How to make DDP work???

[adctd2WDW]

I have seen here that the DDP is a huge benefit if you eat at a lot of TS restaurants. I am still not clear on how to really make it work for me. I am planning a 10 day vacation and do like to eat at quite a few TS restaurants. Enough that the Ts options on the regular dining plan would be used up by the end of day 4. However, I do not want to spend ALL my time sitting down and eating. The DDP includes 3 TS meals every day- correct? And it seems to = about $64.80 per person per day. I see that if I were to eat at Chef Mickey's (breakfast), San Angel Inn (lunch) and 1900 Park Fare (dinner) every day it would save me money. These are just examples, mind you. And, having done the math, I just don't see how to make it work. I am very OCD and a meticulous planner. I look at the most recent menus possible to calculate costs. I feel confident in guesstimating what will be spent on food.

Are there pros I am not considering? I guess I could just get the basic dining plan and only use the TS meals for those that are most expensive. Is this what most people do?

 

[Perditamarie]

Well, I think you can get more value from it if you eat at a lot of signature restaurants...like do a character breakfast/brunch in the am then top off your day w/a nice meal in a 2TS credit signature restaurant or 2 TS dinner show. Also, the snack credits and mugs add to the value. I think that keeping TS dining to 2 a day (or less!!) is a better use of time as well, so you are not ruled by your ADRS.......but face it, we are ruled by ADRs even if we just have 1!!!!

To me, the tricky part is you have to balance the value of your touring time w/ getting value for the DDP....you surely don't want to invest in theme park tix just to get to restaurants. But it depends on what your touring style is, as to where the greater value lies....for you.

Waxing philosophic about dining tonight I guess!

 

[rodeo65]

Well, I don't have the experience to answer this since we have never used the DDP before, but I can tell you how we plan to use it. We are using the regular DDP and are booking TS dinners for the 7 nights. There are three character breakfasts we want to do, so will plan to pay OOP for those.

When I looked into switching to the deluxe plan it was going to come out to another $248 each for dh and I, and another $70 each for the two kids. Those three character breakfasts will run us about $225 for the four of us. I had read in the UG that the best value use of TS meals is in the more costly dinners. We'll be happy with CS and snacks for the rest of the trip so the plan seems like a good deal for us.

I'm also obsessive about the planning and am just waiting for June hrs to be posted to confirm what I think our plans will be and then the 90 day out date for the booking (which is a scary process for me - what if I don't get what we want??)

 

[wilde_oscar]

think big breakfast and big dinner.

Breakfast before the parks open, such that you get there in time for rope drop. No matter the time of year eating breakfast early is a big help to keep up your energy and avoid the rush.

Dinner is useful to time it just before the night time spectacular, or right after the parks close, depending on schedules and time of year.

 

[serene56]

with the delux you dont have to have all three meals as Table service.
What we are doing-- a TS for breakfast. a TS for a late dinner and grab something from a CS during the day.

 

[Colleen27]

I have seen here that the DDP is a huge benefit if you eat at a lot of TS restaurants. I am still not clear on how to really make it work for me. I am planning a 10 day vacation and do like to eat at quite a few TS restaurants. Enough that the Ts options on the regular dining plan would be used up by the end of day 4. However, I do not want to spend ALL my time sitting down and eating. The DDP includes 3 TS meals every day- correct? And it seems to = about $64.80 per person per day. I see that if I were to eat at Chef Mickey's (breakfast), San Angel Inn (lunch) and 1900 Park Fare (dinner) every day it would save me money. These are just examples, mind you. And, having done the math, I just don't see how to make it work. I am very OCD and a meticulous planner. I look at the most recent menus possible to calculate costs. I feel confident in guesstimating what will be spent on food.

Are there pros I am not considering? I guess I could just get the basic dining plan and only use the TS meals for those that are most expensive. Is this what most people do?

What you seem to be missing is the value of signature dinners on the deluxe plan. We very rarely eat 3 meals in a day on vacation, but the deluxe plan worked very well for us because we used it for a lot of 2 credit meals. On the regular plan, 2 credit meals are generally a poor value because of the lack of appetizers and the fact that they aren't quite twice as expensive as one credit meals. They are a fine use of credits on the deluxe plan, though.

To give you an idea, this is what our deluxe plan trip looks like for May:
Day 1 - Narcoosees dinner (2 credits)
Day 2 - Teppan Edo lunch (1 credit)
Marrakesh dinner (1 credit)
Day 3 - Artist Point dinner (2 credits)
Day 4 - Yak & Yeti lunch (1 credit)
Chef Mickey dinner (1 credit)
Day 5 - Tokyo Dining lunch (1 credit)
Le Cellier dinner (1 credit)
Day 6 - Cinderella's Royal Table lunch (2 credits)
Ohana dinner (1 credit)
Day 7 - California Grill dinner (2 credits)
Day 8 - Brown Derby lunch (2 credits)
Kona dinner (1 credit)
Day 9 - Kona breakfast (1 credit)

That uses up 19 of the 24 credits we have per person for the trip, but as you can see we aren't planning on spending all our time eating. The rest of the credits will be used for last minute TS or for CS. And as far as value, the above meals adds up to slightly more than the cost of the plan, so the mugs, snacks, and unplanned meals are all over and above the breakeven point.

We did have a lot of snack credits leftover at the end of our first deluxe dining trip, but that was partly because of the circumstances of the trip (I was pregnant, avoiding unnecessary sugar & caffeine, and still in that uneasy stomach phase). Its a safe bet that I'll be trying a lot more snacky goodies on this trip! And leftover snack credits are easy to deal with - hit the Confectionary on Main Street, Goofy's Candy Co. or even the resort gift shop and get some Disney goodies to take the magic home with you.

 

[summermac]

Well, I don't have the experience to answer this since we have never used the DDP before, but I can tell you how we plan to use it. We are using the regular DDP and are booking TS dinners for the 7 nights. There are three character breakfasts we want to do, so will plan to pay OOP for those.

When I looked into switching to the deluxe plan it was going to come out to another $248 each for dh and I, and another $70 each for the two kids. Those three character breakfasts will run us about $225 for the four of us. I had read in the UG that the best value use of TS meals is in the more costly dinners. We'll be happy with CS and snacks for the rest of the trip so the plan seems like a good deal for us.

I'm also obsessive about the planning and am just waiting for June hrs to be posted to confirm what I think our plans will be and then the 90 day out date for the booking (which is a scary process for me - what if I don't get what we want??)

Rodeo, just FYI but you might want to use DDP for the breakfasts for your kids and pay for their dinner OOP. Character meals for breakfast for kids are MORE than the daily cost of DDP. Most other TS meals kids' fare is typically around $10 and cheaper than the breakfast. HTH!