Is getting the meal plan worth it?

[demonavive]

This will be my first trip to DW so I'm not sure if the meal plans will be a good idea or not. Going with my ds and dd with dh. Also what web site would I look at to find menu plans? Do I just buy this plan via my hotel??? I'm am soooo confused!

 

[luvmyfam444]

When are you going? There's free dining starting in Aug thru OCt. Look at the top here & there's a link about Dining - there you can click to see the menus - it sends you to wdwinfo.com but there's pics of food, menus & for chracter meals it tells you whos there.

For us we're doing the free dining this time -but we went last year & brought in tunafish & crackeres & snackables for our meals. We've done it both ways...

 

[DonaldTDuck]

The best place for menus is
www.allears.net
Just click on dining at the top of the page. There are also reviews available if you click on rate and review.
And the dining plan is great if you plan on eating at WDW. It's a lot of food, and all I've had was great. Just make sure to make those ADRs.

 

[demonavive]

what's ADRs?

 

[Tricia1972]

It's an acronym for Advanced Dining Reservation.

You can call Disney Dining 90 days prior to checking into your Disney resort and make dining reservations for Table Service (TS) locations for your whole trip (up to 10 days)

If you are staying off site, you call Disney Dining 90 days prior to dining at a specific restaurant to make a reservation to eat there.

The dining line number is (407) WDW-DINE

It's not a true dining reservation, but it holds your place in line and you'll be seated at the next available table for your party size after your reservation time.

 

[Momto2PrncChrmgs]

It depends on how you like to eat to see if it's a good value for your family. We like the one counter and one table service meal/day, so the regular DDP works for us. I LOVE the planning, so we're able to plan 3 months ahead of time where we're going to eat. If you're a "fly by the seat of your pants" kind of vacationer, it's probably not a good deal for you because you have to schedule!

That being said, as the plan gets more restrictive each year, for our last trip in Jan, I made a dorky spreadsheet and went thru the menus on allears.net, figured what my family would "probably" order, and added up the price vs. what we'd pay out of pocket. It came our real close to even BUT we wouldn't normally order dessert (we would with the DDP!) and I'd stress about every penny we spend, so I'd end up not order what I wanted (filet) in order to save a couple of bucks. With the DDP, it's already paid for, I get to order what I want and I don't stress! For us IT WORKS!

I'm anxious to see what, if any, changes they're going to make to it this year when the new prices come out!

 

[csp131]

I often checked Allears.net for the menus and plans for my trip.

 

[Jenna319]

I also keep asking myself this question..... is it worth it? Right now, I have a room-only reservation booked for 6 nights at POR for $648.... it's just me and DH, we are not huge eaters but I do have several reservations booked at the Disney restaurants, including Chef Mickey, Ohana, Marakkesh, and the expensive 2-credit Jiko for DH's bday.... we don't care about having dessert so if having to pay for it, we wouldn't.... when I called the other day to price the difference between my current reservation and adding on the dining with just a 1-day base ticket (since we already have tickets), it was $700 more!!! I'm assuming they included the price of vacation insurance, which I would decline to purchase and when checking prices by myself online, found the difference to be closer to $500 more..... I know I only have till sunday to change my mind so any help deciding this difficult decision for me is greatly appreciated!!!! Pros- it's so great to have your food all paid for and not have to worry about bringing so much cash..... Cons- it doesn't include tax and tip anymore.... also, when I booked the room-only, I paid $300 of it already using Disney gift cards that I threw out once I applied the credit to my reservation.... if I changed my reservation now, would that $300 payment I already made be applied to the new reservation or would they be asking for the Disney gift card numbers again, which I dont have anymore..... therefore, making my decision for me that I can't change it!

 

[iloveeeyore]

"Is it worth it?" The answer is "it depends." It depends on your family's needs, on what you plan to eat and where. We have learned how to "work it" so that it saves us SOME money, but mostly, it is very convenient having the food already paid for and not having to worry about what we're ordering. Making it "worth it" from a monetary perspective definitely requires some advanced planning, as mentioned above.

We get the regular DDP and generally use our snack credits for quick on-the-go breakfasts, our counter service credits for lunches, and our table service credits for dinners. When on the DDP, we tend to select the more pricey restaurants and order the more expensive entrees (because we enjoy them and probably wouldn't choose them if we paid OOP). If we go to a dinner show, we pay for that OOP so we can buy the tier 1 seating, and use our "extra" TS credit to dine at a signature restaurant one night.

 

[iloveeeyore]

I also keep asking myself this question..... is it worth it? Right now, I have a room-only reservation booked for 6 nights at POR for $648.... it's just me and DH, we are not huge eaters but I do have several reservations booked at the Disney restaurants, including Chef Mickey, Ohana, Marakkesh, and the expensive 2-credit Jiko for DH's bday.... we don't care about having dessert so if having to pay for it, we wouldn't.... when I called the other day to price the difference between my current reservation and adding on the dining with just a 1-day base ticket (since we already have tickets), it was $700 more!!! I'm assuming they included the price of vacation insurance, which I would decline to purchase and when checking prices by myself online, found the difference to be closer to $500 more..... I know I only have till sunday to change my mind so any help deciding this difficult decision for me is greatly appreciated!!!! Pros- it's so great to have your food all paid for and not have to worry about bringing so much cash..... Cons- it doesn't include tax and tip anymore.... also, when I booked the room-only, I paid $300 of it already using Disney gift cards that I threw out once I applied the credit to my reservation.... if I changed my reservation now, would that $300 payment I already made be applied to the new reservation or would they be asking for the Disney gift card numbers again, which I dont have anymore..... therefore, making my decision for me that I can't change it!

I would think that dining for two at those 4 restaurants that you mentioned would come close to around $250? (I'm really just estimating here). Then you add on breakfasts and lunches and another dinner for six days...I don't know, you really have to do the math. I agree about the desserts being kind of a waste. Our family of 4 always likes to order one or two appetizers to share and maybe two desserts to split when we go out together (not on DDP). It's hard to figure the "value" of those desserts. We end up usually really enjoying them (what we can eat of them, anyway), but wouldn't buy them if we had to pay. Especially not for lunch AND dinner. (I think Disney should reevaluate that part of the DDP. Maybe people should have the choice of an appetizer OR a dessert with dinner and side salad or cup of soup vs. dessert at lunch.)

BTW, you said tax and tip not included in DDP. I thought tax WAS included? I'm pretty sure in 2008 we only had to pay the tip OOP?

 

[iloveeeyore]

I'm pretty sure you can't buy the DDP at the hotel. You have to have a package in advance, and you have to be staying at a Disney resort. I think you have up to 48 hours before you arrive to add DDP to your package, but I'm not sure...you can probably get this infor from one of the sticky's at the top of this board, or check out the WDW website.

 

[3boymthr]

Well....

I just started a thread about this the other day. For us it was definitely worth it.

The text of my post:

I saved $338.34 using the DDP . Which was pretty darn close to what I estimated.

but....

I also spent $129.64 OOP on drinks, snacks, breakfast items and that final meal our last day. Most of the cost was drinks because DH refused to bring in cases of water or soda from outside saying we should drink the water out of the fountains because it was free He was the only one who could stand it. Ick!

and...

Of that $338.34 there was $75 - $100 worth of desserts which I probably would not have bought if they hadn't been included on our plan. That's not the total spent on desserts but I figure I would have bought them at at least one meal as a treat and several days instead of getting a cookie or mickey bar with lunch I would have bought one later in the afternoon.

Soo...

I'm feeling pretty good about my decision.

My DH likes to eat a sit down meal every day. We ate mostly dinners for TS. We only did one breakfast character meal but did do Chef Mickey's dinner. Our QS meals were not at expensive places because the kids are very particular about their food so places like Sunshine Seasons were out - we averaged about $53/qs meal for the 5 of us - which is about what we would have payed anyway except the desserts for everyone at every meal -which as I stated above I would have ended up buying later as a snack. Two of our TS meals were at the more expensive 1 credit restaurants (Tutto, Chefs) but we didn't choose them because of price but because these are the types of food we like.

Would we do it again, definitely. Is it the right choice for everyone, no.

It was a lot of work planning where we'd be for dinner months in advance.

Those TS meals definitely cut into our time at the parks and cut into the freedom of our days. Having to leave DHS early because we had an ADR at CM was definitely not good.

The best part of the DDP for me though was knowing that I didn't fret about how much we were paying for food every second of every day. Not once did I have to tell my foodie of a DS that he couldn't order what he wanted becaue it wasn't on the plan. Being able to get rootbeer floats for everyone and have them be a snack credit was really refreshing .

DH on the other hand was very frustrated that we couldn't find a single DDP location place that included corndogs - not to say they aren't there just that we couldn't find them .