Is FD worth it?

[bukosluvswdw]

I am wondering what everyone's thoughts on FD and if it is a good deal. I have booked a package with FD staying at the Pop with QS dining. We are a family of four two adults, one junior and one child. If my math is correct I was thinking we would spend $100 to $150 a day if we paid out of pocket. 6 night stay at the Pop is $638. Tickets for the week are $1,125.52. So it would be a total of $1,762.52 for hotel, tickets and dining.

We have the chance to get a condo outside of Disney for free but we would then have to pay for food and parking where as staying on property we would not have to pay for parking which is $14 a day and food which I figured to be anywhere from $700 to $1,000 for the week. If we bought tickets through Undercover Tourist which would be $1,023.81.

It looks to me that FD is the way to go but I would like your imput.

 

[Belleofthehouse]

FD with my family is worth it! We now have five disney adults, so I save quite a bit with free dining.

I really do not have a desire to stay offsite. When I get to WDW I want to forget the outside world! You aren't really saving anything staying offsite. I say go with the disney resort and free dining and have a blast!

 

[SciGirl]

I think staying onsite is magical, and with FD, its a great deal.

Only you can say whether its worth it or not. Some people think yes, some think no. Eating at WDW can be expensive, so for my family, FD is worth it, but I've only ever had the regular DDP.

If the cost is similar, I'd stay onsite with free dining, if it were me.

Have fun!

 

[MK2010]

You're going to get a million different responses! I am a huge fan of free dining and couldn't figure out why everybody else wasn't. finally there was a thread on here somewhere and the light came on. Here are a few things to ask yourself:
1. Do you want to eat several character meals?
A. These are mainly buffet and fixed price meals so its hard to get them any cheaper. If your kids don't like character meals then FD might not be for you.

2. Will you eat TS meals? And at those meals will your kids eat everything or would they be happier splitting a meal? Will you and your husband eat a full meal or would y'all split a meal or just eat an appetizer?
A. You could enjoy a TS meal at a reduced rate if as an adult you would only eat an appetizer and salad, if your kids would share a meal, or if they would prefer to eat off the children's menu.

3. Will you feel guilty if you don't use all your dessert/snack credits?
A. We used our extra snack credits to bring treats home to make the vacation last a little longer.

4. Finally, alcohol is not served on the Dining Plan. It is an extra charge.

I have four kids. 3 are boys, and boy can they eat! People always talk about what a waste it is and how much food there is. All I can is those people need to travel with my family. My husband is 6'4 and my kids all look like they've been imported from the Amazon. None of them are anywhere close to being overweight, but trust me they can put it away! If your family is like mine then yes the Dining Plan is worth it. If they're picky eaters, (or God Bless you- have small appetites) then you might be better off without it!

How's that for an answer- just love it when people ride the fence!

 

[bukosluvswdw]

Thanks to the both of you. I thought the same but it is always nice to get the reassurance. I told my wife that we get EMH and we can us Disney transportation if we want and we do not have to pay to park if we decide to drive to the parks.

 

[TandLMommy28]

If you are already planning to spend a good chunk on food in the parks, than go for the FD! Staying onsite means not dealing the the hassle of traffic, no paying to park (no driving at all if you don't want to!)... With the dining plan, you are just enjoying your vacation. My favorite thing about the dining plan is that there's no sticker shock on the prices of food. To you, it's simply a meal credit. For someone who hardly ever eats out because it's a waste of money, this is a HUGE bonus that makes vacation that much more relaxing.

 

[Love Tink]

I think that, aside from the financial savings, the dining plan is a good thing for our family because it just makes our vacation nicer. With the dining plan (which we wouldn't pay for, but will jump at if it is free) we go into meals knowing we don't have to figure out who can split what entree, if we can get an extra cup to split drinks, or whether we can go to one of the nicer QS places. It makes things less stressful.

It's also nice, with kids, to be able to say that they get one snack a day, whatever they want, and they can choose it. My kids love that.

So the plan doesn't just save money, it makes the vacation better, in my opinion.

 

[wuzzy6]

This is the first time we're using the dining plan, and I'm super excited about it. We upgraded from the basic plan (which was free) to the deluxe for $136 per day for the 4 of us. (We are 2 adults and 2 children, but they're both considered "adults" on the DDP.) There is no question in my mind that, even without TS meals, we would definitely spend more than $136/day on food for the 4 of us. We were already planning to pay for the DxDP, so saving about $1200 makes the FD upgrade totally worth it for us!

As some of the PP have said, it's definitely a subjective question, and you will undoubtedly get a variety of answers!

 

[DisneyRunner2009]

If you are willing to pay rack rates for the rooms, then FD is a great deal. It is a lot of food. Do I need the dessert, no. Everyone can have what they want.

 

[Lyndsey]

I think free dining is going to be so worth it. I have never been on the dining plan we pay out of pocket every year. We are a family of 5 and boy do we eat...lol My inlaws keep telling me it is too much food but I am thinking it is not enough. All you can do is price out what you would spend a day on food and go from there. I definitely would stay on site it just gives the trip extra magic!!!

 

[Lynne G]

I like the free dining discount. For us, we have 2 juniors, so 4 adult, making the dining around $200 a day for the full dining if paying for it. Unless I can get a better room discount, paying rack and getting meals free is a good discount for us. We like to eat at a TS, and with free, even if we do not eat $200 in food each day, we may get close to that amount, and my kids can have whatever food they want, most of the snacks they want, and eating at the restaurants they want to eat at.

Three years ago, we stayed at POP, with free full dining. That was awesome. Though we could save a few dollars with the military tickets, I could not feed my family and stay in Disney for the price of the rack rate room. Now the deal for the values is quick. While I woud not be as happy with that, if you have no other better discount, or there is only a few dollars different from rack with free vs. discounts of tickets/rooms, is that difference worth it to you? What you have to do is look at the math: discounted tickets and discounted room with OOP meals versus free meal plan, not discounted tickets and rack rate. Even with some difference in price with the discount, is that enough to not have some meals already paid for?

Either way, have a great time! We liked POP.

 

[Masonmj84]

A couple of weeks ago, we did a week stay at CSR with free DDP and upgraded to the DxDP.

We absolutely LOVED it (and thought the upgrade to DxDP was totally worth it). It almost felt like we got a deluxe WDW experience at a moderate price. This was not only because CSR has the most deluxe feel of any of the mods, but also because by using the DxDP, we were able to eat a very nice (usually signature) dinner in a different deluxe resort every night of our stay. It was just so much fun to go to dinner at the Poly one night, WL the next, GF the next, the AKL the next, and so forth (we always arrived at least 30 minutes prior to our ADR just to have time to check out the resorts).

We were also able to do several character breakfasts as well as a couple of TS lunches. This also added to the magic (particularly the character breakfasts).

I think we would have had fun at Disney even had we stayed off site, brought our own snacks in, and gone off to dinner off-site (which is always how our family did Disney growing up). But, staying on site with the DxDP was just so much more fun and magical (the only way I can imagine that the experience might be even more magical is if we had stayed deluxe, but that would have been a lot more $$$).

Obviously, this would not be for everyone. For some folks, spending 1.5-2 hours every night in a signature restuarant in a deluxe resort would be time better spent in a park. To each his own (we're rope drop types who tend to get the parks out of our system by mid-afternoon - so a relaxing dinner in a signature was the perfect balance to a day in the parks).

 

[buckeev]

...My favorite thing about the dining plan is that there's no sticker shock on the prices of food. ....

BINGO! That's me!
For most of us, there are good points each way, but the math has always come out better. The character meal normal pricing seals the deal!

 

[GaSleepingBeautyFan]

For us it's not really worth it.

We don't do character meals anymore, we usually eat TS 2 or 3 times during the trip. We do breakfast CS or breakfast in our room and sometimes we skip lunch at just snack off and on all day. Although I noticed on our last trip that my 16 year old was snacking,snacking and snacking (I give him room charging privledges) so I think he needed a good lunch. LOL

On my last solo trip, I considered getting the DP but I had the TIW card instead (I had an Annual Pass) and it worked better since I received discounts on alcohol and appetizers which I preferred over desserts on that trip. I also had a 30% off room discount that I felt was better for me.

If the free DDP was the only discount available to me, I'd take it but normally I wouldn't get the DDP.

For your family, it looks like the DP would work well so I'd stay onsite and get the free DP.

 

[aubriee]

Not for me. I'm an AP holder,who goes several times a year, and at least a couple of those trips are always during the free dining periods. However, I'm usually solo or with just my husband or mom. I usually stay at a moderate. For me getting an AP room discount or a bounceback room discount, then using my TiW card to get 20% off my meals is a much better deal, plus then I'm not stuck with a bunch of two day park tickets I don't need every year (you can only use one of those tickets each year to get a new AP).

I currently have a bounceback booked for Sept 1st-8th. When the free dining deal came out last week, I ran the numbers, but came out alot better using the current room discount (and hoping for an AP room discount that beats it) and paying OOP with TiW. There is also the fact, that I am not a fan of most CS and do mainly an early TS lunch and a later TS dinner down there, frequently ordering two appetizers or an appetizer and entree (skipping dessert), plus I am not a snacker at all, so none of the DDPs really fit how I eat. With the basic DDP I have to pay OOP for several TS meals, but then have CS and snacks left over. The DxDDP has too many meal credits, so since I'm not a breakfast eater, I have to schedule a 2 credit restaurant every night in order to use all the meal credits and then have ALOT of snacks left over to get rid of the last day. We were just down there on the DxDDP FEb 4th-11th. Since we had our 3 y/o GS with us and wanted to do alot of character meals, it seemed to be the cheaper option, (even though I have the TiW card). It was a mistake. There was some mornings my GS did not want to get out of bed, so we wasted the meal credit for that meal. We used only three snacks for the whole trip, so had 39 snack credits to get rid of the last night.

 

[Zim]

We've done free dining the last two times we visited. I specifically plan our vacations around FD timing. However, this year being just my DD and I, we are trying the YES program.

Two 7-day park hopper + water park tickets with the YES program came to just over $400 and then I got a AAA discount for the AS Movies rooms (and hoping they come out with rack rate discounts later). With the room only AAA rate we are at a difference of $450 for not getting the Free Dining this way.

I COULD still get Free Dining by paying the extra $450 and getting two base tickets with our hotel ressie then save them for another time... and I've REALLY been tempted!! But we still would be paying for any TS meals / character meals. And we plan on a day or two at Sea World. So in the end I think we're better off just paying for dining this go around.

With the Free Dining, I will agree with one of the above posters, I was frazzled on the last day to spend the rest of our snack credits... there is often so much food on a plate, that we'd split meals. I'm kind of hoping by not doing the dining plan that I won't eat as much as I do when we have free dining.

Also, you'll see that TS restaurants book fast but it's always been my experience (with the exception of maybe the Sci Fi Drive-in Theater) that restaurants in parks are constantly getting reservations canceled as people change their plans. We never had much difficulty getting last minute ressies. I don't know if that's changed as the popularity of free dining grows. (Although I think you mentioned you just got the QS Dining Plan, so remember that won't include character dining).

Sorry for rambling!