How are you guys with the dp distributing...

[siestakeys04]

your meals? I see alot of people that say they have some credits left so i did a spreadsheet for myself and put down every restaurant and what type service. I should not have any credits left. (if everything goes according to plan because it always does right ) let me know how you will or did spend your credits and how did you have some left over.

THANK YOU!!!!

 

[waltdisneyworlddreamer]

We ate a light breakfast in the room. We don't usually eat breakfast anyway so it was no big deal. We brought some donuts and poptarts and that was sufficient for us. We used our CS for lunch and used the TS for dinner each day. The snacks we used as needed. By the end of the trip we had no credits left. I would highly recommend using your snack credits as you need them. SIL started out paying for drinks and such and then ended up having leftover snack credits. We decided to use all of our snack credits first and then pay out of pocket if we needed anything else, which we didn't. I loved the DP!

 

[disneyjunkie]

We used the plan last April.

At the end of our trip we had several snack credits left over. Before jumping on the bus to MCO, I picked a few items in the food court, (water, soda, chips, cookies...) to snack on during our flight.

We had snack credits left over, because the dining plan doesn't cover the type of snacks we wanted during our trip.

We carry a water bottle around the parks, so we didn't need to use the credits for water.

A few times we wanted soft serve ice cream, but couldn't use the plan for that.

We couldn't use the plan for candy apples, caramel apples, fudge, funnel cakes, school bread, dole whips...

The plan was fine when we wanted popcorn, chips or a Mickey ice cream bar. However, we like to try the other WDW snacks as well.

We're using the dining plan again this summer. I'm sure we'll have several snack credits left at the end of our trip. I'm planning to use them in the food court before heading to the airport.

 

[loralie]

I can't understand how people have left over credits. You are paying for them...why would you not use them?

Anyway...for my trip in May of 2005 I scheduled everything. The only time we wanted to pay OOP was because I wanted to save a TS credit for our last day which was lunch at the Castle. In order to do that, one night we ate at the food court at our hotel and paid OOP. I did have a few snack credits left at the end which I used at the food court for mickey rice crispies for the plane ride home.

Planning is the way you have to be if you want to use every credit. I think it is fun and worth it.

Have fun,

Loralie

 

[patsal]

No credits went to waste, but we did have a glitch of snack credits (12) on our last day as well as six CS left. We had breakfast in the ASMu food court and split three between the four of us and then we used four snack credits for ice cream bars in the MK on our last day. After that we returned to ASMu where we had three CS lunches which we shared between the four of us. DH picked out several rice crispy treats and bags of chips for our return trip using the snack credits in the ASMu food court. Nothing went to waste but with the desserts included with CS at lunch we often took them with us for later on, and it wa easy to see early on that three CS meals would feed four of us.
We'll be adding it on again in July, for us it is how we eat--1 CS and 1TS per day.

 

[SarahKate]

We managed to use ALL of our credits except for one TS. This was from one evening when my DD 3 was asleep. We had 6 snacks left over but one evening before we left we went to the Pop food court and got a couple of sodas and four mickey rice krispy treats!! They are quite yummy and you can bring home w/ you.

What's nice is your receipts will give you balances, or you can call your concierge at anytime to give you all three balances. I tried to look at this on the receipts every day so I knew where we were at!

Like other posters, we would pay out of pocket for certain snacks because we didn't always want what the snacks were limited to. And also did this for breakfast since we ate lite most of the time.

 

[pedro2112]

I can't understand how people have left over credits. You are paying for them...why would you not use them?

Our youngest DD was sick for a day and we ended up with 6 CS credits left over. We still ended up saving money, so no big deal.

 

[MomofKatie]

I can't understand how people have left over credits. You are paying for them...why would you not use them?

We ended up leaving 2 TS credits, 5 CS credits, and lots of snack credits unused on a 7 night stay. Why? DD and DH came down with terrible colds during the vacation, so they just didn't want to eat as much as they normally would. We ended up sharing 2 CS meals for lunch most days, instead of using all 3 credits.

On our last night at WDW, we had ADRs at Biergarten, but DD and DH felt so lousy, we decided to just hit the food court at Pop instead. As for the snack credits, we kind of fell victim to the "don't waste the credits on H2O at the beginning of the trip" mind-set. By the time we wised up and started using them more freely, it was far into the trip, and we never caught up.

Oh, well, we went during the Free Dining promo, so while we didn't use all our credits, we still saved big $$. Even with all the unused credits, I added up our receipts, and we still would have saved about $125 if we had paid for the DP vs. OOP for what we ate.

 

[MOMOFMNM]

we had 12 snacks left which we used to buy rice crispy mickeys for family here at home

then we had 12 CS credits left!!!! We got a meal to go for the airport and still had 8 left!!

why?? We would eat bkfst in room, have a snack at the park maybe...

and have an early TS (we used all TS credits)

then if we were hungry later at night we might buy some ice cream for WISHES or share a churro or pretzel or two...

we just shared and had tons of food and credits...it was a lot to handle for us.

I do not think we wasted considering we still had a 800 dollar food bill even with all those credits left!!!! So really it is not wasting, we actually profitted...

makes no sense to eat more just because of $$$$$ or "getting the most for our $$$$"

 

[dbenlee]

We normally paid OOP for a pastry from the food court in the morning since we don't normally eat a big breakfast. We then had an early CS lunch and an early TS dinner. With the amount of food we were able to get we had plenty to eat. We used our snack credits for Mickey bars, etc and the occasional bottle of water. Our last night in the parks we used our last 3 snack credits on 3 Mickey bars so that we didn't have any credits left. Over all we saved money and will take full advantage of the DP as long as its available. If nothing else, the convienence is worth it!

 

[mickeymousemom]

We always try to go during the Food And Wine Fest. so its easy to use the snack credits there(and boy, did we ever!)..though we did buy some of our snacks in the beginning, so towards the end we were using them at the F&W Fest like crazy. We never really "planned" how we would use our credits, and I would still do it this way. We did use all of our TS credits for dinners, becasue this is where you'll get the most bang for your buck, as dinner is always the most expensive(our most expensive dinner was at Le Cellier, which would have cost us(two adults, an 11yo and 16yo)$205 without the DP. We paid OOP for one character breakfast, as we always do CHef Mickey's for breakfast and we wanted to use all of our TS for the better restaurants. We did have trouble using all of our CS credits, just becasue we weren't that hungry with everything else. The last few days, we used our CS for breakfasts, then snacked around til dinner. It seemed to work out good for us that way. Sorry, I feel like I have rambled some here so I'm not sure I helped any, but just be aware that what the DP offers is LOTS OF FOOD!!

 

[halld6479]

we are thinking of getting this for our vacation and I am wondering if we can do this: we are staying on points at OKW Sun-Thurs then going to universal for weekend and coming back to SSR for three nights if we have credit left from the first stay can we use them on the second stay within that week?

 

[Wendy31]

On our last day, we had some snack credits left over, so, on our way back to FW from the MK, we stopped at CR & bought Mickey Mouse Rice Krispie Treats & some bottles of water.

For some reason, I was so "conscious" of the snack credits that I was really careful about using them because I didn't want to run out, so, in the end, we had about 8 snack credits left. Additionally, there were days when we bought things like Dole Whips which aren't covered under the snack credits.

Otherwise, we used all of our CS & TS credits & paid for 2 meals OOP (because we had planned for more TS meals than we had TS credits).

I did as you said - prepared a spreadsheet w/ columns for each day, listing the TS restaurants & the CS restaurants we had planned for each day.

 

[MomofKatie]

we are thinking of getting this for our vacation and I am wondering if we can do this: we are staying on points at OKW Sun-Thurs then going to universal for weekend and coming back to SSR for three nights if we have credit left from the first stay can we use them on the second stay within that week?

Unfortunately, no. The credits expire at midnight on the day you check out. So unless you get the DP for the second Disney portion of your trip as well as the first, you won't be able to eat on the DP past the first stay.

You could get the DP for 5 nights (Sun-Thur), then for the other 3 nights (Sun-Tue) as well. Since your credits don't expire until midnight on your checkout day, you'd be covered for Sun- Fri (with a little careful planning and possibly sharing a meal or two). You'll be spending $$ OOP for Saturday, but as soon as you check in on Sunday, the DP would kick in again, allowing you to eat Sun- Wed again. You'd only have one day not covered by the plan.

 

[new_mouser]

your meals? I see alot of people that say they have some credits left so i did a spreadsheet for myself and put down every restaurant and what type service. I should not have any credits left. (if everything goes according to plan because it always does right ) let me know how you will or did spend your credits and how did you have some left over.

THANK YOU!!!!

I'm glad I'm not the only one who does this. My trip is still in the planning stages, but not only have I created a spreadsheet, but I've also created a backup in case something comes up.

 

[AUTUMN SUN]

WE USED EVERY LAST ONE OF OURS, WITH PLEASURE!

 

[SnwflkCts]

I had a little spreadsheet too and it was great just to make sure no discrepancies! But I did not keep up with the snacks cause meals were large and we are not big snack eaters (no kids - just two adults). Also, drinks at lunch were so huge, and it was cool when we were at WDW that we did not drink extra stuff. There are lots of fountains to drink from too! We did have a couple ice creams and popcorn. Ended up getting mickey shaped rice crispy treats (to give to coworkers!) and some bottled water for trip back in car so it all worked out! Captain Cooks at the Polynesian has the rice crispy treats if you are looking for them.

 

[Priorityonecb]

Hmmm....I just reserved last night. We are staying 7 nights at ASMO, then going on a 4 night cruise, then back to ASMO for one more night. The gal said that if I had leftover DP credits from the initial 7 nights leftover, I could use them for our one extra night/day. Do you all think this is inaccurate information?

 

[Vijoge]

I can't understand how people have left over credits. You are paying for them...why would you not use them?

Planning is the way you have to be if you want to use every credit. I think it is fun and worth it.


Loralie

We managed to use all of our credits but on the morning of our departure we still had 7 TS, 6 CS, and 16 snack credits remaining. Fortunately we were able to secure a last minute ADR at O"hana for breakfast (used 4 TS), bought breakfast for another family (used 3 TS), went to Blizzard Beach (used 4 CS) for lunch, and then went back to the food court at the resort for tuna sandwich meals (2 CS) to go and a whole lot of chocolate milk! for the trip home.

It wasn't poor planning that did us in-we actually should have run out of credits-but the fact that all four of us got sick while at WDW, all on different days, so at any given time we had someone in our party not eating. That plus the fact that you get so much food at a meal that we couldn't find an opportunity for a snack!

 

[PrincessTrisha]

I planned out all of our meals, when we would use our TS (had to make the ADR's), when we would use our CS, where we would share to avoid the "too much food trap", when we would be able to enjoy snacks cause I love the mickey bars, and then I planned a little more and a little more and a little more.....eventually I had a table chart showing every meal, break, snack possibility, etc.

Honestly, things just did not work out how I thought they would.

For instance, on the day we went to the Christmas party since we were having dinner at 4:30pm at the castle (very early for us, we prefer to eat around 7 pm) we shared two CS credits (for the 4 of us) for lunch so as to not be too full. Now what I had planned was that around 9-10 pm we would be hungry and could again share 2 CS meals. Didn't happen - we left the party around 10:30 and none of us wanted anything to eat.

So, even the best laid plans.....