Is DDP worth It? Resounding YES For Our Family

[catne]

It'll be interesting to see what will happen on a shorter trip. Your's and the OP's trips were each 9 nights, so over the course of time it worked out. I wonder if the same can be said for the 3night/4day trip.

Don't get me wrong, I've done all the math - based on reasonable assumptions of what will be ordered at each location, and it looks like we'll save. But to what amount I dunno.

In your case that $1000 was over 9 nights and how many people? I'll have to pop over to your TR and check it out.

Thanks for sharing.

we've done the Deluxe plan on several short trips recently and have saved mega bucks over the cash cost of the food. For example on our September 2010 weekend trip, we paid $287.96 for 2 nights/2 adults on the DxDP...and the cash totals on our meals, snacks & mugs (excluding alcohol & tips) was $470.03 so once again, the dining plan was quite the value for us. We'd do it again (actually, we already are signed up...regular dining plan for a November weekend, and the DxDP for 4 night trip with son in January 2011. Even taking out the cost of the mugs ($28) we still would have saved substantially on using the plan. For us, the dining plans work very well

 

[Pontifex]

Much of the logic here is flawed (for us, not necessarily for you) though the conclusion is the same.

If I didn't have the meal plan I would be eating most dinners off site. So the comparison to what the cost of the Disney meal isn't correct since it would be compared to the cost of an outside meal which would be much cheaper in many cases. So I don't "save" nearly as much. So for a $120 dinning plan meal I may only be saving the $40 outside meal.

However, by purchasing (or getting free) the dinning plan, I don't go off site, I don't agonize over how much I'm spending, I get to try stuff and don't worry if it stinks, I don't feel tempted to throw my kids out the window when they don't eat the expensive dinner, I can get what I want, and my wife lets me get dessert since it is paid for even though I really don't need it.

So, in my case, I think it makes my vacation much more enjoyable though certainly not cheaper.

 

[NMW]

The deluxe dining plan really saves our family a lot of money.

Only 1 time have we used the basic dining plan (this was before they introduced the deluxe plan and it DID include appetizer and tip-2006 or 2007 I think). Our family still had to eat breakfast every morning. We like character/resort type breakfasts so we paid for them every morning. I don't understand not eating breakfast in the morning.

We also got very, very sick of CS food for lunch every day, so we paid for a couple of TS lunches. Standing in line for the food, spending 5-10 minutes looking for a table, eating in the heat is not so much for us. We like sitting down in air conditioning and having an ice cold beer or glass of wine brought to us while we look over the menu.

Then we wanted to eat at Yachtsman for dinner, so we paid for a dinner at House of Blues to use the extra TS credit at Yachtsman. We paid for dinner at Rose and Crown as well, to save the credits for Flying Fish.

When we got home I realized we had paid A LOT of money OOP for food but at the time, that dining plan was all WDW had to offer. Our next trip we were able to book the deluxe plan and it was a perfect ft for our family. We spent hardly anything OOP-just tips and alcohol and planning our ADR's was so easy. We had the credits for everything we wanted to do. We did 5 signature dinners, breakfasts every morning, and a few TS lunches.

If you eat like our family the deluxe is a really good value. I am always baffled by people on the boards who write that it is too much food. We have never thought that. Perhaps it's the timing of our ADR's? WE do early breakfast (between 8-8:30 AM) lunch around 12:30 and dinners around 7:30-8:30 PM. These are the times we usually eat at home as well. We might do a 9 PM ADR at Raglan Road to see the band, but for the most part those are our dining times. That's plenty of down time for our family to get hungry again.

 

[skier_pete]

If I didn't have the meal plan I would be eating most dinners off site. So the comparison to what the cost of the Disney meal isn't correct since it would be compared to the cost of an outside meal which would be much cheaper in many cases. So I don't "save" nearly as much. So for a $120 dinning plan meal I may only be saving the $40 outside meal.

I don't think anyone would argue that you couldn't eat significantly cheaper off-site. I have only argued that since we prefer to eat on-site, the DDP provides a good discount over OOP.

I could each WAY cheaper if I just stayed home, too!

 

[mmay60046]

I've figured out that the standard DDP will be best for us this upcoming trip. Here's why:

We aren't eating at any signature restaurants this trip. We like them, but out of the restaurants that our group of 10 decided on, none of them are signature restaurants. We prefer eating lighter for lunch so QS meals are just fine for that, and we'll pay for our breakfasts OOP.

I'm paying for our group of 4 that's part of a larger group of 10 for 7 nights during non-peak season. Our group of 4 includes 2 adults, an 11 year old and a 5 year old, so that's 3 adult DDP and 1 child DDP. That comes to $1049.72 for DDP or $1812.72 for DxDP. A difference of $763. Here's what I estimate for OOP food expenses for my group of 4 with DDP:

--1 appetizer/TS meal = $12/day = $84
--4 additional snacks/day = $20/day = $140
--2 refillable resort mugs = $30
--CP and TH character breakfasts = $75/each = $150
--5 days of OOP breakfasts at BWB = $40/day = $200

Going by that estimate we'll pay an additional $604 OOP with DDP or pay an additional $763 for DxDP. I understand that with DxDP all of those breakfasts would be covered, we'd get 4 refillable mugs and 4 appetizers per TS meal. But 2 refillable mugs and 1 appetizer/TS meal is plenty for us. And really I believe I'm estimating on the high end regarding the appetizers, snacks and non-character breakfasts.