Going without any dining plan

[rwdavis2]

It is always a math exercise

This. We have never bought the dining plan. It is not designed to save money although it is possible.

 

[maltdizzy]

Next year I am thinking of doing this no dining plan getting a prepaid card and putting the amount of the deluxe dining plan on it and using that to pay for food.

Unless you are getting a % off that gift card(s), there are probably better ways of handling it. Otherwise, if DP naysayers like myself prove true, you could end up with a few hundred $ balance on the Disney Gift Card. It is easy enough to open a dedicated vacation savings account, earn interest (ha! made myself laugh), and keep whatever you might not spend liquid at the end of the trip. There are several online calculators to help.

Either way, I would love to see the results of experiments like this. We rarely get apples and apples comparisons because of inaccurate accounting of tips and other additional costs. But I would be most interested in the overall mental hurdle. I think 9 times out of 10 people will end up paying less for their meals OO vs DDP, but I understand how some people feel more comfortable with the DP and others (like myself) feel comfortable without it, this seems independent of the cost.

 

[hsc3boys]

We have only had it on free dining offer, way too much food, does take up a lot of the day eating and has to be planned out so far in advance.
Other times I have written down every cost for food, drinks, snacks, garden grocer delivery and it always came to way less that if we had got the dining plan.
I don’t drink alcohol and I am mostly vegan with occasional sea food, so would never work for me. As a family we are not steak eaters and don’t eat desserts very often so the buffets are the best value for us if we have the free dining.

 

[NeedMoreMickey]

We use the gift card or Disney reward card (Visa) all the time. This way we don’t need to track out meal credits to be sure they are correct and we don’t feel like we need to use each credit because it’s paid. We’ve done the math, for us it’s less expensive to get room only and pay for our food as we go.

 

[MarkS2112]

We only get a dining plan when it is free. It basically does not work for us to get it as you have to eat the most expensive meals to get it to balance out. Plus on Deluxe it is way too much food and sit down commitments. Basically without the plan we spen less that. The plan would cost. There is no benefit to it. You prepay and know your costs ahead but generally overpay what we would spend getting what we want versus the high priced items. I can’t imagine eating the amount of the deluxe plan in the Florida heat. It’s too much and allot goes to waste.

Basically it’s a math exercise for you to work. It’s not a time saver with magic bands and the like so you have to see what works for you.

 

[StevieB81]

The only benefit to the dining plan is that you don't have to worry about the money anymore. You can make it worth it, but generally have to eat way more than you normally would. I've calculated it out, and we could make it worth it. However, we can do Tables in Wonderland (DVC), and TIW is ALWAYS cheaper than the dining plan.

 

[rdaky]

We have done it both ways and it's not worth it for us. Not only does it end up costing more to purchase the dining plan than to just pay out of pocket, we prefer to eat what we want vs thinking about what counts as a meal, an appetizer, etc. Sometimes I want my alcohol beverage in the evening or I just want an appetizer, or my kids want the Mickey pants ice cream bowl to share (which is not on the dining plan) instead of separate ice creams as snack credits. So we eat whatever we want and don't have to count credits, and every time it ends up cheaper than paying for the plan.

 

[scrappinginontario]

When I have free dining I save money. This trip I will lose money as I had a free dining bounce back booked for September. The 35% room discount is only about $50/night for our family. There is absolutely no way I can feed our family for $50 even if we share meals and only have 1 snack a day.

If I have to pay out of pocket vs pay for dining plan I would probably spend less than the cost of the dining plan but, it will be far more stressful. I love the DDP because it's paid up front and I don't have to think about every penny we're spending on food and drinks on our vacation. I live my life on a budget and normally our Disney trips are the one break from that we get.

 

[kylenne]

Unless you are getting a % off that gift card(s), there are probably better ways of handling it. Otherwise, if DP naysayers like myself prove true, you could end up with a few hundred $ balance on the Disney Gift Card. It is easy enough to open a dedicated vacation savings account, earn interest (ha! made myself laugh), and keep whatever you might not spend liquid at the end of the trip. There are several online calculators to help.

Either way, I would love to see the results of experiments like this. We rarely get apples and apples comparisons because of inaccurate accounting of tips and other additional costs. But I would be most interested in the overall mental hurdle. I think 9 times out of 10 people will end up paying less for their meals OO vs DDP, but I understand how some people feel more comfortable with the DP and others (like myself) feel comfortable without it, this seems independent of the cost.

We never do the dining plan because it’s a waste of money and food for 2 adults. We do the gift card thing, but we run credit card reward hacks to get them—I always buy Disney GCs from BJs at a 5% discount. And as a rule I can count on 2 quarters per year where I can get 5% cash back for purchasing those GCs with my Discover It card, one quarter always has warehouse clubs as a 5% category and another always has PayPal, which BJs accepts for purchases. Other times I take advantage of special bonus cash back or statement credit offers on my various CCs to buy gift cards. We save a ton of money doing this, we pay for everything this way including our food. So we have all the psychological feeling of having paid in advance but spending way less than the sucker’s bet that’s the DDP and eating when and how we want.

 

[Disney Bubble Lover]

The dining plan made financial sense for our family when both children were under 10 and we planned a character meal everyday. Oftentimes the one character meal alone cost nearly as much as the dining plan for the entire day.

Now that our oldest is a Disney adult and we no longer have the desire for daily character meals we will go without the plan (unless it’s a free dining promotion which usually works out to a better deal than a value or moderate room discount). I will miss the all inclusive feel the plan provides but I’m also looking forward to not being tied to long dining reservation every single night and having more flexibility with our schedule.
We also used snack credits on a daily Starbucks stop for coffee/smoothies and used the other snack credits to try things like Dole Whips, LeFou’s Brew, Mickey Bars, School Bread, fancy cupcakes and the Flower and Garden booths. We would not have made the daily Starbucks stops or added alcohol to many of our meals without the dining plan so it was an added bonus for us and we didn’t end up with a bunch of extra credits at the end of the trip. I can see where it’s hard to come out ahead with the dining plan but there are instances where it does still make financial sense.

 

[butterscotchcollins]

Have never done the dining plan, free or otherwise - considered it many times for the convenience factor but like many others have said depending on how/how much you eat you need to do the math and include tip etc. to figure out if it's worth it. Honestly our dining dollars go to alcohol and snacks more than proper meals so for us it's not actually worth it. Also I'm a big proponent of not planning out every second of your trip to make it "worth" it

I think regardless, putting the same value on a gift card and then spending is an excellent exercise in measuring whether or not you're over or under at the end of a typical trip and I think we'll employ that strategy on our Sept trip as an experiment!

 

[tguz]

We have used the qs plan twice because it was free dining. However, we will get the dining plan everytime now, free or not. It suits our style of eating and I calculated up everything we ate and the plan saved us just under $100. So, for us it was worth it and convenient.

 

[B-Ride]

If you prepay the price of the deluxe I gotta believe you'll have money left over in addition to a great dining experience.

 

[Gregory Paolini]

My wife and I originally purchased the mid level dining plan for our first stay, but we canceled it after doing the math. We calculated that we would need to eat $150 worth of food between the two of us, each day. While I’m a bigger guy, with a big appetite, My wife is vegan, so we seriously questioned if she would eat that much money worth of food.
During our stay, the nerd in me recorded everything we ate, and what we paid, including tips. On average, we spent about $100 total per day (INCLUDING TIPS), and we were` stuffed all the time. We generally had cinnamon rolls and coffee for breakfast, a sandwich and fries for lunch, a snack or two such as a mickey pretzel and dole whip during the day, and a sit down dinner. Among these were Yak & Yeti, Sanaa (3 nights), Via Napoli, Hoop dee doo revue and Ohana.
Could not have eaten more if I wanted to

 

[ShazzySteph]

We have used the dining plan in 4 of our last 5 trips. I do understand the appeal of pre-payng so that there is nothing to think about on vacation. I did feel limited by it, though. It had been on my bucket list to go to California Grill and I could never justify it on the Disney Dining Plan because it would be two of the table credits. Also, I knew that I could go to California Grill and order what we felt was an appropriate amount of food instead of the structure of the dining plan.

This past trip, we did not use the dining plan and it was lovely. I was able to have my bucket list meal at California Grill and we all split a bottle of our favorite wine while sharing other dishes. The rest of the trip felt far more relaxed, too. We stopped and got a snack when we were hungry, not because we were worried we wouldn't use them all.

At the end of the trip, my husband, son (2 at the time) and I had spent about the same amount of money over the course of the vacation than had my husband and I done the dining plan. That being said, had we done the dining plan, our son would have needed to eat off of our plates or we would have been spending additional money on meals and snacks for him throughout our trip.

I can work within the confines of the dining plans, but loved the pace of eating without it.

 

[rwdavis2]

We have used the dining plan in 4 of our last 5 trips. I do understand the appeal of pre-payng so that there is nothing to think about on vacation. I did feel limited by it, though. It had been on my bucket list to go to California Grill and I could never justify it on the Disney Dining Plan because it would be two of the table credits. Also, I knew that I could go to California Grill and order what we felt was an appropriate amount of food instead of the structure of the dining plan.

This past trip, we did not use the dining plan and it was lovely. I was able to have my bucket list meal at California Grill and we all split a bottle of our favorite wine while sharing other dishes. The rest of the trip felt far more relaxed, too. We stopped and got a snack when we were hungry, not because we were worried we wouldn't use them all.

At the end of the trip, my husband, son (2 at the time) and I had spent about the same amount of money over the course of the vacation than had my husband and I done the dining plan. That being said, had we done the dining plan, our son would have needed to eat off of our plates or we would have been spending additional money on meals and snacks for him throughout our trip.

I can work within the confines of the dining plans, but loved the pace of eating without it.

This is our thoughts too. Considering one does not necessarily save money on the plan, we find it less trouble to just order what we want. We found the regular plan was too much food as well. I really don't want have to worry what's included/not included. We just order what we want.

 

[kmartin]

My first experience with the DP was when I got free dining back in 2009. When it's free--why not? We have also gotten the QSDP and then just paid for a couple of TS meals with gift cards we'd loaded up for that purpose and for spending money. It was helpful when we had teenagers going and they knew their allotments to use each day since they were not always with us in the parks. The regular DP is just so much food and doing a TS meal each day does cut into your time enjoying attractions. If we ever do the DP again, it'll be because we got it free (if Disney ever offers this deal again) or the QSDP.
My husband and I are seriously thinking about not getting the DP on our next trip and just loading up gift cards and using credit cards for meals. One or two TS meals are nice to do, especially if there are some you'd really like to try. We are also wanting to go to a number of lounges that are new to us and order small plates or even some of the very same food served some lounges' main restaurants. I think that NOT doing the DP will give us more flexibility with our choices and not lock us into big meals. My sister and her husband who are Disney pros and go multiple times a year never get a DP. I think I'll follow their lead next time. Happy eats!