Do you do the DDP with Food & Wine? Why or why not?

[TPCShauna]

We are planning a trip to the World in early October, primarily for the Food & Wine Fest. I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to do DDP (or QSDP or DxDP) with F&W.

Have you done a dining plan with a F&W trip? If so, what did you think and would you do it again?

I'm trying hard to figure this out because I need to book ASAP before all the rooms get snagged so TIA for your input!

 

[TDC Nala]

I don't do the dining plan anyway but I would not do it with food & wine, because I would not go to enough restaurants or eat enough at them to cover the TS credits (I don't do buffets).

I would consider doing the CS plan just to get the snacks. You can use the snack credits at the World Showcase kiosks (at least you could in past years past years). But I don't like prepaid dining plans (I stopped using any of the dining plans when they were changed so as not to save the consumer as much money, i.e. tips not included), so I probably wouldn't do it anyway.

If you are planning a trip where you eat a number of your meals by either grazing around the World Showcase or doing special festival events, maybe a dining plan wouldn't be the best thing to have, but if you plan on visiting as many restaurants for full meals as you normally would, you may want a prepaid plan if you like them otherwise.

 

[3pletprincesses]

I did it the DDP last October. Early caracter breakfast with the girls, CS for dinner and I used all the snacks around the world between our meals.

 

[Chkultr]

We have used the DDP with F&W Fest. The snack credits work out great for us! We like to "graze" around the WS. We usually do F&W Fest a few days in a row. We try to hit the non peak times and days to avoid the crowds!

Note: it is the two of us with out kids!!

Hope to make it again this year! DW wants to run the Wine & Dine Half Marathon again!!

 

[chocolateMinnie]

we had it in 2009 because it was free but paid oop lots of snack credits for food and wine and didn't use about 3 counter service meals each.

Last year we paid in full for dxdp simply because we wanted to do the dinner shows and some signature and it worked out cheaper to do so.

 

[aubriee]

Oct '09 I was solo and did the DxDDP. Not liking most CS restaurants, I did the first available lunch seating and then a later Signature meal. Three days I snacked around the World Showcase for lunch. It was way too much food and I had meal credits left at the end of the week.

This past Oct I went with my husband and we did the basic DDP. We did an early CS lunch then a later TS dinner. Two straight days we grazed around the World Showcase booths sharing each item and using the DDP snack credits for things over $4.00 and then using a Disney gift card to pay for items under $4.00. It worked out perfect. We always arrive into MCO on the earliest available flight and then take the last flight out on our last day, so with the basic DDP are always two credits short. This past Oct for the first time we weren't, since we used snack credits and a gift card for our lunches two days.

This coming late Sept/early Oct I am going solo again and plan on paying for my meals OOP. I'll get a Disney gift card and use it to pay for my meals and to graze around the F&W Festival a day or two.

 

[TPCShauna]

I don't do the dining plan anyway but I would not do it with food & wine, because I would not go to enough restaurants or eat enough at them to cover the TS credits (I don't do buffets).

I would consider doing the CS plan just to get the snacks. You can use the snack credits at the World Showcase kiosks (at least you could in past years past years). But I don't like prepaid dining plans (I stopped using any of the dining plans when they were changed so as not to save the consumer as much money, i.e. tips not included), so I probably wouldn't do it anyway.

If you are planning a trip where you eat a number of your meals by either grazing around the World Showcase or doing special festival events, maybe a dining plan wouldn't be the best thing to have, but if you plan on visiting as many restaurants for full meals as you normally would, you may want a prepaid plan if you like them otherwise.

My thought is that we probably wouldn't eat many TS meals since we are planning to focus on F&W stuff. I was thinking of the QSDP because of the extra snack credit and because we split a lot of CS meals since they are so large. We will be doing one Signature for sure for our anniversary, but we can probably just do TIW for that one.