Magic Your Way or Not

[GOOFY4DONALD]

We are in the early (EARLY) planning stages of our 3rd trip to WDW. All trips we used MYW with park hopper and dining. All 3 trips we either received a discounted room or free dining. The first 2 trips we used up all our dining (although we had to buy some sandwiches in Norway for the trip home). The last trip we went with 3 teen girls that used up as many as 10 snack for meals. We ended up wasting 14 counter service meals (not to mention being stuffed all trip). The thought still makes me sick as I hate wasting money. DH seems fine with it saying it was free dining but I say we could have used another discount. I was thinking of not adding the Dining plan but then I was thinking..does it make sense to buy a package with tickets or buy tickets separate and get a room only? Are there any savings? pros? cons?
Thanks in advance

 

[dpswift]

If you are not planning a lot of expensive restaurant meals you might be better off without dining. I would get giftcards for the snack eaters. this way they will be aware of what they are spending and how much they have left.

It depends on your choice of resort and the amount of people in a room as to which discount works better. However do not get your mind set on FD it has not been offered much lately.

I like to do mock booking for both discounts and see which is the better deal. Also figure in the cost of any table service meals you are planning . On our quick trip in February I realized after the fact that the dining plan would have worked for us. Even if we had spent the same we would have gotten the resort mugs and one more table service meal.

 

[mom to minnie&mickey]

We are in the early (EARLY) planning stages of our 3rd trip to WDW. All trips we used MYW with park hopper and dining. All 3 trips we either received a discounted room or free dining. The first 2 trips we used up all our dining (although we had to buy some sandwiches in Norway for the trip home). The last trip we went with 3 teen girls that used up as many as 10 snack for meals. We ended up wasting 14 counter service meals (not to mention being stuffed all trip). The thought still makes me sick as I hate wasting money. DH seems fine with it saying it was free dining but I say we could have used another discount. I was thinking of not adding the Dining plan but then I was thinking..does it make sense to buy a package with tickets or buy tickets separate and get a room only? Are there any savings? pros? cons?
Thanks in advance

With a package you get 2 entries to Disney Quest (value of about $100) and 2 passes for mini-putting (value of about $24) along with all the other extras.
For us this makes it worth it to get the package because we only get base tickets. We see this as an extra day of free entertainment.

 

[ateam79828592]

Maybe. Depends on what level or resort you are choosing and how many disney adults are in your party. If you are value or moderate and have 4-5 adults, it will be hard to beat the free dining discount. If you are staying deluxe and/or only have 2 adults, you will probably be better off with a room discount.

 

[pigletto]

*Free* dining or not it doesn't make sense to use the Dining Plan if it's not how you eat and I agree with you, that's way too much waste to make it worth it.
I would book where you want to go and use a room only discount, or look into renting points etc. You may spend a little more but if you end up staying where you want to stay and eating how you want to eat, that's worth more in my opinion.
We really waffled on the free dining this trip. It's not exactly how we like to eat, but it's close enough. What ended up being most important to us was our bottom line number so we went with it. However, if this was our only trip this year I would have switched to AKL, used a room only rate or rented points and happily paid the 800 difference. It just wasn't workable this time because we have two trips this year.

 

[writersblock42]

Wow you had that many credits left over? For us the snack credits were the hard ones to use because we were full from the meals and brought in our own drinks. We stretched the dining plan into 8 days by splitting some of the counter service meals. I wish that they would let you do the dining plan for only part of your stay. Like you could add it for three days or something instead of each night of your resort.

 

[travelitis]

Snack credits are easy to unload at the end as souvies. Just grab Mickey rice crispy bars and some cookies that are individually packaged.

If you like traveling during free dining and you like the DDP, unless its much more expensive than booking separately, I don't see a reason not to book it. If you price it both ways and it's break even or free dining is slightly more, I'd still book it. When you compare, look at the food you are pricing. Are you going to eat at more expensive places with the DDP? Will you be more relaxed because you're not trying to cut back the cost of every meal? Are you sacrificing character meals by paying for meals as you go? For me, personally, taking a family of 5 to Disney sit down is painful. It's much more than we pay off site.

Being passholders, the free dining never adds up for us. We do better going when we want to travel, using a passholder or military room discount and adding dining. That does not mean that I don't consider and price the free dining each time. My opinion just might change.

 

[mdsouth]

We are in the early (EARLY) planning stages of our 3rd trip to WDW. All trips we used MYW with park hopper and dining. All 3 trips we either received a discounted room or free dining. The first 2 trips we used up all our dining (although we had to buy some sandwiches in Norway for the trip home). The last trip we went with 3 teen girls that used up as many as 10 snack for meals. We ended up wasting 14 counter service meals (not to mention being stuffed all trip). The thought still makes me sick as I hate wasting money. DH seems fine with it saying it was free dining but I say we could have used another discount. I was thinking of not adding the Dining plan but then I was thinking..does it make sense to buy a package with tickets or buy tickets separate and get a room only? Are there any savings? pros? cons?
Thanks in advance

You can get a room only discount and then it lets you add tickets. This is done through the room only discount web page and the it gives you the opportunity to add tickets AND keep the discount. I played around with the site trying to figure out which was best for us.

You can then put money on gift cards for dining especially if your teenagers might be off on their own.

 

[GOOFY4DONALD]

With a package you get 2 entries to Disney Quest (value of about $100) and 2 passes for mini-putting (value of about $24) along with all the other extras.
For us this makes it worth it to get the package because we only get base tickets. We see this as an extra day of free entertainment.

We don't do the water parks fun and more only park hopper.

 

[GOOFY4DONALD]

Maybe. Depends on what level or resort you are choosing and how many disney adults are in your party. If you are value or moderate and have 4-5 adults, it will be hard to beat the free dining discount. If you are staying deluxe and/or only have 2 adults, you will probably be better off with a room discount.

We are planning on staying Deluxe. We will have 3 maybe 4 Disney adults with us.

Wow you had that many credits left over? For us the snack credits were the hard ones to use because we were full from the meals and brought in our own drinks. We stretched the dining plan into 8 days by splitting some of the counter service meals. I wish that they would let you do the dining plan for only part of your stay. Like you could add it for three days or something instead of each night of your resort.

We were a party of 6 last year. My DD brought along her friend and they either shared a meal or had a snack for a meal.

Snack credits are easy to unload at the end as souvies. Just grab Mickey rice crispy bars and some cookies that are individually packaged.

If you like traveling during free dining and you like the DDP, unless its much more expensive than booking separately, I don't see a reason not to book it. If you price it both ways and it's break even or free dining is slightly more, I'd still book it. When you compare, look at the food you are pricing. Are you going to eat at more expensive places with the DDP? Will you be more relaxed because you're not trying to cut back the cost of every meal? Are you sacrificing character meals by paying for meals as you go? For me, personally, taking a family of 5 to Disney sit down is painful. It's much more than we pay off site.

Being passholders, the free dining never adds up for us. We do better going when we want to travel, using a passholder or military room discount and adding dining. That does not mean that I don't consider and price the free dining each time. My opinion just might change.

The dining plan seemed to work for us because we were a family of 5 with every trip one of the kids became a WDW adult. Last trip my DD brought her friend so we had 6 people 5 WDW adults. We saved so much $$ with the free dining vs a room discount.( WOW is all I can say for cost the buffets for 6.) I spent the trip constantly full. This time we will most likely be a family of 3 (DDs do not want to go) possibly 4. So a discounted room would be a better deal.

 

[mom to minnie&mickey]

We don't do the water parks fun and more only park hopper.

Hi, neither do we. We only get the base ticket no park hoppers or fun and more option. Not sure if I was clear but what I meant to say is that the 2 Disney Quest and 2 mini-putting entries come free when you book a package irregardless of whether you get the fun and more option. If these activities interest you then getting a package from Disney is a good option.

 

[GOOFY4DONALD]

Hi, neither do we. We only get the base ticket no park hoppers or fun and more option. Not sure if I was clear but what I meant to say is that the 2 Disney Quest and 2 mini-putting entries come free when you book a package irregardless of whether you get the fun and more option. If these activities interest you then getting a package from Disney is a good option.

Really? I never received a pass to Disney Quest. My DS and DH would have used them for sure. We never have time to mini golf so we don't use those.

 

[Darcy03231]

Last trip I did a room discount and got MYW tickets with hoppers. We stayed at ASMO. Rate during the week was $75 night and weekend was $85/night. We paid OOP for meals. I think we did much better with the room discount than we would have with free dining. We did a grocery run (had a car) and bought stuff for breakfast (cereal, milk, yogurt, fruit) and snacks (trail mix bars, nuts, cheese, crackers, water, etc). Neither my mom nor I are big eaters and we found we split a lot of meals. We were there for 10 days and spent a bit over $100 at the grocery store and spent about $300 buying food/snacks in the parks. This did not include our meal for Mom's birthday at Le Cellier, but even that, with tip, still kept us less than rack rate for the room.

 

[My3Princez]

Really? I never received a pass to Disney Quest. My DS and DH would have used them for sure. We never have time to mini golf so we don't use those.

The package bonuses change from year to year, so they may not have offered that when you were there.

I know when we have gone with free dining before and had counter-service credits left at the end of the trip, we could use one counter service credit to get 3 snack items from the resort food court. As far as I know, it's not a written policy, and it may be that they no longer allow it, but they did when we went in late 2011 with free dining. Only at the resort food courts though - not in the parks.

 

[GOOFY4DONALD]

The package bonuses change from year to year, so they may not have offered that when you were there.

I know when we have gone with free dining before and had counter-service credits left at the end of the trip, we could use one counter service credit to get 3 snack items from the resort food court. As far as I know, it's not a written policy, and it may be that they no longer allow it, but they did when we went in late 2011 with free dining. Only at the resort food courts though - not in the parks.

We were able to use some counter service credits at starring rolls. It was great 4 items and a drink. I think my dh and I were so full from the buffets and the kids had better things to do than eat. I think I will have to play around with the numbers and see what works.

 

[C-CMom]

"Room only" reservations have different, some would say "better" policies for deposit (one night deposit), payment (final at check-in) and change/cancellation (5-6 days out).