Is Meal Plan worth it?

[Lisa loves Pooh]

We will be traveling with 2 adults and 2 kids 12 and 7. Is having a meal plan worth getting?

It really depends.

We have gotten it a couple of times. We usually only get it when we have enough TS ADR's in our plan that makes us easily break even without even trying hard. So one trip that was BOG and WC for a two night stay.

Otherwise, we usually don't get it because it will cost us more than if we just pay OOP. My husband just likes the idea of meals being already paid for. But we usually don't get it.

 

[JimmyV]

The reality is, there's no way to truly know if a meal plan is a good deal/money saver until after a trip is complete. While it's all fine and dandy to go to a website and plug in your plans, there is no way to know if you're really going to eat those exact meals until you're literally sitting in the restaurant and placing your order.

As the saying goes:

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is."

The best laid schemes of [cartoon] mice and men...Almost any adjustment made "on the fly" is likely to be an adjustment that lowers the value of the Dining Plan rather than increase the value. If your plane is delayed or your flight gets cancelled and you miss just one measly meal you could tip the scales past the "break even" point. Or, as you point out, if an exhausted kid just wants a hot dog instead of a full entree, that alone could tip the scales. When "savings" add up to under $100, it doesn't take much to make those savings evaporate.

 

[supersnoop]

What is the source of that? I couldn't find it. What I found on the official Disney website says:

That's a screenshot of the page where DVC members can add the dining plan to their reservation. Perhaps the language is outdated and has been removed from the main webpages.

 

[luvdisney00]

It doesn't work for us as a family of 5 Disney adults. We used to use it years ago when it was cheaper and included more and my kids were "kids" on the plan. We also will take it if it's free, but we haven't been able to score FD for a while now. If we have to pay for it, we don't find it a value for us. We bring breakfast items or buy a few things like pastry or fruit and split it in the morning. Then we do 1 TS a day either lunch or dinner, but for the other meal we don't do dessert and often split entrees and have snacks. I love food, but I find a full CS lunch with dessert is a lot of food if we are going to a nice dinner a few hrs later. We all ate whatever we wanted on our last trip including 1 signature meal and all bought mugs and still came in over $400 less than the DDP would have cost. Every family needs to do the math for themselves and compare.

 

[Chrelaine]

Our family traveled in May 2015: Myself, DH and DD4. In my research, I decided that the plan wasn't for us, even though we did 3 character meals (H&V, Akershus and Tusker House). First, I am fine with setting a budget and going over it, but if we paid for the meal plan and didn't use it all, it would make me crazy. Also, we don't like to eat the way the plan works. We prefer an appetizer to dessert and DH and I like to have an adult beverage with dinner. By the time we added in all of the extras and tips, we would have been paying a ridiculous amount for meals. We decided to go and just eat what we wanted when we wanted it In the end, we saved a bit on OOP vs the plan, but the amount wasn't as high as $200...without the character meals the amount would have been much higher.

I don't think there is any one right answer. Many of my friends love that the plan is paid for ahead of time, savings or not.

It really does make sense to look at the menus where you are planning to eat, and just do the math. It's the only way to see what works best for your family.

 

[akadada]

It generally will not save money...but for us we did it because our trip was 100% kid focused, which included a bunch of character breakfasts/lunches/dinners (Crystal Palace, Cape May, Akershus) Most of our remaining meals we ate at Epcot restaurants and found it reasonable relative to OOP when I ran a comparison. I compared the actual restaurants, not the averages. For example, it appears to be a waste of money if you use it on signature dining.

The other reason we took it this past trip was because when we were trying to find a room onsite we could only get a parking lot view at the resort we wanted if we did not take DDP. When I reset the search to see what room I could get with DDP I got garden/pool. When I subtracted out the DDP from the normal garden pool price compared to the parking lot, the tally for DDP was about $250 cheaper over 5 days (i.e. the price for the garden room was then the same as the parking lot room if I bought the DDP plan but not the same if I did not buy the DDP). The Disney call center confirmed that sometimes this happens as they roll out packages.

I understand I could have looked at that calculation differently, but since we were staying on site my wife and I wanted a nice room and we justified it by buying the DDP.

We likely won't do it again now that we got the character meal bonanza is out of the way. We'll likely go back to offsite as well.

 

[AprilDreamsOfDisney]

Our children are 8 and 5'and we do a character meal every day that we are there, so the regular dining plan saves us a TONNE of money. We would never do those amazing experiences every day if we had to pay OOP for them.

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

The reality is, there's no way to truly know if a meal plan is a good deal/money saver until after a trip is complete. While it's all fine and dandy to go to a website and plug in your plans, there is no way to know if you're really going to eat those exact meals until you're literally sitting in the restaurant and placing your order. What if someone (or worse, everyone) gets sick on the trip and doesn't really eat for a day or two? What if it's really hot and regardless of how wonderful the air conditioning in the restaurant feels, you still don't have much of an appetite? What happens when a "Disney Adult" child decides they want an Uncrustable (or something else from the kids menu) for lunch every day rather than a standard meal? There are a lot of things that can change your well thought out dining decisions. And the more kids you have, the more likely these types of things will happen. I have no doubt that there are families (and most definitely couples) who can make the dining plan a good value for their family (eating a lot of character meals or buffets will certainly make it much easier to get your money's worth out of the plan). But in the 4 trips that I've kept detailed notes and receipts for, we have always come out several hundred dollars ahead by paying for all of our meals OOP. And we order whatever we're hungry for when we're eating without regard to the price. We also buy a few snacks a day (whenever we're hungry for one) and buy all of our water/drinks in the parks (again, whenever we need one). I can't even imagine the amount of extra work I'd have to do to make sure we got any kind of value out of a dining plan. It would most definitely force our family to focus on when and where we're eating rather than just going with the flow on our vacation. I realize that there are many families who don't mind planning their trips around dining decisions made 6 months before they even arrive at the park. I don't know what I want or where I want to eat dinner tonight, let alone 6 months from now. YMMV. I will say that when my husband and I take a trip to Disney without any kids, we might revisit the DDP because we will have a lot more flexibility when it's just the two of us. We can make ADR's for some meals, but being a party of 2 will give us a little more freedom to just see what's available the same day.

Even that's problematic and probably not wholly accurate on what you saved or didn't. Many people change their eating behavior while on the plan. To really know if you saved money you have to compare the plan versus how you would have eaten and that becomes theoretical once on the plan. You say you wouldn't have splurged for cupcakes but maybe you would have. And how do you "calculate" in the benefit of meals you wouldn't have otherwise done that you get for no additional cost. There's some fuzziness to the math no matter how you cut it.