Is the Dining package really worth it?

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

Just curious as to what you Disers think! For those of you who purchased the dining package and used it. Did you find it worth the money? Were there too many restrictions? I'm looking it over, and for us, it seems like it might be worth the money. Last trip, we had two character meals, and ate counter the rest of the time (we didn't want to spend too much on food). If I'm doing the math correctly, We would be spending about $140 a day for the 4 of us every day using the dining plan.

thoughts?

By $140, I assume you will be paying full adult price for a party of 4.
Are two of those teens? How big of eaters are they? How many Character meals/other sitdowns do you have.?

It's all information crucial to your decision.

In general, the sit downs are the key. If you have em planned for most of the days in the trip and there's alot of dinners in there, go ahead and get it and fill out the rest. If there's only a couple of breakfast character buffets in your plans, and no other sit downs, I'd say you're better off on your own.
If you have kids that are just over the adult threshold and you're all light eaters, then you'd be better off on your own as counter portions are big enough to share in that case AND the two character buffets you do, you can load up.
If your sit downs go over $25 with drink tax and tip (don't forget they are included) then you've gotten good value out of the plan. If they don't, you haven't. Most dinners, many lunches, and a few breakfasts go over this threshold.

Notwithstanding the financial aspects, you may indeed just choose to eat higher on the hog so to speak and get the plan.

Hope that helps.

 

[Tomandtammy]

Hope this helps, Hubby crunched numbers for me!

We got the dining plan free, but if we payed for it it would have cost us 119 a day, for 10 days $1190.00

We saved all of our reciepts and on the food plan we recieved 1641.72
We bought a few kids meals Out Of Pocket, total cost for 4 kids Meals, Alcohol, and 2 CS at the POP, plus a salad, 2 fruit cups Out of Pocket expense is 180.22

I would definately do the dining plan again in a minute, although not sure if we will use it for our next trip its only the 2 adults, and one of our meals will be at Victoria and Alberts Chef Table!

 

[reeeoga]

We are using the plan at Thankgiving
Me the Dad
Wife the Mom
Daughter the 4 year old
Son the 1 year old

Cost for the plan $480
We are eating TS at
Chef Mickey's
CRT for Lunch
Hoop Dee Do
Le Cellier
Sci Fi

Total TS cost $369

That leaves $111 for 12 adult CS, 6 child CS and 18 snacks.
I figured what we would actually eat at a CS for 2 adults and 1 child. We normally get 1 app. and 1 dessert to split when we eat out at home, so I used the same for the trip. The average price at WDW for the type of meal we eat is $25. For 6 CS meals it would cost OOP $150.

Our total cost for all TS and all CS would be $519. That does not include the price for snacks. This also does not include the price if we decided to get 2 desserts and 2 apps per meal. That would increase the cost if paying OOP.

For us it will save about $63 dollars IF we eat the same on vacation as we do at home. That is not a big savings but it is 1 Pal Mickey and 1 Goofy Cap which I was going to buy anyway