Free Dining Plan??

[sleeping beauty 2]

I had originally booked room only at AAA for Sept 27 - Oct 3. But then free dining came out. Since we had no expiration tickets (from last year trip that got unexpectly cut short), it is costing us more to switch to free dining. So much for the free part. Here's how it breaks down, do you think it is worth changing to the DP?

AAA at GF LV Room only - 6 nights 2,388
Free DP & GF LV Room, plus one day park ticket family of 4 - $3,059.

Added cost since no longer get AAA and have to add the ticket is $671.

Will I make up the cost in savings with the following ADRs:

Chef Mickey Dinner
LTT - dinner
Coral Reef Dinner
Whispering Canyon Dinner
1900 Park fare - breakfast
One other dinner - Tony's or Le Sellar

any thoughts would be great?

 

[jjan]

The only real way to tell if it would me sense would be to check out all of the places that you would normally eat at here... http://www.allearsnet.com/din/dining.htm and check the prices and add it all up. For some people it is just not worth it since they don't do a lot of sit down meals, but for others it is a huge savings. Hope that helps

 

[beattyfamily]

What I would do is go HERE and look up the menus/prices for those restaurants and get an idea of what you'd be spending OOP. I'll bet just for those meals alone, with tax and tip, you'll be pretty close to the extra charge of $671.

But the DDP also includes a counter service meal and a snack.

 

[pooch]

several of the ADR's you have are for buffets so figuring out how much those will be should be easy. (don't know the ages of your party) Allearsnet will have exact $ but assuming 2 adults & 2 kids the buffets will be about $75.00 each plus tax & tip. You have 3 or 4 planned so that's $300 again plus tax & tip. Le Cellier is expensive as is Coral Reef. Really you're looking at needing to spend about $115.00 per day for food for the plan to be worth it. My family would spend that at dinner alone so lunch & snacks are just freebies (of course now the whole thing is a FREEBIE!!! Only you know your family's eating habits. We gave up $300 AAA discount and got $1368.00 worth of dining plan. A no-brainer in our case! Hope this helps!

Pooch

 

[joanchris]

Why not just save your non-expiring tickets for your NEXT trip? Since they never expire, just use them another time.

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

You have to figure out which freebie is bigger. Is it the dining plan or the discount on your room? Note that you could save those non-expiration tix for another trip. Or you could buy one day tix with the dining plan, use up your non-expirations, and save the one day tix to upgrade them on a different trip.
Your one day tix do not expire seeing as how you won't be actually using them.

It may be cheaper for you to keep your hotel discount and pay for the dining plan if that's what you wish to do.

It's $38 for adults and I think $11 or 12 for kids. per day (I rounded up) Anyway, with your character meal selections, the kids are going to go over their price in just the sit down portion most likely.

In general, any sit down meal that comes to over $24 as listed on all ears will come out to about $30 or more when you include tax and tip (which are included with the meal plan.) It's not hard at all to spend about $8 between a counter meal and snack so that's getting full credit value (or more) out of it. Of your selections, only the breakfast fails on the adult price. So my sense is you will go over that threshold but not by all that much.

So add up $38 per adult per day and add up 11 per child per day and see that that is. Next, get your hotel discount. Take the one that's bigger.