olliesmom
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2015
- Messages
- 295
We will be a Disney in April with three kids ages 1, 4 and 8 at the time of travel. We have not used the dining plan in years, but the free dining for kids promotion has us leaning toward adding it.
We will be at Disney for 5 nights and have a DVC reservation that is currently split into 4 night + 1 additional night, so we would be paying for a 4 night dining plan (we would not add the extra night as we are flying out early on our day of departure).
I have done the math estimating the OOP cost for the following restaurants:
CS:
Captain Cook's
Columbia Harbour House
Connections Eatery
Gasparilla Island Grill
TS:
Chef Mickey's
Crystal Palace
1900 Park Fare
Akershus (breakfast)
Snacks: mostly estimating things like dole whips and Mickey bars, we aren't likely to have time to scope out the highest value snacks daily and the kids really just love ice cream.
We do not drink alcohol, but even accounting for sodas instead of expensive drinks, I am coming up with an estimated cost of approx. 1100.00 OOP vs. the 788.00 of the dining plan for four nights.
Even if we ate counter service the entire trip (our usual eating pattern without the DDP, sharing things and occasionally ordering kids meals for adults) we spend roughly 50.00 per CS meal plus approx. 20/day in snacks which would be an OOP cost of 480.00. Adding in a single character meal would put us over the dining plan cost and then it seems we might as well go for it.
Before I go ahead and add it to our reservation, I wanted to make sure there isn't anything I'm missing! I keep reading about how difficult it is to beat the DDP, especially without ordering alcoholic drinks. But maybe the free kids dining really does change the math?
Thanks!!
We will be at Disney for 5 nights and have a DVC reservation that is currently split into 4 night + 1 additional night, so we would be paying for a 4 night dining plan (we would not add the extra night as we are flying out early on our day of departure).
I have done the math estimating the OOP cost for the following restaurants:
CS:
Captain Cook's
Columbia Harbour House
Connections Eatery
Gasparilla Island Grill
TS:
Chef Mickey's
Crystal Palace
1900 Park Fare
Akershus (breakfast)
Snacks: mostly estimating things like dole whips and Mickey bars, we aren't likely to have time to scope out the highest value snacks daily and the kids really just love ice cream.
We do not drink alcohol, but even accounting for sodas instead of expensive drinks, I am coming up with an estimated cost of approx. 1100.00 OOP vs. the 788.00 of the dining plan for four nights.
Even if we ate counter service the entire trip (our usual eating pattern without the DDP, sharing things and occasionally ordering kids meals for adults) we spend roughly 50.00 per CS meal plus approx. 20/day in snacks which would be an OOP cost of 480.00. Adding in a single character meal would put us over the dining plan cost and then it seems we might as well go for it.
Before I go ahead and add it to our reservation, I wanted to make sure there isn't anything I'm missing! I keep reading about how difficult it is to beat the DDP, especially without ordering alcoholic drinks. But maybe the free kids dining really does change the math?
Thanks!!
