Free Dining ever at Disneyland

[SharBear4]

I've never planned a trip before to DL, but have utilized free dining frequently at DW. Do they ever do free dining at DL?

 

[blackjackdelta]

I've never planned a trip before to DL, but have utilized free dining frequently at DW. Do they ever do free dining at DL?

Never, at least not yet that I am aware of.

Jack

 

[SharBear4]

LOL OK then I know to not even wish for it!

 

[blackjackdelta]

LOL OK then I know to not even wish for it!

I guess DLR does not have to offer free dining to get people to come to the park. You can always wish.

Jack

 

[skiingfast]

I've never planned a trip before to DL, but have utilized free dining frequently at DW. Do they ever do free dining at DL?

Just be aware that the WDW dining plan is not equivelent to the DL dining plan. So I wouldn't recommend looking into it when compared to a WDW visit.

 

[SharBear4]

We are purchasing a 4 day Minnie plan for meals: I've been told that is a table service, counter service and snack each day of the four days.

 

[smile4stamps]

Skip the dining plan. It offers absolutely no value. In fact you can end up spending more on the plan than you do on the food. It does not work that you get a TS, CS, or snack of any price. You get vouchers for certain dollar amounts and you do not get change back if you don't spend that much.

 

[JadeDarkstar]

i love the dinning plan it works well for some familys

 

[skiingfast]

We are purchasing a 4 day Minnie plan for meals: I've been told that is a table service, counter service and snack each day of the four days.

It does. But it's not as simple as the WDW version. You don't have nearly as many choices of where to dine. In fact for all the TS you don't at all.

You will get a buffet TS Character meal each day. You don't get your choice of TS.

You get $15 vouchers that will cover the CS. That should cover most CS meals.

You get snack vouchers, that cover most snacks.


Few people on this board have experience using either dining plan. So I'll explain the often talked about WDW Dining Plan that leads to people asking about the DL Dining Plan.

In WDW. With free dining, you can save about %5 on a vacation package versus paying for the dining plan. Because of the variety of lodging(over 20 resorts) it's very complicated to figure out if you are saving or spending more using free dining because you end up paying higher lodging rates.


The basic WDW Dining plan gives you, per night of your stay per person.

1 Table Service. Good at about 25 parks locations and about 40 resort locations in WDW. Covers and Entree, drink and Dessert. Works great if your entree is a steak not if it's a sandwhich and alright on one of thier many buffets. You pay out of pocket for the tips.

1 Counter Service. Entree with side, (burgers and fries), drink and dessert.

1 Snack. Good for a set dollar amount, you aren't told this, but they put a symble next to the snack menus. So regular popcorn is fine but large popcorn is not. Regular bottle of coke is fine. Large coke on lanyard is not.


So the WDW Dining Plan is not wide open, lots of choices on where to use it, and you can eat items that aren't worth the value paid.

DL plan is not wide open, you have fewer choices of how to use it, and you can eat items that aren't worth the value paid.

 

[TheColtonsMom]

It does. But it's not as simple as the WDW version. You don't have nearly as many choices of where to dine. In fact for all the TS you don't at all.

You will get a buffet TS Character meal each day. You don't get your choice of TS.

You get $15 vouchers that will cover the CS. That should cover most CS meals.

You get snack vouchers, that cover most snacks.

Not exactly...we used to dining plan at Christmas...you are not limited to only Character meals on the TS voucher it is good at any TS restaurant.

On the higher plans you get a character meal as well but to get full value of the character meal voucher you need to to hit one of the 2 premium charater meals ie Goofy's or Ariel's. We did use our TS vouchers for the other character meals but we didn't have to.

Just be aware of a couple of things...At somewhere like CC you are unlikely to use the full amount of your voucher and you get no change.(we had them add tip to our bill so the additional money wouldn't be wasted) At somewhere like BB the TS voucher will not cover the whole meal..however you can use your snack vouchers or other meal vouchers to make up at least part of the difference. You just have to really pay attention to get the full value..like when we picked up snacks we sometimes bought an additional bottle of water for the backpack to not lose unused money. As far as CS goes we sometimes managed 3 meals using only 2 $15 vouchers at bengal BBq for example we only used mine & my husbands vouchers and we used the extra one when we went over our voucher amount at the BB. So if there are 3 of you you don't necessarily have to use 3 vouchers to get 3 meals depends on the price.

All in all it did work well for our family but our next trip we are putting the same amount of money on a Disney Gift Card to see what we spend without the work that went into using the Dining plan on our last trip. It will be interesting to see what difference doing it this way makes in our food bill and if we have "extra" money on the DGC on our last day we can DO EXTRA SOUVINEER SHOPPING!

 

[Huff]

No free dining at DLR and the meal plan as noted by others is not anything like WDW's. Its not designed to save any money. You get exactly the same as if you paid seperatly for each meal and the no change from vouchers means you could end up spending more with the plan.

Free dining at WDW sometimes makes a WDW trip cheaper for us that DLR even with airfare to WDW vs. driving 6 hours to DLR. Right now airfare has skyrocketed so we're headed to DLR and have to forget about a nice TS dinner every night.

 

[katesorad]

The dining plan at DL is a joke. We did the Deluxe Dining at WDW last time we were there and it was just amazing. The food at DL just doesn't add up. Skip the dining plan altogether.

 

[mommy2allyandaveri]

I wish, that would be a great pin to get

 

[Huff]

The dining plan at DL is a joke. We did the Deluxe Dining at WDW last time we were there and it was just amazing. The food at DL just doesn't add up. Skip the dining plan altogether.

Theres some excellent restaurants at DLR that are on par with WDW's. Just not nearly the variety and the dining plan at WDW saves us quite a bit every trip. Wish DLR had something similar.

 

[Funball]

yeah i havnt read to many great things about the meal voucher for DL, i just would not consider it, there is other options outside the park as well.. and most places like tony roma's is in walking distance