We feel like the best way to get the most "bang out of your buck" is with the Dining Plan. We have been on the dining plan 3 times. Twice we have paid for it and once we got Free Dining (receiving free dining on our September trip saved us almost $1000. Free Dining has been offered for the last three years. The offer will come out the first of April. First for Disney Visa holders and then for the general public. We were offered a bounceback for next year while we were there this September. The dates for September are August 30 - September 27. Free Dining is the best deal Disney offers, as far as most bang out of your buck, but not everybody can go during those dates. Those dates have historically been slow times, but with the popularity of Free Dining growing, it really isn't that slow anymore. And the heat was almost unbearable. But we did save a lot of money). We are a family of six and it has saved us money everytime we used it. Unless you are packing your own pb&js to bring into the parks or going back to your room for a "homemade" meal, I don't see how you can't be saving money. The value is especially good for the kids, there is no way we could feed them on $11.00 per day without the plan. We even used snack credits for breakfast items on our last trip. You could get a whole carton of Entimens donuts and a half gallon of milk for two snack credits. That was a quick breakfast for the kids before we left for the parks. We had a character meal everyday of our trip. I can't remember the price of every single item at every single meal (part of the beauty of the dining plan, not having to worry about prices), but I know the buffet at Crystal palace is about $28.00 per adult and $13.00 per child (the child's price on the plan for the entire day with cs meal, ts meal and snack was on $11.00!) so our bill was about $107.00 (before tip, which was included on our last trip), with tip about $127.00. The dining plan for our family for the whole day was only $120.00. We came out $7.00 ahead just on dinner, then you throw in lunch for the six of us that would have cost about $40.00 out of pocket and say $3.00 each per snack for each of us ($18 total), that has us saving about $65.00 per day.
We have never had any trouble with it. You just hand them the card and they swipe it. No big deal. That's my husband's favorite part of it all, the ease of the plan and not worrying about the money.
Now, I must say I agree that people will not be saving as much money with the new 2008 plan because it does not include the tip. (I also don't think the revamped plan will last past 2008 either, just my opinion.) Even without the tip and the appetizer we would still come out ahead. So, we are "Fans of the Plan!"
!!! Welcome to the mother load of info!!! Lucky for noobs like us their are lots of great people willing to share a wealth of insight!
to The Dis!!! 
!!! We ended up using most of our snack credits for the all-day type lollipops to bring home as souvenirs for DS's friends. Because you are served so much food with your meals, we often took our desserts to go and had those as snacks if we felt like one (not that that happened often as we were always so full, even DS who is a chronic snacker)
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