Just back - QS Dining Plan Review

[texasroni75]

Just wanted to post a quick review of the QS Dining Plan. We had free QS dining with our package during our stay 9/15-9/21/2013. We were a family of 5 (technically 4 since our party included one child under 3). We had a 6 night/7 day stay. So, we had had 6 adult CS meals, 2 child CS meals, and 4 snacks allotted to us for each of the 6 nights we stayed.

This was our first visit using any dining plan and while I researched it relentlessly prior to our trip, I was still nervous it would be complicated/confusing/restrictive. We wanted to try to get the most value out of the plan, but we did not order the most expensive meals if it wasn't what we were in the mood to eat.

That said, let me just say that the plan was AMAZING! We decided to pay for breakfast OOP for 5 of the 7 days, because we mostly ate items for breakfast that we brought from home, and we had our refillable mugs for coffee/hot chocolate/etc. to go with our breakfast. We spent maybe $50 OOP for our breakfast items, but we could have easily used some dining credits instead now that I can look back at how much "left over" credits we had to use the last 2 days.

Every CS cashier we encountered was friendly and helpful and knowledgeable about the plan - all we did was say "we are on the dining plan" and they made sure we got every item we were entitled to with each meal (entree, dessert and drink). Snack credit items were easily identifiable at every location.

We saved our receipts and including the cost of our "length of stay" refillable mugs, we got $870 worth of meals, drinks and snacks during our vacation. We had 9 snack credits left over on our last day that we used at our resort gift shop for treats for the ride home and to give to friends upon our return. We also shared our meals with our 1 year old, and we still had plenty of food to go around. Truly incredible! DH kept telling me over and over again that he could not believe the amount of food we were getting. I will be reviewing the individual meals as I download the photos from the trip, but for now just had to share.

 

[gismo1554]

Thanks Joanie makes me feel better about my upcoming trip

 

[kaybird]

Yay! You did incredible! We love both QSDP and DDP, always makes sense for our family! You did address the one caution I always make to newbies, spend your plan first, then OOP, more often than not we are scrambling at the end! Here now, just had a great Snack credit for lunch!!

 

[Kalea]

Thank you for sharing your experience!

 

[wdwloverz]

Cant wait to see your meal reviews and photos!!

 

[DizneySue]

Agree, Love the dining plan! We found it's almost too much food

 

[DJWMom]

We had almost the same experience! We stayed the same week even!

We're also a family of 5 (with three growing boys 6,7 and 8) and definitely saved more with free dining vs room discount.

My 8 and 6 year old are fairly picky and were happy with the kids choices but my 7 year old who is more adventurous and a big eater was generally disappointed with the kids offerings. I'm not a big eater and usually found my portions to be suitable for sharing with him so that he got some more exotic food and more food in general lol.

I enjoyed the freedom of ordering whatever I wanted too, without automatically going for the cheapest items, just to keep the bill down.

We are definitely hoping for more free dining promotions to take advantage of next year.

 

[Nolan4]

Thank you for posting ! We are leaving for our trip in a month, and we are also doing the QDS plan . We are a family of 4, including a 3 1/2 year old and 2 year old, who is not on the plan, so we will be sharing food with him. Happy to hear the food was plentiful. We, too, plan on doing breakfast OOP- granola bars, squeezable yogurts, that type of thing. Thanks for the heads up that we could potentially have extra credits left towards the end of our stay.