How do we figure out if it's "worth it"?

[hkkatie]

We're planning our very first WDW trip next summer (2018) and I'm wondering how to figure out if the dining plan will be worth it financially? We are a family of 6, 2 adults, 2 older kids who will be 11 and 15, and two younger kids who will both be 5. Having never been to WDW, we don't know how much the restaurants cost, where we would want to eat etc. From past experience at different Disney parks, we usually just try to eat the cheapest stuff we can find being that it's all OOP. If we do the dining plan, it gives us the flexibility of eating different things than we normally would. My husband would still like to try and save money where we can, so how do we figure out if the dining plan is worth it for us?

Thanks for any input.

 

[DJFan88]

My very best advice is research. Go on allears, or the Disney menus, look at the foods and what you think people might eat if they just ordered what they wanted. Character meals are pricey considering what kids actually eat, so add that in to the factor. Add the tax in. Look at the counter service parts too, and also snack ideas. You also figure in the mugs price.
Then remember that if you do get the dining plan, you will still have to pay tips out of pocket. So, that is a cost added to your dining plan purchase total.

Research is the best way to know if its for your family or not, and what kinds of meals/foods you want to eat while there.

 

[sharonabe]

how do we figure out if the dining plan is worth it for us?

For starters, let's look at the cost of the dining plan.

The Quick Service Plan (QSDP) is two QS meals per night of stay (entree and drink) and 2 snacks per person. QS meals are like fast food.
This plan would cost your family $234.52 each night at today's prices.

The regular dining plan (DDP) is one QS meal (entree and drink), one table service meal (entree, drink, dessert), and 2 snacks per person. TS meal is restaurant with someone to take your order and bring it to you. You will also need to figure in tips for these meals.
This plan would cost your family $327.30 each night at today's prices.

I know it will look daunting, but what you need to do is start looking at the various restaurants and see where you want to eat. Do you want a TS meal every day? Would you eat mostly QS meals? How many character meals do you want to do, if any? Once you have an idea of where you want to eat, it will be easier to determine if it will be worth it.

Some other things to consider are how you like to eat on vacation. Will your older kids want "adult" meals or will they still be eating kid's meals? Do you want four adult desserts on the table at TS restaurants or would you be happy with one or two to share? Do all of you drink soda/tea/coffee at every meal or do you prefer water?

It takes a lot of planning and thinking, but it can be fun. Hope you enjoy dreaming and drooling over some food porn!

 

[SarahDMac]

I literally sat down and made a spreadsheet of "sample" meals we would be likely to order from different places we wanted to eat by looking at menus on allears and the Disneywebsite. Of course appetites may change, but it will give you an idea of what the ballpark figure would look like. It took some time but it felt good doing the math and realizing I would likely save over $100 by paying oop.

 

[hkkatie]

Thanks for the input. i really appreciate your responses and will spend some time researching the restaurants.

 

[TwoMisfits]

Thanks for the input. i really appreciate your responses and will spend some time researching the restaurants.

And don't forget - if you go for the Dining Plan with Table Service, it does not include tips and your family size will always pay a mandatory 18% charge, even for buffets. So, if you chose, say a Chef Mickey's dinner, you would pay $40-$50 just in tips for the meal (figuring that meal will cost you about $250 before tip).

If your husband wants to save money, with your family size and 2 kids as Disney adults, you may want to look at offsite condos with kitchen facilities. $350/night will add up fast (if you do the 1 TS/1 CS meal with tips). Even having 1 meal offsite and bringing in some snacks and drinks will save you tons...not to mention the room also costing a lot less...

 

[PrincessArlena'sDad]

http://www.distripplanner.com/ can help you figure out the cost of paying oop and getting the DDP. However, it uses it's own "guesses" on the prices of the meals you would choose, so you do need to take the results with a grain of salt.

In general, if you go to a significant number of AYCE and buffets (i.e. character meals) you can save quite a bit with the dining plan. Otherwise, it would be hard to make the DDP worth it without picking and choosing your restaurant and entrée carefully.

Up to date prices for character meals can be found in the first post here:
https://www.disboards.com/threads/buffet-character-shows-aycte-pricing.3108466/

We are saving 15% by using the DDP, compared to OOP for the same meals. This comes out to over $600 for a 14 night stay. We are also going to lots of character meals.

 

[marcyleecorgan]

Dining Plans are NOT meant to save money. They are a convenience of pre-paying and not having to count pennies at the table. Each and every time that receipt printed out with the OOP costs, we sighed with relief and scanned our Magic Bands. But we are a party of three and our DD is a massive sushi fan. OOP paying at Tokyo Dining dinner would have been an easy $160! Garden Grill? Another $130. The stress this would have caused us every four hours at mealtime, well, we were happy to overpay for the Dining Plan.

Saving money is going to come into play with your Hotel (on or off-site, kitchenette or not), your Tickets (Hopper or No Hopper? Water Parks? 4 day versus 10 day), Souvenirs, and Other Purchases (first aid, sunglasses replacement, etc.)

[Edit: I just realized this could be a great acronym! THOSE things! The E is for Etc. ]

However... some people "save money" because they eat at the more expensive restaurants and if you spread that cost across your party, it can seem like you've "saved money". As pointed out, the kids usually eat very little at Character Meals because they are easily distracted by a giant stuffed animal walking around.

Meals at WDW are just plain expensive, no matter which way you work it. I would suggest possibly ordering non-perishable food online for hotel delivery, splitting up the meals between your whole family (most portion sizes they slap on a plate are MORE than substantial for two people!!!) and bringing water bottles as they do have water fountains everywhere.

And remember... it's Disney so you actually have two kids and four adults when it comes to the food. The older ones aren't supposed to order off the kids menu, the younger ones aren't supposed to order off the adult menu. If you get a server who doesn't mind, they may ignore this, but the policy is the policy is the manager's discretion. I know for our small family, once we got enough dishes on the table, nobody minded when we asked for extra plates and we all shared bites of everyone else's meal. So maybe it won't even be an issue for your family...

YMMV but depending on how many times you have gone before, if you haven't experienced all the Character Meals, I'd say it has a higher value than say, before you've done 6 of the Character Meals. If you're not interested in repeating them, then the value kind of drops off... My family has done a small sliver of them so I am planning our next trip with Dining Plan to incorporate as many Character Meals as we can comfortably manage on a vacation that we still walk miles each day on....

 

[dolewhipdreams]

As others have mentioned- the savings totally depend on your food preferences. If you are already planning on ordering the more expensive entrees, then you may actually save some money.
When we used the DDP we found that it was simply too much food for us (we felt like we had to force ourselves to eat dessert at every meal which we don't normally do). However, the convenience was nice. Since we had prepaid for everything, we felt like we could order those more expensive entrees instead of looking for what was cheapest. So you have to balance the difference between financial savings and personal value.
Start with the spreadsheets/menu browsing/etc to see if you would even come close to spending the same amount OOP as you would on the DDP and then talk with your family about what is most important to them! Either way you will have an excellent trip and have some great eats

 

[hkkatie]

I really appreciate everyone's input. It's very helpful!

 

[chris benton]

dolewhipdreams has a great point - the size of the meals. Not many ppl talk about this when these, "How do I figure out if dp is for me" threads pop up. Some of the QS meals are massive, and if you can finish a 1ts credit Mama Melrose F! meal, you deserve applause. I could make the ddp "work" for my fam, but the reality would be that we'd wind up throwing away a bunch of food. The thing is, however, we would pay for that food we are throwing away.

hkkatie- just take your time, and ask more questions if you need to, but don't be at all surprised if your research shows you that you'll save money paying out of pocket.

 

[ilovevacation]

I think being "worth it" is completely subjective. We have done it in the past and I found out to be too much food. I tried to get my "money worth" and ended up missing an entire meal because I felt so awful from over eating. I did save all of our receipts and we "saved " about $100. Obviously it would have been more if I hadn't skipped a meal. That being said we ordered things we wouldn't have gotten otherwise like dessert. I don't plan to get it again but you never know...

 

[TwoMisfits]

It can be both too much food and not enough food at the same time. The lure of the DDP plan is to eat at the highest priced places...and these tend to be AYCTE and/or highly "designed" 2 TS food. At AYCTE, most people have more than 1 plate of food. If you imagine each plates gotten is probably 1000 calories (give or take), people can routinely put away 2-3K calories at buffets before you include the soda. That's a whole day's worth of food in one meal with 2 snacks and a CS to go. But on the other hand, some folks use the 2 TS meals and get a tiny entree plate and don't want to eat the included dessert and then have "lost" a meal on another day and come away hungry and only have a CS and 2 snacks for the rest of the day.

It is hard to balance the right amount of eating for your whole party on the Disney Dining Plan without undershooting or overshooting the mark for someone. It is easier to manage OOP...

 

[UpStNYmouse]

Another thing to think about...is eating out part of the vacation. For some, eating at signature/Epcot/TS restaurants is a reason why they like WDW. All the different options make meals part of the vacation too. For my family food is only to give us energy to get around the parks. Eating out is not that important to us...at least for now. So we pay oop and carry in snacks and hit the QS when we get hungry.

Think about how your family works and you'll come up with what works best for you.

 

[squirrel]

I priced out what I thought my niece and I would eat. She is considered an adult. I was looking at the QSDP. I had a reservation with one free QS per person per night and I figured out I would spend at least another $30 per day in another CS meal each (bringing cereal from home for breakfast). It was way cheaper to pay out of pocket than to upgrade to the QSDP from the 1 CS meal. I don't drink soda with every meal and I'm quite happy to have free ice water. I don't need 2 snacks per day. With the heat I may even feel like a kid's meal.

 

[William Ades]

Pretty sure everyone has made it pretty clear that it is all "in the eye of the beholder" and there is no real way of determining worth. What you could do is get a prepaid credit/gift card with the exact amount the dining plan is, and use that to pay for meals. If you have money left over, you know it wasn't "worth it." If you run out of money, you will know it was. The big draw back to that of course being the fact that you will now need to spend more money out of pocket. Also the only way to determine the worth effectively this way, is to actually eat the exact same offerings that the respective DDP has that you are debating (ie..1 TS, 1 QS, and 2 Snacks per day) and paying for them out of pocket.

 

[PrincessArlena'sDad]

Pretty sure everyone has made it pretty clear that it is all "in the eye of the beholder" and there is no real way of determining worth. What you could do is get a prepaid credit/gift card with the exact amount the dining plan is, and use that to pay for meals. If you have money left over, you know it wasn't "worth it." If you run out of money, you will know it was. The big draw back to that of course being the fact that you will now need to spend more money out of pocket. Also the only way to determine the worth effectively this way, is to actually eat the exact same offerings that the respective DDP has that you are debating (ie..1 TS, 1 QS, and 2 Snacks per day) and paying for them out of pocket.

This is all true. I would add, though, that there is another way of thinking about it.

You could look at where you would eat, and what you would order, if paying OOP.
Then, look where you would eat and what you would order, if on the DDP.

Many find that the two lists are quite different! Then, look at the cost of the two itineraries, and decide if the upgraded experience is worth the cost of the DDP (and also make sure that the upgraded itinerary is not less expensive OOP anyway).

 

[dvcdream4fld]

I recommend watching/listening to the recent DISUNPLUGGED podcast about the DDP. However, the story hasn't changed for years. DDP is only "worth it" if you eat at the most expensive restaurants, most of expensive entrees and use all your dining credits, which requires a significant amount of planning around eating. As others have said, DDP is more a convenience (because your dining is pre-paid) than a savings. I think you get same convenience and more flexibility if you pre-load a disney gift card and not eat the most expensive thing at every meal.

 

[1st*toright]

Either you can assume it won't be worth it (and OOP would be less planning and bother) or you can assume that it will be worth it to just know what you're going to pay and be done (either approach is perfectly valid - its your vacation!) Or you can do some kind of analysis to really determine the difference in what your likely food choices would cost under a dining plan vs. OOP. And of course, you could then run that analysis for the various levels of dining plans.

Being a nerd, I did the latter (spreadsheets, meal by meal analysis, kinda ridiculous). The only plan that made sense for our trip (this specific trip, with this specific group of travelers) was the deluxe dining plan, because we could double up credits for some signatures, share meals (esp. at lunch - none of us want both an app and an entree for lunch, but one app and one entree will be plenty for 2 of us), and we have many character meals planned. The deluxe plan will allow us to do all the meals we want to do for a little less than we would pay OOP (including tips in the analysis), and allows us to upgrade a few meals to signature restaurants (where we might have chosen less expensive table service options OOP). I figure even if we skip dessert a bunch and don't get through all of our snacks, we will still come out a little ahead. Many people talk about feeling over-full due to the DXDP, but I don't have a problem choosing a cheaper option, skipping a course or sharing a meal rather than eating food just because I "paid" for it.

On the other hand, this is our first trip and we have a lot of character meals planned. I'm guessing we will never do the DXDP again, because the economics would be very different if we weren't planning to pay for several character meals anyway. In my plans we "save" the most money (greatest difference between OOP and value of a dining credit) on character meals for kids - more than makes up for the meals where the individual price of our likely meal is less than the "value" of an adult DXDP credit. But I'm sure I will enjoy running the numbers to determine the best option next time too...

 

[dmea10]

Try this chart
http://www.distripplanner.com/