Is this ok to do on DxDP?

[Rachandgarry]

Hi!

Have been reading about dining plans for about 4 hours now, and I've done searches on here, various other resource websites and downloaded the disney brochures for the 3 dining plans, but I still am not 100% clear on something. Would some kind soul be able to help me, before I go out of my (tiny) mind, lol!

If we booked the Deluxe Dining Plan, it would include breakfast, lunch, dinner and 2 snacks per night of stay, plus a resort mug. The restaurants covered are those in the brochure.

So, if we wanted to, every single day, could we, for example, have:

Breakfast - Chef Mickeys
Lunch - Garden Grill
Dinner - Crystal Palace

plus 2 snacks.

These are all character dining, and seem to be one credit.

(obviously I know this particular scenario is unlikely, but there is method behind my madness, so I just want to know if we can have character dining for all 3 meals every day).

Thanks in advance
Rachel x

 

[maggiew]

Yes. You can do all character meals if you want!!!

You actually get 3 credits per day and can use them how ever you want. You can do BLD at 3 1 credit places. Or, for example, you can do breakfast at a 1 credit place and dinner at a 2 credit signature place.

I haven't done the deluxe plan, but many people say it is too much food and time to do 3 meals each day. Many people do breakfast at a 1 credit place and then dinner at a signature place or one of the dinner shows.

For example, you can do 'Ohana for breakfast and then the Luau for dinner.

Maggie

 

[PoohsFan1]

We do the DxDP all the time, we love it. Yes it is a lot of food and you do sit down a lot but since we go to Disney twice in a year, we don't mind it...especially during the hot summer, it gives us time to cool off and talk about what we did that day so far.

With that said, what the PP said is correct. You get 3 dining credits a day plus 2 snacks a day/per guest. That means you can do 3 1 credit meals a day or a 1 credit meal plus a 2 credit meal for dinner (or lunch if you planned on eating at CRT for lunch). Also, if you only do 1 or 2 credits on one day and don't use the third credit that day, it will carry over to the next day so you could possible do CRT for breakfast (2 credit), Crystal Palace for lunch (1 credit), then California Grill for dinner (2 credits). When you get your bill and give your KTTW card to the CM they will only deduct the amount of credits that that particular restaurant has per person, then on your copy of the receipt it will show how many credits are left for your stay. You have until midnight of your check-out day to use up all of your credits and snack credits. I hope this helped.

 

[Judique]

Hi!

Have been reading about dining plans for about 4 hours now, and I've done searches on here, various other resource websites and downloaded the disney brochures for the 3 dining plans, but I still am not 100% clear on something. Would some kind soul be able to help me, before I go out of my (tiny) mind, lol!

If we booked the Deluxe Dining Plan, it would include breakfast, lunch, dinner and 2 snacks per night of stay, plus a resort mug. The restaurants covered are those in the brochure.

So, if we wanted to, every single day, could we, for example, have:

Breakfast - Chef Mickeys
Lunch - Garden Grill
Dinner - Crystal Palace

plus 2 snacks.

These are all character dining, and seem to be one credit.

(obviously I know this particular scenario is unlikely, but there is method behind my madness, so I just want to know if we can have character dining for all 3 meals every day).

Thanks in advance
Rachel x

Sort of.

But you can't do Garden Grill for lunch.

What is the method behind this madness? <g>

 

[henry72]

Just remember that you have to have park admission to each park that you want to eat at so unless you have Park Hoppers, you won't be able to have breakfast in the Magic Kingdom and then lunch in Epcot.

 

[Rachandgarry]

Yes. You can do all character meals if you want!!!

You actually get 3 credits per day and can use them how ever you want. You can do BLD at 3 1 credit places. Or, for example, you can do breakfast at a 1 credit place and dinner at a 2 credit signature place.

I haven't done the deluxe plan, but many people say it is too much food and time to do 3 meals each day. Many people do breakfast at a 1 credit place and then dinner at a signature place or one of the dinner shows.

For example, you can do 'Ohana for breakfast and then the Luau for dinner.

Maggie

Thanks Maggie, that's brilliant news and makes sense. Hadn't thought of the Luau... I will definitely add that to the list!

We do the DxDP all the time, we love it. Yes it is a lot of food and you do sit down a lot but since we go to Disney twice in a year, we don't mind it...especially during the hot summer, it gives us time to cool off and talk about what we did that day so far.

With that said, what the PP said is correct. You get 3 dining credits a day plus 2 snacks a day/per guest. That means you can do 3 1 credit meals a day or a 1 credit meal plus a 2 credit meal for dinner (or lunch if you planned on eating at CRT for lunch). Also, if you only do 1 or 2 credits on one day and don't use the third credit that day, it will carry over to the next day so you could possible do CRT for breakfast (2 credit), Crystal Palace for lunch (1 credit), then California Grill for dinner (2 credits). When you get your bill and give your KTTW card to the CM they will only deduct the amount of credits that that particular restaurant has per person, then on your copy of the receipt it will show how many credits are left for your stay. You have until midnight of your check-out day to use up all of your credits and snack credits. I hope this helped.

Thanks so much, that makes sense. I love the sound of that day actually - CRT, Crystal Palace and California Grill. Perfect!

Sort of.

But you can't do Garden Grill for lunch.

What is the method behind this madness? <g>

Oh yes they stopped lunch didn't they. Stupid garden grill...

Method behind madness is.... drum roll please... we're 2 adults who love food (you can tell when you see photos of us ) and know WDW very well, but haven't been since we have had a child. My back is a bit tricky and I can struggle with standing for a long time, but not enough to hire a scooter thing. Our son will be 6 1/2 by then, but has autism and learning disabilities. He loves the characters, so I would love to get as much character interaction for him as possible - preferably while I'm sat comfortably at a buffet bar .

We are considering the standard dining plan, as the deluxe is a lot of money for our budget.... but the standard is not as good value at all, in my opinion.

Might end up doing it 'as we go' money wise (although I'll obviously book the ressies as soon as they are available) - it might work out cheaper in the long run. I just love the idea of having the convenience and 'luxury' of the all inclusive dining!

Just remember that you have to have park admission to each park that you want to eat at so unless you have Park Hoppers, you won't be able to have breakfast in the Magic Kingdom and then lunch in Epcot.

Thanks, that's a good point. We're coming from UK so will have the 14-day unlimited park pass - its brilliant. It gives full access and park hopping for the 4 main parks and 2 water parks for 14 consecutive days.

Thank you all again for your help, it will help us make our decision!

Rachel x

 

[SabresFan]

Almost all the character meals are single TS credit - I think Cinderella's is the only one that requires 2 credits.

You can easily fit in 2 character meals per day if you enjoy that sort of thing (and I DO enjoy that sort of thing). You can even do 3 character meals per day some times. And if you bring your autograph book, you'll be amazed at how many signatures you can get and how many pictures you can get.

The main reason you see so many characters at breakfasts is that years ago, nobody would bother going to breakfast at these expensive restaurants, and adding characters was a way to fill the place up (and raise the price considerably!).

But we love the DxDDP. Although now that my kids are older, they are addicted to the Signature restaurants, so I don't get into as many character meals as I used to. But the kids have tried all kinds of food that they never, ever would have considered if we were paying OOP, and they now enjoy, so you do get some flexibility on the dining plan to take a flyer on a dish (and if you hate it that much, you can always use a snack credit to tide you over).

Plus all those snack credits make for a big haul on the last day - we have never used even half of them on our trips, and you can stop at the hotel gift shop and pick up "epic" lollipops, nuts, etc.

 

[tarheelmjfan]

Might end up doing it 'as we go' money wise (although I'll obviously book the ressies as soon as they are available) - it might work out cheaper in the long run. I just love the idea of having the convenience and 'luxury' of the all inclusive dining!

If you plan to eat that many character meals the DxDDP would be the way to go. If you decide on only one a day & most of those are for dinner, the regular DDP would probably be the best option. If you do one character meal a day, & most of them are breakfast or lunch, you may do better paying out of pocket. Naturally, it's best to check the menus & add up the price of each meal, before deciding. That said, with the plan you currently have (3 character meals a day), the DxDDP is definitely going to save you money. It sounds like a lot of fun to me. Your DS would have a blast, esp. if he's not one to run from one ride to the next.

 

[TravelAgentJen]

But it's not per day you get the 3 table credits and 2 snacks per NIGHT of your stay. Just clarifying...

 

[catne]

my bit of advice if you're doing the DxDDP: make sure you schedule 5-6 hours between meals... it is sooooo much food. Either you're at all-you-can-eat buffets, or you're getting appetizer-entree-dessert-beverage every meal, and most meals are very generous portion sizes. We're large people and have had very hard time ever finishing everything at a Disney meal.

So schedule breakfast at 8:05 in the park you're going to (like Crystal Palace before park opens. You'll have plenty of time to eat and get pictures in relatively empty park and then be there at the rope drop inside the park at 9:00)

Then schedule lunch for no earlier than 1:00 PM (1:30 or 2:00 would be even better.) If it's your MK day, I'd say schedule Liberty Tree Tavern in the park, or hop the monorail to Grand Floridian Cafe, or Kona Cafe, or The Wave. Then book a dinner reservation no earlier than 7:30 or 8:30 PM.

We actually do DxDDP and prefer the two meals a day version (usually lunch at a 1 credit place, and dinner at a 2 credit signature place) We're rarely hungry for breakfast...might use a snack credit for a pastry, but a lot of times we're still full from previous night.

 

[dixonsontour]

Rachandgarry - are you UK based?

Free dining runs for alot of the year for Uk visitors - you'd just need to pay to upgrade from DDP to DxDDP.

Have gone for it and upgraded for our stay at OKW in October. Our DD will be 6 1/2.

Plan is to do a character breakfast or early 'fun' lunch like sci fi then do a dinner show or signature meal in the evening.

 

[Rachandgarry]

Almost all the character meals are single TS credit - I think Cinderella's is the only one that requires 2 credits.

You can easily fit in 2 character meals per day if you enjoy that sort of thing (and I DO enjoy that sort of thing). You can even do 3 character meals per day some times. And if you bring your autograph book, you'll be amazed at how many signatures you can get and how many pictures you can get.

The main reason you see so many characters at breakfasts is that years ago, nobody would bother going to breakfast at these expensive restaurants, and adding characters was a way to fill the place up (and raise the price considerably!).

But we love the DxDDP. Although now that my kids are older, they are addicted to the Signature restaurants, so I don't get into as many character meals as I used to. But the kids have tried all kinds of food that they never, ever would have considered if we were paying OOP, and they now enjoy, so you do get some flexibility on the dining plan to take a flyer on a dish (and if you hate it that much, you can always use a snack credit to tide you over).

Plus all those snack credits make for a big haul on the last day - we have never used even half of them on our trips, and you can stop at the hotel gift shop and pick up "epic" lollipops, nuts, etc.

Thanks so much for that info, it all helps us make up our minds and know what to expect. I've just looked through the restaurant list and there aren't as many that offer character dining as I expected. Do you find you end up just eating at the same place over and over?

If you plan to eat that many character meals the DxDDP would be the way to go. If you decide on only one a day & most of those are for dinner, the regular DDP would probably be the best option. If you do one character meal a day, & most of them are breakfast or lunch, you may do better paying out of pocket. Naturally, it's best to check the menus & add up the price of each meal, before deciding. That said, with the plan you currently have (3 character meals a day), the DxDDP is definitely going to save you money. It sounds like a lot of fun to me. Your DS would have a blast, esp. if he's not one to run from one ride to the next.

Great advice, thank you. Have just listed a basic plan of what we'd like to do and costed it up. The regular DDP and OOP are about the same, so we just need to think carefully about what we want to do, and go from there.

But it's not per day you get the 3 table credits and 2 snacks per NIGHT of your stay. Just clarifying...

Yup, thanks for reminding me of that. Because we'll have the 14 day ultimate ticket, but are there on 15 days, we've decided that day 1 we won't go to the parks at all as our flight won't arrive til later afternoon, so we'll just think of it the samw way if we do the DP.

my bit of advice if you're doing the DxDDP: make sure you schedule 5-6 hours between meals... it is sooooo much food. Either you're at all-you-can-eat buffets, or you're getting appetizer-entree-dessert-beverage every meal, and most meals are very generous portion sizes. We're large people and have had very hard time ever finishing everything at a Disney meal.

So schedule breakfast at 8:05 in the park you're going to (like Crystal Palace before park opens. You'll have plenty of time to eat and get pictures in relatively empty park and then be there at the rope drop inside the park at 9:00)

Then schedule lunch for no earlier than 1:00 PM (1:30 or 2:00 would be even better.) If it's your MK day, I'd say schedule Liberty Tree Tavern in the park, or hop the monorail to Grand Floridian Cafe, or Kona Cafe, or The Wave. Then book a dinner reservation no earlier than 7:30 or 8:30 PM.

We actually do DxDDP and prefer the two meals a day version (usually lunch at a 1 credit place, and dinner at a 2 credit signature place) We're rarely hungry for breakfast...might use a snack credit for a pastry, but a lot of times we're still full from previous night.

That's really interesting, thank you for that. When you say it like that, I actually am starting to see that it isn't going to be the right thing for us. We'd never keep DS sat in restaurants for that amount of time each day. Oh poo, I sooooooo wanted to do it. Oh well, I'll just wait 18 years til he's moved out then we can go on a 'just us' trip and do DxDP!

Rachandgarry - are you UK based?

Free dining runs for alot of the year for Uk visitors - you'd just need to pay to upgrade from DDP to DxDDP.

Have gone for it and upgraded for our stay at OKW in October. Our DD will be 6 1/2.

Plan is to do a character breakfast or early 'fun' lunch like sci fi then do a dinner show or signature meal in the evening.

Hiya, yes we're UK based (Bristol). Annoyingly, the free dining is not applicable for our dates . It literally excludes the 6 week period with our trip in the middle of it. Its so annoying!!!!!! If it was on, I'd do it without a second thought!

Hope you have a great trip in October!

Thank you for all the replies and your help, DISboards rock!

Rachel x

 

[Tara]

I second the suggestion that you go with breakfast at a 1-credit restaurant and dinner at a signature/2-credit restaurant. This is how I've used the DXDP and it's worked quite well. I can't imagine eating 3 restaurant meals every single day! Typically we do a late breakfast and then dinner at about 6pm so we aren't starving midday...when everyone else is eating lunch, we're swimming and having a light snack (good way to use up some of those gazillion snack credits).

 

[nkereina]

my bit of advice if you're doing the DxDDP: make sure you schedule 5-6 hours between meals... it is sooooo much food. Either you're at all-you-can-eat buffets, or you're getting appetizer-entree-dessert-beverage every meal, and most meals are very generous portion sizes. We're large people and have had very hard time ever finishing everything at a Disney meal.

So schedule breakfast at 8:05 in the park you're going to (like Crystal Palace before park opens. You'll have plenty of time to eat and get pictures in relatively empty park and then be there at the rope drop inside the park at 9:00)

Then schedule lunch for no earlier than 1:00 PM (1:30 or 2:00 would be even better.) If it's your MK day, I'd say schedule Liberty Tree Tavern in the park, or hop the monorail to Grand Floridian Cafe, or Kona Cafe, or The Wave. Then book a dinner reservation no earlier than 7:30 or 8:30 PM.

We actually do DxDDP and prefer the two meals a day version (usually lunch at a 1 credit place, and dinner at a 2 credit signature place) We're rarely hungry for breakfast...might use a snack credit for a pastry, but a lot of times we're still full from previous night.

I cannot agree more. We did DxDP in September and even though I knew how much food it was, I was not really prepared for how much it actually was. I scheduled my meals with the thought "well I eat breakfast at this time at home, then I eat lunch at this time and dinner at this time" - but what I did not think about is that at home, I am not having an appetizer, entree and dessert at EVERY meal. If we ever do DxDP again, we will do a TS breakfast and a signature dinner. Or a TS lunch and a very late signature dinner.

We had 5 meal credits left at the end of our trip (gasp!) due to us cancelling ADRs last minute because we were not hungry. Be mindful of this because with the new credit card hold policy for ADRs, you can't cancel last minute if you aren't hungry. We also had 6 snack credits left over. We were able to convert the meal credits to snack credits at our resort (POR) and got a ton of snacks to bring home. We also used a lot of snack credits throughout the week on bottled water which worked well for us. I know water at QS locations are free but we couldn't shove the cups of water in our bag and often times the QS lines were long and we could just stop off at a kiosk for a bottle of water.

 

[ljcrochet]

We did the deluxe dining plan when my girls were 4. In a 9 day trip, I think we only eat 3 sit down meals one day. We did a bunch of 2 credit meals. I would figure out where you want to eat and if it pays. We did breakfast and dinner with "snacks" for lunch.

 

[focusondisney]

Plus all those snack credits make for a big haul on the last day - we have never used even half of them on our trips, and you can stop at the hotel gift shop and pick up "epic" lollipops, nuts, etc.

Agree about the snack credits.


Going off topic for a minute: I LOVE your screen name!! (see my location! )

 

[nkereina]

Going off topic for a minute: I LOVE your screen name!! (see my location! )

Buffalo takeover!!!

 

[Rachandgarry]

I second the suggestion that you go with breakfast at a 1-credit restaurant and dinner at a signature/2-credit restaurant. This is how I've used the DXDP and it's worked quite well. I can't imagine eating 3 restaurant meals every single day! Typically we do a late breakfast and then dinner at about 6pm so we aren't starving midday...when everyone else is eating lunch, we're swimming and having a light snack (good way to use up some of those gazillion snack credits).

Talking about this has been so useful, thank you so much. If we do it, this makes sense as the way to do it.

I cannot agree more. We did DxDP in September and even though I knew how much food it was, I was not really prepared for how much it actually was. I scheduled my meals with the thought "well I eat breakfast at this time at home, then I eat lunch at this time and dinner at this time" - but what I did not think about is that at home, I am not having an appetizer, entree and dessert at EVERY meal. If we ever do DxDP again, we will do a TS breakfast and a signature dinner. Or a TS lunch and a very late signature dinner.

We had 5 meal credits left at the end of our trip (gasp!) due to us cancelling ADRs last minute because we were not hungry. Be mindful of this because with the new credit card hold policy for ADRs, you can't cancel last minute if you aren't hungry. We also had 6 snack credits left over. We were able to convert the meal credits to snack credits at our resort (POR) and got a ton of snacks to bring home. We also used a lot of snack credits throughout the week on bottled water which worked well for us. I know water at QS locations are free but we couldn't shove the cups of water in our bag and often times the QS lines were long and we could just stop off at a kiosk for a bottle of water.

Hearing your experiences really makes me think harder about it - and that is such a good thing, thank you so much! We wouldn't really be able to bring loads of snacks home as we're flying, but we do use a lot of bottled water, so this could be a consideration.

We did the deluxe dining plan when my girls were 4. In a 9 day trip, I think we only eat 3 sit down meals one day. We did a bunch of 2 credit meals. I would figure out where you want to eat and if it pays. We did breakfast and dinner with "snacks" for lunch.

Thanks for replying, it really is helping me make sense of what our options are. I am struggling to find the restaurants where we would all really enjoy, that are 2 credits. I love the idea of the Royal Table - but I absolutely hate all the food on the menu and my DS wouldn't touch it either. That is *so* annoying for me, I wish I was a less fussy eater!!

Rachel x