Do you eat 3 meals a day on the DDP? Should I eat lunch?

[Disney8704]

Im trying to find a way to cut some money back for food, we were gonna bring an additional $500 for breakfast and extra water plus do the dining plan, but we are gonna be eating buffets, 1 TS and 1 CS for breakfasts and then do a TS for dinner each night. We would have breakfast between 9 and 10, eat lunch around 1 and then dinner between 6 and 7. Only thing is I've read you get a lot of food and afraid me and DH arent gonna be hungry enough for lunch. Plus we might stop by the Mara during the afternoon to grab a snack and drink and head out to the pool or room for a small break each day. Cant really split lunches because we would have way to many CS credits left over. So if we skipped lunch and ate breakfast around 9 and 10 and then ate a small snack in the afternoon and then dinner say around 5, do you think we would even need lunch and in that case should we even do the DDP? My appetite is very weird. At home I dont eat much but sometimes in Disney, doesnt matter if I ate something 10 mins ago, Im hungry again, even when it is like 90 degrees outside. So I really dont know what to do. As for DH he likes eating 3 meals a day, just afraid we arent gonna be able to eat very much during lunch.

 

[Frantasmic]

How is your 1 TS and 1 CS going to work for breakfast?

I found many times that two meals are sufficient on the DDP.

There were a few times when I skipped breakfast because I was still full from the night before, but mostly, you could probably count on skipping lunch and just having a snack.

 

[Disney8704]

We will pay OOP for ALL breakfasts including the buffets, TS and CS. The TS is Grand Floridian Cafe and the CS is the Mara.

How is your 1 TS and 1 CS going to work for breakfast?

I found many times that two meals are sufficient on the DDP.

There were a few times when I skipped breakfast because I was still full from the night before, but mostly, you could probably count on skipping lunch and just having a snack.

 

[justplaingoofy]

We are planning on using our snack credits for breakfast. You can get a bagel, etc. Then using our cs for lunch and ts for dinners....

Hope you have a great trip

 

[amarberry]

We are not big breakfast eaters, so I always bring along some granola and cereal bars that we just eat on our way to the park or while waiting in line before the park opens. No wasting time in the morning eating for me when I have a park to get to!!! We eat lunch early (between 11am and 11:30am) and dinner around 6pm. Sometimes we'd save a dessert (brownie, cookie, etc.) from a CS and eat that for breakfast too.

CS breakfast is a bit of a waste, if you ask me. They used to let you get a fruit cup, danish, etc. for your "dessert", but when we were there last time, it was just your meal and a drink.

 

[Bev J]

WE like to get to the parks when they open and our kids don't like to eat right away so we will keep some cereal/fruit in our room if they want it before we leave otherwise we will make a stop at the bakery at what ever park were at for a muffin or something (like Mickey bar...LOL) we are planning most of our TS for lunchs around 1-1:30 and using our CS for evening dinner around 7:30-8. We think that will be plenty of food for us and I have a feeling we may be eating desert from TS for breakfast the next day....

We are also going to order 2 cases of water from wegoshop, that will save us a ton of $$$ since the case costs about what 2-3 bottles of water does

Bev

 

[*love*2*shop]

We are also going to order 2 cases of water from wegoshop, that will save us a ton of $$$ since the case costs about what 2-3 bottles of water does

Bev

I have looked into this too. BUT you should look into GARDENGROCER, the delivery Rates are WAYYYY Less !~,doing this will save $$

 

[krissyh]

Are you a big breakfast eater? If so, I'd do a late b-fast otherwise - an early lunch.

We grabbed something quick on our way to the bus - danish, fruit, juice (less than $10 / day for two people), had luch around 11 and our ADRs were all 6-6:30. We used our snack credits for extra drinks during the day. We were stuffed most of thetime and we CAN EAT.

 

[gigi1313]

i think you need to re-evaluate your dining/touring plan... if you are planning to eat breakfast between 9 and 10, lunch around 1, dinner 6-7ish and take breaks by the pool, *when* will you tour the parks?!?!?!

i suggest making a spreadsheet or table of days, dates, broken down into chunks by daypart (i.e. 6am-9am, 9am-noon, noon-3pm, etc) and then pencil everything in... you may find you are trying to do too much and not enough time... use this year's hours as a ballpark to get you started... it really sounds like you are going to spend far more time waiting to eat, eating and waddling than anything else!

you should seriously consider splitting CS meals... maybe using a snack credit to extend the meal... and if a lot of your CS meals will be at your resort, go for the refillable mug and get a bottle of water for use later/tomorrow as your beverage allotment...

if you do this you may be able to reduce the number of TSs you're planning thereby reducing your OOP costs...

another suggestion... eat the TSs you are REALLY looking forward to near the beginning of your trip as you may be too full to a) go or b) enjoy them near the end!

 

[WAHMto5]

We found that we were STUFFED with the 2 meals a day plus our snack. We spent next to nothing for oop food

 

[patsal]

I have looked into this too. BUT you should look into GARDENGROCER, the delivery Rates are WAYYYY Less !~,doing this will save $$

For water only it is even less to order from staples. Shipping is free and if you call the order in you will be able to control the delivery date. It will have been delivered to your resort and they will have it sent to your room upon check in.

 

[Dorisk3]

The two meals a day are actually plenty- you'll be surprised at the amount of food! I wouldn't waste my money on CS breakfast (personally our family aren't giant breakfast eaters and on vacation it just takes too much time!). What we plan on doing is using some of the snack credits for breakfast items (like the box of Entenmans donuts or beignets or something) then TS and CS for lunch and dinners. Also with a light breakfast you'll be really to roll- its better to get to the parks at opening rather than 10:30 or 11:00- then figure for a 11:30 lunch before the crowds descent on CS, and then dinner later. Everyone's different, I just wanted to share what works for us. Have a great time! Now we are a little cheap- but last year we spent nothing out of pocket except for some gummy bears in Germany for the kids and a Toblerone for me- and we were never hungry! If you get a little hungry between meals, just use the snack credits- it seems like a lot of people try to save them and then end up not using all of them by the end.

 

[sugarpie]

We never would have been able to eat 3 meals a day. If we ate breakfast at all it was a bowl of cereal or a bagel in our room. One sit down meal a day & snacks filled us up. Out of 5 days we ate 1 counter service meal. There's a lot of food on the dining plan and I can't imagine needing $500 extra for food, but I don't know how many people are in your party.

Another thing is all the time you waste at table service meals. Ours averaged 2 hours & I wouldn't want to waste 4 + hours a day eating.

 

[Disney8704]

$500 - $100 for extra water and snacks if we want any and $400 of it is going towards breakfast (buffets arent cheap u no) and a couple of meals that the dining plan wont cover. Like we wanna eat at Tonys for lunch one day, even though it maybe covered in the dining plan, but we wont have the TS credits to use it on because all our TS credits are being used for dinners and rainforest cafe in DTD, which isnt covered in the plan at all. Its just me and DH. I know we wont use all $500, but its better to have more money then not enough and whatever we dont spend thats extra money for souviners for us. Gotta figure. Each water is like $2.50 x 2 = $5.00 per person, per day. Which is $10.00 for 4 waters per day. And we are going for 9 nights / 10 days. Our snack credits will be used for water as well, but we would buy 1 more additional water during the day and 1 at the resort for when we go to bed. We like to have water next to us just incase we get thirsty in the middle of night and so I can also take my medicine. As for yours averaged of 2 hrs per TS, either you have a lot of people in ur party or u get slow servers. We've never spent 2 hrs in a TS before.

We never would have been able to eat 3 meals a day. If we ate breakfast at all it was a bowl of cereal or a bagel in our room. One sit down meal a day & snacks filled us up. Out of 5 days we ate 1 counter service meal. There's a lot of food on the dining plan and I can't imagine needing $500 extra for food, but I don't know how many people are in your party.

Another thing is all the time you waste at table service meals. Ours averaged 2 hours & I wouldn't want to waste 4 + hours a day eating.

 

[HaleyB]

Three meals everyday will be too much. Why not split a CS for breakfast and split a CS for lunch?

Beware of spending all your time eating too. One TS a day is plenty, they can take up to 2 hours to complete (even more for us, but we have slow eating kids) because the TS places are filled to capacity and even with an ADR a 20 minute wait to be seated is pretty standard, longer in some cases. The buffets can go a little faster, but many of them are not in the parks, so they still eat up close to 2 hours of park time.

I would rethink your ADR's and over all plan, unless you don't mind missing a lot in the parks.

 

[Disney8704]

Reason why I said between 9 and 10 is so we can actually sleep in a little bit. But I refigured things out and the only way we can do it now is have breakfast at 8, which means we have to be up by 6am. About an hr to get ready and I wanna be down at the buses no later then 7, so we can get on the bus fast so we can make sure we make it to our ADR in time, and if we have some time to kill, we will just look around at the resort we are at and take some pics. Last time we went down, we were able to eat breakfast, get to the park by 10 - 11am, eat lunch around 2 or 3 and eat dinner around 7 and we still got everything done. We didnt go back to our resort, but we arent probably gonna go back to our resort everyday for breaks. Only if we need one. And more then likely we probably wont ever go back, because we hardly ever need breaks down there. We arent like everyone else who needs breaks during vacation. We're the type to go, go, go. Now one opition we might do, is have dinner around 5, leave the park, go back to the hotel, rest for like an hr and head on over to epcot to catch Illuminations each night, except for the 2 nights we will see wishes and fantasmic. And then we will either go back to the resort afterwards or head on over to whatever park has EMH.

i think you need to re-evaluate your dining/touring plan... if you are planning to eat breakfast between 9 and 10, lunch around 1, dinner 6-7ish and take breaks by the pool, *when* will you tour the parks?!?!?!

i suggest making a spreadsheet or table of days, dates, broken down into chunks by daypart (i.e. 6am-9am, 9am-noon, noon-3pm, etc) and then pencil everything in... you may find you are trying to do too much and not enough time... use this year's hours as a ballpark to get you started... it really sounds like you are going to spend far more time waiting to eat, eating and waddling than anything else!

you should seriously consider splitting CS meals... maybe using a snack credit to extend the meal... and if a lot of your CS meals will be at your resort, go for the refillable mug and get a bottle of water for use later/tomorrow as your beverage allotment...

if you do this you may be able to reduce the number of TSs you're planning thereby reducing your OOP costs...

another suggestion... eat the TSs you are REALLY looking forward to near the beginning of your trip as you may be too full to a) go or b) enjoy them near the end!

 

[Disney8704]

Why would it be to much? Thats what we always eat down there. And Im not gonna be stuck on eating a CS everyday for breakfast. Theres only so much food you can get at the Mara. Imagine eating the same thing everyday for 9 days straight. You would get sick of it to. And Im not gonna travel all over the place just for breakfast thats a CS. I would for a TS but not for a CS. Not worth it. If we have our ADRs at 8am and if it takes 2 hrs we would only be missing an hr of park time. Not that big of a deal. Last time we went down about 98% of the time, we didnt get to the parks till 11am. Oh yeah, we dont like splitting meals either. DH gets what he wants and I get what I want. Say he gets a burger. How do you expect to split a burger? And most importantly he likes things on his burger that I dont and vis versa, plus what if Im not in the mood for a burger. To me splitting meals is dumb and pointless. You have CS credits. Its better to use all of them and eat half of ur meal then still have CS credits left over.

Three meals everyday will be too much. Why not split a CS for breakfast and split a CS for lunch?

Beware of spending all your time eating too. One TS a day is plenty, they can take up to 2 hours to complete (even more for us, but we have slow eating kids) because the TS places are filled to capacity and even with an ADR a 20 minute wait to be seated is pretty standard, longer in some cases. The buffets can go a little faster, but many of them are not in the parks, so they still eat up close to 2 hours of park time.

I would rethink your ADR's and over all plan, unless you don't mind missing a lot in the parks.

 

[gigi1313]

ya know what, methinks you've already got your mind set on what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, and i'm unsure why you are asking for advice...
but, since you asked, i'll continue giving it anyway... although i expect it to get shot down...

some days have a shared CS at the mara... other days have a shared CS wherever you're at... i.e. main street bakery (magic kingdom), sunshine seasons (epcot), electric umbrella (epcot), etc... that way you are less likely to be bored...

also, i asked in my other post, but do not recall seeing an answer... what time of year are you going? what are the typical park hours? also, will you have a car or be relying on wdw transport to take you to all these other resorts to eat?

do you have a park touring/dining schedule made up yet? would you care to share it?

we often eat two TSs in a day... but we schedule one instead of a mid-day break... say we start the day at AK at 8am... we schedule a 10:30 breakfast at donald's, so just as we're getting tired and needing a boost, we stop, relax in the a/c, fuel up and then get back to touring... so while dining eats up "touring/park time" it is in lieu of going back to the resort some days, thereby allowing more park time...
especially when the parks have the shorter hours...

 

[kaytieeldr]

DH gets what he wants and I get what I want. Say he gets a burger. How do you expect to split a burger? And most importantly he likes things on his burger that I dont and vis versa, plus what if Im not in the mood for a burger.

So you go to, for example, Pecos Bill's in MK and get a double burger, and an extra bun top for about an additional $.75 - then you split the double burger into two singles, and top using PB's EXTENSIVE toppings bar option.

ya know what, methinks you've already got your mind set on what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, and i'm unsure why you are asking for advice...

Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing

 

[nicky mouse]

Sounds like you could use your CS for breakfasts and use the TS for dinners and then plaly lunch by ear. You may just need a snack which you could use a credit for and your dh could use the snack credit to suppliment the cost of a full lunch. Or you could use both of the snack credits to get a bigger snack and dh could pay OOP for lunch.