat over our 4 days there, and pre-paying ourselves.

Plus, with the package that we got, it ended up being something like 3 character meals (one is included) plus a breakfast in the park plus all those vouchers...we were gaining weight just THINKING about all that food! So we dropped it from our package and will just prepay our wallet for food.


The WDW dining plan sounds cool, though I'm not sure we could justify it (even though we both have weight to lose, we're really not that big of eaters!) if we had to pay for it...