How cost effective is the Dining Plan without free Dining. is it worth it?

[GrammyJudy]

We are not doing the dining plan this year unless it is free. We find there is too much food as the portions are large and we can split some meals. And I don't want lunch dessert...would rather have ice cream later if I want it. So if we get FD we will take it but if we get a room discount that might owrk better. Wish they would get the deals out soon!!!!

 

[herb102211]

I would sit down and look at the menus and go over prices. It does still work for some people but fFor us, the DDP isnt worth it anymore. We generally eat at more TS restaurants than the DDP would allow for the week, so we would find ourselves paying OOP for 3-4 meals, while having a bunch of CS meal credits left over. We tried the Deluxe DDP one year and that was way too much food, since we generally only eat 2 meals a day and then grab a snack or 2. Even price wise, youre not really gaining much value anymore. We priced it out last time and even if we both got a steak for dinner at Les Chefs de France, plus dessert we would be spending about $40 for the TS meal, a CS meal generally runs about $12-15, plus a snack for $4-5 ,and the DDP is around $55 per adult, per day, so youre really not saving much.

 

[MinnieLovesMickey12]

I would never PAY for the QSDP or DDP. If it is free it is a great deal. But we can always eat cheaper out of pocket.

I can buy 3 CS meals for the cost of the QSDP where you only get 2 CS meals.

I can pay OOP for a TS meal a CS meal and a snack and still come out cheaper than what the DDP cost.

I think the biggest rip off is the deluxe dining plan because you can eat WAY cheaper than $100 a day per person even if you eat 3 TS meals a day. Unless you are eating expensive buffets for every meal then you might break even.

But if all 5 of us are going getting the dining plan for free saves us a ton of money because we are 5 Disney adults. There is no room discount out there that can save us as much as getting the free dining plan. Even when it is only QSDP and we pay to upgrade to DDP.

If you have a spouse who gets upset by the high food prices and it might ruin your trip to have to deal with a grumpy pants every day at meal time, it may be worth it to pre-pay for the dining plan just so all the foods seems free.

 

[darnheather]

This thread made me curious as I have recently booked our Sep13 Package with free Dining. I went online and did 3 possibilities

The below is for 5 nights POR in a Royal room with pool view. We are 2 adults and 2 Kids.

1. FD package ( what we did) is 2473
2. Package with new offer of 25% Fall Room only is 2142
3. Package with Fall offer plus paying for DP ( 1QS and 1 TS) is 2870


Now We could save Money and only do the room. but the difference of 331 is less that what we would pay OOP.. We have BOMA, OHana, CM, Akerhus booked. That alone brings us up to that.


Where I would though consider payiing OOP is if there was no FD and we got the room only. Here the differnce is 728 Dollars. Here it might make sense to crunch some real numbers to see if OOP is better, especially with Kids.

This is what I came up with too. The FD package came out to much better bargain for us 3 adults 1 child than the fall offer plus paying oop for the dp or oop for food. I'm the type of person who really stresses about money in the moment. Putting a $2400 trip to Disney on the credit card no problem, but shelling out $18 for a plate of pasta would make me have an anxiety attack. When we went to DisneySea I didn't eat or drink all day because I was SO stressed over the price of everything. The next time we want to go to Disney if FD isn't being offered we'll stay off site and eat cheap cheap cheap instead.

 

[etoiles]

We do not do the dining plan because we would lose money with it.

Even though we did a few pricey meals such as Boma and Tusker House dinners on our last trip, we also ate at other restaurants such as Rose & Crown and Whispering Canyon. I am a vegetarian so my entree is pretty much always the cheapest thing on the menu so although I could break even on my buffet days, we would lose money when eating at a regular TS. My CS meal is also almost always the cheapest meal as well. DH is not a steak person either and usually orders something with chicken that is not the priciest.

Also we don't order dessert at every meal and we don't buy drinks, we drink water that you get for free from the CS places and add Crystal Light sticks to it.

Sometimes I also enjoyed having a cup of soup or chili and side of fries instead of a traditional meal and paying OOP allowed me to do that. We also ate around Epcot one day and could not have done that the same with the dining plan.

You have to see what types of things you would like to order and see if it is worth it to you.

 

[CutiePie516]

If you'd like the convenience of having "pre-paid" for your meals, decide on the amount you would like to budget for meals and put that on a Pre-paid Visa card or Disney Gift card. They're accepted everywhere and that way you won't get a bill after you get home and you won't have to carry cash.

We haven't actually done this yet, but my dh puts all our meals and snacks on his AMEX, so we can keep track of what we've spent. For our family of 4, all considered adults in Disney's eyes, there is no way the DDP would ever save us money.

I absolutely love this idea and can't believe I never thought of it. I never did the number crunching to see if the plan was worth my families' bucks, but we all agreed we wanted to prepay for our meals. There's 4 adults in Disney's eyes and only one child, we really didn't like the idea of having to run around to go to specific places to eat. Thank you for the light bulb!

 

[salemnews]

We're heading to Disney in Nov all ready made my ADR, for all the restaurants that we woul have not usually eaten at. Chef Mickeys, Ohana, CApe May and BoG just to name a few! We are banking on free dining being offered that week we are there, and all ready hearing there will be! We will upgrade for 19 bucks a day per person to the second level of free dining witch includes I quick service and 1 table service plus a snack! For people like us it makes sense to take the free dining plan and do the upgrade of $19 per day per person! So it basically boils down to $240 for the entire week for me and my fiancé to eat at all the top notch restaurant