Is The Disney Dining Plan Worth It To You?

[Pirate at Heart]

Hey,

Yes, we love it even when we have to pay for it! It is a great value to those who enjoy 3 course table service meals.

I think the waitstaff prefers guests with the plan because they know they will get a good tip!

 

[back_again]

This will be the second time we have paid for the Dining Plan. It is really nice to have it all paid for up front and not have to worry about the prices on the menu. Also, it fits well into our touring style of liking to just sit down for a lesiurely meal. Plus the fact that our children will try new things (as well as some snuck in vegetables) because Mom and Dad won't complain if they don't clean their plate. Now if we had the DDE card....

 

[captinhookedondisney]

I love the DDP I will not stay at a neighboring Disney resort anymore. That's how much i love it!

 

[Amy&Dan]

I said worth it even when I have to pay. However, we have been to WDW seven times now and the food has gotten to be a big draw for us. We spend less time in the parks each trip. Back during our first few trips, I am not sure the DDP would have worked since we just couldn't seem to stay out of the parks riding rides then! I also have decided to stop thinking about "value" when I book my meals and start thinking about the overall experience. For instance my next trip we'll be using up credits at LTT, Crystal Palace, and CRT. Big no no's I know! But my kids are growing up and our character meal days might be winding down so there you go. And we don't order all the appetizers and desserts since our party of four adults is really two adults and two kids ages 10 and 12. So its a good deal for us and we love it enough to pay for it but I can see why others woudn't feel that way. And I thnk our trip in June of 2008 will not be on the DDP, but mostly just counter service and maybe one or two adr's. And that will be kind of cool too to have that flexibility. So my answer is yes but not a yes written in blood!

 

[scrump]

Not really worth it for us. We don't do counter service, and don't always order three courses for our sit downs. We'd be ordering things that we wouldn't want, and wouldn't have ordered anyway. Maybe with kids, it would make more sense for us, but not right now.

 

[Disneyof3]

I said yes even if we have to pay for it. We just tried it for the first time in March and it saved us $200.00 US. We are a family of 5 and we made sure our meals were spread out and we always except if we went to CM ate breakfast in our rooms at POR. We had left over snacks and my kids used them for WDW candy in which I would of had to pay oops for if I wasn't on the plan, like I did last year. Well worth it and will do again in March 2008

 

[Syrreal]

Nope. Not worth it for us. We don't usually eat counter service (maybe once in a whole trip) and have been known to do 3 table services in a day.

 

[imadisneynut]

I think it is great. the only problem I see with it is new people have a hard time making all the reservations and having to plain everything out. lucky for me i have been to disney a couple dozen times and know where I want to go and what I want to do.

 

[WAHMto5]

We have gone both ways with the free dining and paying for it and will say that we will never go without it! We love the DDP

 

[thunderbird1]

Funny you should ask--I've just been going through our last 3 trips' worth of dining receipts to determine what our average cost per day of food was. It's not as bad as it sounds--I kept great journals of the trips, so it was just a matter of recompiling data. Okay, it's as bad as it sounds--I'm a total geek.

12/04 (no DDP) we averaged $101.82 per day on food, with 13 TS meals over 17 days. We were on property 10 days (5 Pop, 5 Poly) and off property 7 days.

12/05 (no DDP) we averaged $106.58 per day on food, with 8 TS meals over 10 days. We were at CBR.

8/06 (free DDP) we would have averaged $111.94 per day on the cost of the DDP + our OOP expenses (glow cube drinks, adults beverages, etc.), with 10 TS meals over 10 days. However, we averaged $190.38 per day worth of food--a great deal. We were at POFQ.

Were our family still 2A/2C, I would definitely be willing to pay for the DDP. But my dd turns 10 in a few weeks, and will enter that 'tween land where I'm not sure whether she'll eat her $$ worth. Add that to the fact that I'm a vegetarian (and therefore always order the cheapest thing on the menu) and it probably would not be a great deal for us. That isn't to say we couldn't still save $$, because I'm way too geeky to not to get our $$ worth, but I think without the DDP we could eat well for less $$ and less worry about who's allowed to order what off of which menus.

 

[Bete]

We always come out ahead on having the plan and my husband is vegetarian; so, his entrees are not the most expensive ones on the menu. Because, tip is included on the TS, I can't see OOP ever being better. We even add to the tip and it's better.

For us, the two meals are what we would do anyway. Now, I will say we probably don't need to have the dessert offered, but we are careful on what we order for it.

I think my favorite part is all the time it saves over leaving Disney premises. We use to leave Disney to have meals on our trip; so, now, we stay put. I don't think I could justify the cost of all our meals OOP at Disney without the plan. We would cut corners to save money, etc. Now, we can have a relaxing, pleasant table service meal at a reasonable cost. The whole concept of staying on-site appeals to me. We use to rent a car; now, we don't; so, that's another savings for us.

I will say having free dining is a nice perk. We have a flexible schedule; so, we can normally take advantage of the free dining offer. We did it the last two years that way. We are not going to Disney this year, but I'm happy for those who are able to utilize free dining.

 

[Family5LovesDisney]

It worked out so well for our family that we figured lunch and our snack ended up being free. There were some days were we saved even more then that! We would do the DDP again in a heartbeat!

 

[minnieandme]

I chose yes, even if I had to pay for it. Although it's been 3 years since my last trip, I like knowing that our meals are already paid for without budgeting $ for each day. Free dining makes it even better. I also like the plan because we're able to do TS and eat at different restaurants we probably wouldn't have eaten at. Most of our meals were either CS or offsite.

 

[robinb]

I just want to chime in with my own opinion. It is worth it to us, even if we have to pay for it. We save money even though we have the DDE card which gives us 20% off at TS restaurants. We still use it at V&A's and for adult beverages.

 

[kacaju]

This will be our first time at Disney. I bought the dining plan because I didn't want to have to worry about the cost of food while we were there. Now that we are getting it for free and I was able to get $1000 knocked off of our total cost of our trip I say it is WORTH IT!!

 

[TDC Nala]

It doesn't work for me most of the time, I don't eat that much.

However, it's become really the only way for adults to get value at many of the WDW restaurants (it's not as big a value for children because of the limited offerings on the kids menus, but great if the kids like buffets). The prices for dining are soaring and much of the food is declining in quality (it's not declining enough to be bad, just enough to make it not worth the menu prices in some places - if they've got a captive audience they don't have to worry so much about quality).

 

[LurrrvtheDuck]

We'll be trying the DDP in 1 day!
It seems like a good idea, especially for people who would not usually do sit down (TS) meals.
Wouldn't it be great if Disney let you utilize your $40 a day as you saw fit though? (instead specifying TS's, CS's and snacks) I don't like the idea that a buffet character breakfast/lunch uses up a 1TS. Also most of the lunches have the EXACT same menu that the dinner menu has.
Some people may even end up overspending their alotted money and end up paying OOP for stuff and that would be to Disney's benefit. Oh well, wishful thinking.

 

[Cinders Mum]

I get TA rates on my room, but this precludes us from buying DDP, so free dining is offering me the chance to try the dining plan which we would not normally be able to experience.

Looking forward to seeing how it works for us, as opposed to cash or AP/DDE which we have done previously.

 

[LurrrvtheDuck]

Ok here's my review of the Dining Plan. It's really worth it if you have already been to Disney and don't need to see everything. If I were to do it again I think I would mostly do Breakfasts or Late lunch/dinners for the TS's. We were so full all the time and I was worried that we would go hungry, but that was so not the case and we were 5 adults.

When we did the Breakfasts the food lasted a long time.
The only day we ate 3 full meals was when we went to MK because it was a long day and we had an early breakfast then used 2 CS credits for lunch and dinner in the park.
The first day we got there and had a late dinner which left us with a leftover CS for another day. We hardly used our snack credits and ended up having a whole bunch on the last day that we used for our breakfast from the resort food court.
2 days we had breakfast in our rooms and 1 days we had dinner in our room that freed up some CS for later times.

Overall it was good not having to actually see the money be spent at the time. Some of our TS meals were $200 not including tip and our CS usually hit $50. So spending around $275 a day (if we included a snack) for 5 adults would've been depressing to see go away. Basically you get your CS and snack for free. So worth it IMO.

 

[BigDogMom7]

Last July was the first time we tried the DDP. My husband absolutely loved it. I figure we spent about the same total amount that we would have spent without it, but we got to eat at much nicer places (e.g., Le Cellier, best meal of our trip). It also got our DD13 to try some things that she otherwise would never have tried. We're using it again on our trip next month!

Last year we came home from a 7-day trip with 2 unused snack credits; this year the goal is to see if we can come home with 0 unused.