Half board Meal Plan

[MJGirl]

From your vast wealth of experience, is the Half Board Dining Plan worth it??? I will be at DLRP for 3 days in July. Do I need to purchase this plan before I go, or can I add it on at check in??? Can I purchase it online? Does my TA need to add it on??? Do I need to phone in my request???

Too many questions ... So little time.

Thanks in advance for your help!!

 

[SandraVB79]

I have never booked it, but as far as I understand from the brochure, depending on which hotel you stay at, you can get one of the two half board plans. If you're staying in the "cheap" hotels, your half board consists of a choice of "cheap" restaurants, if you stay in one of the "expensive" hotels, you can choose between "expensive" restaurants.

Now we stay off-site, but when we stayed onsite, we always stayed at Santa Fe, but loved to dine at Manhattan, Walt's, etc. So, for us that would not really work out well.

I think you have to book it in advance, but not sure how, since I have never done it before.

 

[wideeyes]

From a report I read it is not meant to be very good, you get a different set menu from the normal restaurant with very limited choices.

 

[wideeyes]

here is the trip report

Now, I remembered that when I'd been to DLP before (about 7 years ago) it had been pretty expensive to eat so the thought of the pre paid half board menu idea had been great and I thought it would have worked a bit like the Disney Dining plan. Connor is a little fussy when it comes to eating and Callum tends to copy him with his 'just chips' request at mealtimes so we thought the half board thing would work well.
We were seated quickly in the Silver Spur and I used my terrible and inadequate French to explain to our waiter that we had the meal plan vouchers, with that the menus that we had been handed were snatched away from us (obviously before we could see what 'real' customers would be offered) and we were handed other menus that were a choice of two salads for starters, a steak choice of tortellini for main and two types of desert!. The kids had a dreadful menu that was a choice of burger (no bun, just the burger) with mash and beans or pasta with a seperate bolognese sauce with a pudding of apple sauce (yes, the great apple sauce makes a comeback in all disney menus - why? whats wrong with a bloody apple? why do they feel the need to puree it up with sugar and call that a pudding?)
To say we were dispoointed was an understatement, I know its good that 11 year olds are classed as kids in DLRP as opposed to adults at WDW but these kids have a full set of teeth! they don't need pureed mush like baby food for a meal.
They settled for the pasta, while we had a mozzarella salad to start, and the steak and fries for main, we gave the kids one portion of the fries to share as they were less than impressed with a spoonful of pasta each.
Mum and I had a delicious chocolate pud for desert and promised the kids we'd get them ice creams.
The drinks they supplied with the pre paid meals were less than adequate too, mums coffee was around two mouthfuls and after being used to 'regular' size cokes at WDW being enough to supplement 2 or 3 adults we thought the drink sizes here were a joke.

I made sure the girl on the podium was aware we had the pre paid voucher which was just as well otherwise they might have put us in a nice area of the restaurant rather than in a conservatory bit with wonky tables and lots of screaming little children. At least they had spag bol, chips, chicken nuggets, a beef stew thing, some fish and chicken dishes so the boys could choose something better than regurgitated baby food.
The food was ok but again we were only 'entitled' to one drink per person with the voucher so when we asked the waiter for another we had to patiently explain that, yes, we actually could afford to buy another drink, I mean the whole holiday cost around £900 so why would they think we can't afford a couple of euros for an extra sprite? The waiter obviously didn't trust us not to leg it without paying our extra drinks bill and hovered over us throughout the whole meal ready to grab the money the second I opened my purse. we played a game of deliberately waiting until he had to see another table then we'd all leave our table and take our bags etc to the buffet, to get some more food but really to watch him run panicking through the restaurant at the thought that we have absconded with ten euros worth of drink.

 

[chinhk]

The DLPfoodguide says all guests staying in a Disney hotel EXCEPT DISNEYLAND HOTEL are entitled to have this meal plan vouchers service. Why is that??