Help with the dining plan pretty please !!

[marivaid]

OK here's the deal. We are staying 8 nights but only have dining plan for the first part of our stay.

Checking in Dec 27 *VERY* late (probably around 1am). Do we still get credits for that day, that we can use later ?

Checking out Hotel #1 on January 1st, I *think* I read somewhere that we have until midnight on the day we check out to use our remaining credits. Am I correct?

Another thing,everyone is posting how much $$ they saved with the DP but we're only saving about $40. ALL of our meals on DP are buffets, and most of them are $20 or under. We could get a lot more out of the dining plan by going to finer restaurants in resorts (I would love to try Kona) but we really want to do those character breakfasts and such.
I thought of paying OOP for those, but if the whole idea is to get "more bang for our bucks" and we end up paying $100 or $150 extra for character meals then is it really a good deal?
We'll have to use those CS too. There are just so many meals you can do in a day, we dont want to spend our time eating.

OF COURSE the "fancier" meals we have planned (Le Cellier,Spoodles) are on the last couple days when we DONT have the dining plan. I cant move Spoodles because we're going for DM's birthday.

Last thing. Is the food at Garden Grill and Liberty Tree basically the same ? If I move Le Cellier then we'd have LTT for dinner and GG for lunch the next day. From the menus, it sounds like it's pretty much the exact same thing on your plate and the only difference is that you get Chip & Dale instead of Goofy.

GGGAAAAAAAHHHHH I'm going a little crazy here !!!

This is what we have planned so far :

Dec 28
Lunch Crystal Palace

Dec 29
Breakfast Donald's Breakfastauthingy
Dinner @ Garden Grill

Dec 30
Sci-Fi (lunch) OOP

Dec 31
Yacht Club Galley

Jan 1
Liberty Tree Tavern

Jan 2 * NO DDP *
Le Cellier (lunch)

Jan 3 * NO DDP *
Chef Mickey's
Spoodles

 

[bicker]

Do we still get credits for that day, that we can use later ?

You get credits for each night of your qualifying stay, and you can use them whenever you want from the time you check-in until midnight of the day you check-out from that reservation.

Another thing,everyone is posting how much $ they saved with the DP but we're only saving about $40.

We're saving around $120 four adults over five nights.

ALL of our meals on DP are buffets, and most of them are $20 or under.

Buffets will bring you to the lower end of the range, since they're a set price. And it sounds like you're doing a lot of breakfast buffets, which are an even lesser value (since all the dinner buffets are over $20).

I suspect if we were just doing buffets, our savings wouldn't be much different from what you compluted.

We'll have to use those CS too. There are just so many meals you can do in a day, we dont want to spend our time eating.

Well, you have to eat, and CS meals take very little time.

Last thing. Is the food at Garden Grill and Liberty Tree basically the same ?

Not the same, no, but similar in quality and grade.

 

[marivaid]

Thanks for the advice
I've dumped GG and going to pay OOP for CP and Donald's.

New ADRs while we are on DP are :
Alfredo's
Mama Melrose (lunch)
Liberty Tree
Yacht Club Galley
Kona Café

I'm going to end up paying about $300 OOP though but oh well,it's vacation.Not like we're gonna come back anytime soon.

 

[Calgary DISHeads]

What you may want to do is pay room only for your first night and add another night of the DP at the end. We stayed for 12 nights with a room only at each end of our stay, that way we only had to buy one CS at the beginning of our stay (we arrived at 6pm) and on our last night we had until midnight to use the credits. We still had CS left over and bought sandwiches for the next day. We bought 22 snacks to come with and we are big eaters. We did pay OOP for parts of a couple of meals ie: entrees and shared desserts and apps, and for a couple of kids meals.