If you don't do the dining plan...

[ccgirl]

We had the dining plan this time and ended up with extra credits. We did the 1 TS, 1CS and 1 snack per day and found that was too much food for us. Keep in mind that a dessert is included with each meal. We were flying Southwest so I also packed a small suitcase with just snacks as we could bring 2 suitcases per person. I had granola bars, popcorn, drink mixes, trailmix. I also carried on bananas and apples. As others mentioned, you can also get food delivered. In your situation, I wouldn't think the $$ spent on the dining plan would not be worth it. Take a look at allears.net and go to dining. They have all of the restaurants along with their menus so you can see what you would pay OOP (out of pocket) if you didn't have the dining plan. Have fun!

 

[cglaura]

If you don't do the dining plan ... you will miss out. take adv of this by choosing great full service restaurants like captains grill, and maya grill

I think this largely depends on how you eat and how you tour the parks. If you don't eat alot normally and don't view dining as a form of entertainment, then you wouldn't be missing anything.

I think the major drawback for us is 1. Too much food. 2. Being locked into a specific park (if not hopping) and having to be somewhere at a specific time everyday.

We do get 1 or 2 TS meals, but for the rest of the time we just realize "Hey we're hungry" and then find something to eat.

But we are more the eat to live, not live to eat type of family. Dining doesn't factor into our vacation experience. I understand this is totally opposite for some (my mom is like that, she plans her trips around restaurants, to her and my step dad, their dining is an event in and of itself).

I think the only way to really know if it is of value to you is to check out the dining menus and pics, see if the portions are something you'd normally eat. If not, then you'd be better off paying as you go. We split alot of meals or purchase smaller portions, so we average around $35 per day for 2 people ages 41 and 18, for lunch, dinner and some snacks (we eat breakfast in the room). This doesn't include the 1 or 2 TS meals. Alot of times I'll save the fruit from lunch for a snack later on.

 

[Ariel on Land]

Squirrel hit the nail on the head- it all just depends on what/how/where you want to eat! We can go w/out DDP and definitely eat under what the DDP costs, but we're not able to eat where we want! The DDP costs for one day for our family of four is MUCH less than what we'd spend on a nice TS dinner. So on top of that nice TS dinner we also get a CS meal and a snack! We could live on a CS meal in the park, breakfast in the room, snacks brought from home and a meal offsite for much less, but for us, one of the reasons we go to WDW is the food!! (And the biggest reason we haven't made it out to DL yet!! They just don't have the food that WDW has!! )

So just figure out where and what you want to eat and you can decide which is cheaper pretty easily!

 

[christinec68]

We don't purchase the dining plan because they don't suit how we eat and I like having the option to cancel an ADR without basically forfeiting the money we paid to Disney for that meal. We just budget for food for our vacation like we would if we went anywhere else.

As it's been pointed out in several other posts, the dining plan is only worth it if you would normally eat in the manner laid out by the DP. If you have to alter your preferences then you aren't really going to enjoy your meals and what's the point of that?

 

[n2mm]

We have done all 3 dining plans and we are TiW cardholders. We find we did not save any money using the ddp and found it stressful. Esp. when we really wanted to skip a TS meal, but felt obligated to eat it because we didn't want to lose the TS credit. Using the TiW discount costs us much less than buying the ddp. We still eat at all of the places we always eat at (LeCellier, Kona, Coral Reef, 50s PT), but we can buy appetizers to split and skip deserts. With the discounts we actually come out better than using the ddp. And if we want to skip dinner and share a sandwich at Beaches and Cream and save room for desert we don't have to feel like we are wasting a credit. I actually did 5 nights on the delux ddp last summer and kept track of the price and what I would've actually bought and found there was no savings for us. By the end of the trip, I had a frig full of deserts. We won't do that again. We get 5-6 trips out of our TiW card, so it pays for itself very quickly, esp. when we are traveling with a party of 10! I find using the TiW is perfect for us and when we want to change our plans, it's not a big deal. And no, we don't cook in our room either. Though when we do have a kitchen and the grandkids are with us, it's nice to throw some pancakes in the microwave for a quick and inexpensive breakfast!