Ease my mind, WDW pros?

[thegib95]

Just throwing in my two cents...

I think based on the value of your room, you probably made the fight decision...

However, do not let others negativity scare you away from DDP, free or paying for it, it works for some and my family is one of them...

We are DVCers that fly and prefer to has ME pick up our bags and never have to worry bout a car...
We have done DxDp before but this year we are stepping down to just the Dp...
We always do small breakfasts in the room if anything, we have out favorite CS locations in each park and I made my ADRs as soon as I could and got all our favorites...
Could we eat cheaper than the DP per day cost, absolutely but when I am vacation I don't want to look at prices to determine what I am going to eat, it's whatever the heck i want.,.
Would we each order an App... No but now we get to try new things plus get favorites we know we will like.... And desserts we don't always get them all, but it's fun to indulge....
So for us we travel with some form of DP, it's more enjoyable!

Have a great trip.

And thank you both for your service!

 

[darnheather]

By staying off you are saving more money than you have saved on site with the free dining. I wanted to stay on site and played with the numbers between military tickets, Shades of Green, moderate resort discount, and free dining. For my family free dining came out around $500 ahead. It can be a pain to work out different variations but it's really the only way to know for sure. Have a wonderful trip!

 

[mm1971]

I was super proud of my Disney "budget" since we got the military park hopper tickets and found a condo for only 299/week. We made ADR's for each evening and that is where I splurged, but I decided to add it all up to know what to take and it looks like between food and tip we are looking at $700 for 5 dinners and a brunch? I'm okay with that,but I have been second guessing myself wondering if staying on property with free dining would have been less expensive? It's too late now, but I'm going to plan another trip for after DH gets home from Afghanistan.

Thank you

Most likely, you would not have saves $$ when comparing off site and food with on site and FD. The reason is that the lodging component is significantly lower most times. One of the reasons is that you have to pay rack rate for the room and purchase tickets to get the FD package. Where you could save is if you wanted and planned to stay on property, then it can save $$ depending on how you vacation.

That's pretty insulting, isn't it???? I have a family of four, all considered Disney "adults" and free dining is a huge savings for us. We like to stay on site, for th convenience factor and so we don't have to rent a car or pay for parking/gas, etc.

If we got a RO discount it might save us 20-25% off a rack rate. At a mod, that's about $40 or $50 a night. Please explain how I could possibly feed my family of four for that at Disney. Then tell me how I'm a "sucker" for taking advantage of this great deal. I hear people say this and yet no one has done the math for me to explain how I'm throwing money away. It's always just, "It's not a good deal," but no explanation why not.

Everyone's situation is different--some save with one discount, some with another, some by staying offsite. But to make a blanket statement like that is ridiculous. Each family needs to do some research, some math, and see what works best for them.

I agree with you completely. It really depends. Our family of 4 will be saving a good amount of $$ on our next trip (already booked for August 2014) by having the free dining. RO discounts are 20-25% at that time best case. That's whole $300 in savings off the room. I can assure the OP and everyone else that our family of 4 will spend a lot more than that on food for 8 days. We had to buy tickets anyway and the lost discount by booking with the package on the tix is about $140. So we either save $440 by booking RO and then paying for food or we save on FD, which I estimate at over $1K based on where we plan to eat. That's a savings of $600 over not having the FD plan.

We have taken trips where we wouldn't have saved based on our plans so everyone should look at the components and how they plan to eat and make the decision.

 

[Ladygoldenhair]

Each person has their personal experience, level. Our experience is we never eat that much food. We had two diners and SciFi lunch with counter dining plan.....BUT, it was $1,300 value room for two of us + the oop $125 sit downs.

I second guessed myself, first room only would have been $850 vs off site for the condo at $299 + $75 cleaning fee. Even without dinning plan we would save having a diner a night for two of us.

The condo has a lot of room, washer/dryer, place to have breakfast or snack at then end of the day. I have done both, onsite a few more times but after dropping the last $1,300 on a FD package I am not staying on site anymore when offsite is a fraction. The savings certainly leaves the extra for a nice meal if desired.

But, it depends if you are there for the food or fun experience. Three meals were enough for us. Even with counter service I had extra credits for two extra days ith out the package. They were good through midnight and I took back to the room Sandwhich meals from Norway. We just never were that hungry.

The kids don't eat enough even for free dining. For what you pay to Disney either through a FD package or OOP, off site savings is enough for an off season cruise, not Disney though.
So we are staying in a Condo, and using he savings for our second vacation, the March or November cruise.

 

[SEA333]

I was super proud of my Disney "budget" since we got the military park hopper tickets and found a condo for only 299/week. We made ADR's for each evening and that is where I splurged, but I decided to add it all up to know what to take and it looks like between food and tip we are looking at $700 for 5 dinners and a brunch? I'm okay with that,but I have been second guessing myself wondering if staying on property with free dining would have been less expensive? It's too late now, but I'm going to plan another trip for after DH gets home from Afghanistan.

Thank you

If you stayed on property with free dining you would have spent A LOT more, believe me. Free dining is for suckers and will not save anyone money. Don't second-guess yourself.

People are so weird on these boards about free dining.

One time I actually figured out that we were saving nearly $1000 on our trip (we leave TOMORROW!!!!! yay!!!) based on what we *would* do with free dining and what we would do without. For example, without the promo, we would stay somewhere on I-Drive (last time it was the Hilton Convention Hotel, which we LOVED) and did our normal pizza, burgers, etc dinners, went to Walmart for breakfast stuff and some lunch stuff, etc.

So, I compared that to what we are doing this time - POR, free dining, park tickets, etc., and we would literally have saved a whopping $11 staying off-site - and that was with us eating bare bones kind of food and sharing! With free dining, we are able to stay at the park for the whole day and try new places that I would normally say no to because they are too expensive - and would have definitely added hundreds of $$ to our trip if we didn't take the free dining.

Someone came back with a retort that I wasn't comparing apples to apples LOL I have no idea why....I based each scenario on hotel accomodations, park tickets, and food for the exact same # of days/meals/etc. There will always be someone who always think that the free dining promo is a scam, and maybe it is for a party of 1-2 adults. We have three kids, two of whom are "adults" at age 13 and 10. There was NO WAY that a 20% off hotel PIN was going to be a better deal than free food for 5 days...and even off-site (which, remember, someone told me was not comparing apples to apples) was only $11 better.

Some people are sooooo weird LOL

 

[katie111]

Just a suggestion for his trip. You may want to switch some of your character meals to lunch instead of dinner. We do this a lot and it is much cheaper. Often you can get an ADR as late as 3pm and its considered lunch. We often find that the restaurants are much less crowded and we get better character interaction at this time. Also, at dinner my kids are usually exhausted. We don't do midday breaks, especially when staying offsite in the off season, so it gives us a chance to rest & relax & then the kids can usually last for several more hours. When you get back to your condo, everyone can just have a snack before heading to bed.

 

[grainsmommy]

Just a suggestion for his trip. You may want to switch some of your character meals to lunch instead of dinner. We do this a lot and it is much cheaper. Often you can get an ADR as late as 3pm and its considered lunch. We often find that the restaurants are much less crowded and we get better character interaction at this time. Also, at dinner my kids are usually exhausted. We don't do midday breaks, especially when staying offsite in the off season, so it gives us a chance to rest & relax & then the kids can usually last for several more hours. When you get back to your condo, everyone can just have a snack before heading to bed.

This is a great idea! I will check the site when I'm on a computer and see if we can switch some. Thank you!

 

[Chief Powhatan]

I hope you have a great trip and thanks to your DH for his service to our country.

 

[grainsmommy]

Just a suggestion for his trip. You may want to switch some of your character meals to lunch instead of dinner. We do this a lot and it is much cheaper. Often you can get an ADR as late as 3pm and its considered lunch. We often find that the restaurants are much less crowded and we get better character interaction at this time. Also, at dinner my kids are usually exhausted. We don't do midday breaks, especially when staying offsite in the off season, so it gives us a chance to rest & relax & then the kids can usually last for several more hours. When you get back to your condo, everyone can just have a snack before heading to bed.

So I called and was able
To do this for 2 of our ADRs which were at the more expensive locations, so we should save $100 between the 4 of us on those 2 days! Thank you, that helps a lot since we just got a gargantuan repair bill for our house in Texas. Thanks again!!

 

[grainsmommy]

I hope you have a great trip and thanks to your DH for his service to our country.

Thank you so much that means a lot to us.