Just back from using DDP for the first time

[LovePug]

We absolutely loved it! In our case, it made financial sense due to the ADRs I made, my plan to use the alcoholic beverage allotments with meals, and the Flower & Garden Festival use of snacks. Even so, we absolutely landed in the camp of loving the freedom of ordering whatever we wanted with zero thought of cost. Our ADRs were Prix Fix, so that was not an issue, but adding the alcoholic beverages with the meals and the freedom to eat at the F&G Festival really put it over the top.
Our meals: Storybook Dine, Garden Grill, H&V Fantasmic, BOG, Tusker House. Our QS were mostly used at the resort, with one or 2 exceptions. I made a conscious decision to not overthink our snacks due to reading how many people were thinking about the value of each and they ended up with a ton left over the day they were leaving and would then buy a bunch of take home goodies. We bought whatever we wanted whenever we wanted and had none leftover.
In the end, we would definitely do it again unless we simply were not planning on so many ADRs for the trip.

 

[jsbowl16]

Glad you had such a good experience with it. We do it every year and usually save between $200 and $300 over paying out of pocket. We do a lot of character meals and usually order the steak or fish at every dinner. We also usually have a beer with lunch and a glass of wine with dinner.

 

[mmackeymouse]

Great to hear. I am currently working on a spreadsheet so that we can ultimately figure out if it will be worth it our not. With 2 little ones, I would imagine we'll do enough character meals to make it worth it, but still...just have to crunch to numbers and see.

 

[mn51]

It's just my husband and me but we do the dining plan. It's nice to have a sit down meal and feel free to order the steak dinners. We did not do it one year and I saved all my meal receipts. It came out pretty much the same but we were ordering less expensive dinners paying out of pocket. It's worth it for us.

 

[heidijanesmith]

When my kids were teens, it was fantastic! They were both never ending bottomless pits of hunger. The snacks help keep them full until our next meal. It worked out perfectly for us too.

 

[ENJDisneyFan]

We’ve found that the plan works best for us on trips when we focus our Epcot day on eating at festival booths. Otherwise, when we do a TS meal at Epcot we end up with way too many leftover snack credits. So sometimes we get the DDP and sometimes not depending on our plans for that trip. Glad to hear it worked out in your favor!