You know, they do know we are a party of five, but the fifth being (at the time of travel), two weeks shy of turning one year old. It gets so discouraging at times just to plan on what we'll be able to eat and where, it takes all the fun out of planning for one of the best family vacations we can take in our life time. I did mention the baby as the fifth person in out party, but please don't tell me we'll be charged for him? Sure I realize that even at home we have to plan on weekly meals and snacks, but we spend a lifetime getting used to planning meals. It's not every day that a family has to plan on each and every aspect of daily meals such as we'd have to do on vacation, but with Disney, it takes almost a lifetime to read and study each and every rule involved in their plans, and each restaurant is different to make it that more confusing. I've been to Disney World before as both a couple only and then times with young children while on the dining plans, the oldest trip back in the eighties and early nineties, the last time in 2001, but it was far from being as confusing, time consuming, disappointing, aggrevating and expensive. I'm sure you may have used or heard of the Food and Fun cards in the past, with that, we had no problems whatsoever, nor did we have a huge balloon to pay at the end of our stay. I can't recall the rules involved in that plan, but I do know it included some recreation, signature dining and some other benefits. My feeling is, and I know I'm probably ignorant in my wishes and my thinking here, and that adding a hundred different packages is not prudent or a good business plan, but I feel that Disney really needs to come up with a plan where a family can purchase the basic dining plan as it is now but with a few additions and subtractions for the length of stay. What I'd like to see is just an option offered where we can get the basic plan as it is today, that includes the 1 credit dinner seatings per person for each day purchased, but, add the option of paying for 2 credit Signature seatings as individual ala carte options. They could opt to include (as it is now in the dining plan) or do the ala carte option with recreation. Doing this I feel may make things a little more confusing, the most part for Disney, but I personally don't think so. What it does do is makes it more enjoyable for their clients in their daily planning, it makes it more affordable such as instead of the client being forced into either the basic plan, the premium plan or the platnum with a $4500 to $7000 difference in price between each, it allowes say for instance, my trip on the basic dining plan, the cost for two adults, two children and one infant at a cost of $7200, but, with dining, instead of being in the jam we're in, we'd be able to just pick and pay for the options individually at a nominal cost for each. I say this because I have twenty nine years of making up and planning packages in the automotive service field. Some packages are cost effective for both the customer and the auto shop or dealership, and other packages are not. This is one reason why the public is so confused and disgruntled with auto repair shops (not to mention people get ripped off at times), every shop recommends something different from the other and with a wide range of pricing. For instance, prior to my back injuries, I was factory trained technician and customer service rep in Honda and General Motors vehicles. Every service recommendation in the service manuals are pretty much is basic at each milage interval per manufacturer. But, the proble we run into is every dealership or garage makes up their own plans and pricing. After years of reviewing what the customer is actually getting for their buck and if they first getting what is recommended, and second, is the package offered going to be cost effective for the customer. Take a 1990 Honda Accord for instance, the manual recommended at 60,000 miles a complete engine tune up, oil and filter change, valve adjustment, brake inspection and servicing, tranmsmission fluid replacement, there's more or less per each model vehicle, but, one shop may just replace the spark plugs in the tune up, others would include the plugs, distributor cap and rotor, air filter, fuel filter(s); some places never even adjust valves, we did, this included all the nessesary gaskets and seals for the valve cover. It takes 10 minutes to replace the transmission fluid in most Honda's, but some places in my opinion basically ripped people off by charging them an hour's labor to do that part of the service. In the service I came up with, it did not leave one thing out that was actually recommended or needed at the service interval. Now, so we wouldn't confuse things by having 300 different packages and having to explain 300 different prices to the customer, we came up with (just like Disney packages) three levels of services for each milage interval. But, we offered a sort of ala carte pick the service you want and need. This not only gave the customer a break in their pockets, but we gave them the option to make up their minds for what they wanted and not forcing them into a corner by having such a HUGE decrepancy in prices such as the case with Disney dining plans. It also kept us from redoing work that had already been done recently on someones car. I knew of one dealership offering a HUGE deal on a 30,000 mile service, then, the customer would price out the same 30,000 mile service with us, or so they thought. The other dealership was charging customers over four hundred and fifty dollars parts and labor plus tax for what they described was a tune up, an oil change, brake inspection, transmission service (if they even included that), and that was it. If you compaired our price and what was included, it came out a bit more, so, the customer at time would go with the lower price, but blindly and being uneducated, in my opinion getting ripped off. Our service listed each and every tune up component, transmission fluid, brake fluid, oil and filter, air filter (if it was needed), all the gaskets and seals needed and on and on and on. We gave a clearly written list of each and every thing we did as well as future recommendations. We never handed a customer a bill that said "tune up engine" $500 dollars, perform brake job, $1000 dollars, and every day I had seen that done to customers from shops that either knew nothing about States laws pertaining to repair shops, pricing and HOW TO WRITE A PROPER estimate and invoice which includes ALL pertinent information about the vehicle and its mileage. The customer, thinking they recieved what they expected and paid for and that safety should have been first and foremost with the second most valuable possession next to their home and one of the most important things in their lives to keep them safe on the road. A customer might call for a basic service appointment, then when he or she comes in says "I heard a noise stepping on the brakes," What does the shop or mechanic do? Instead of FIRST, checking the suspect noise, he would do the "recommended" service originally scheduled for to get his labor and bonus (called flat rate bonus), then, when he feels like it, he'll check the brakes, well, oops! Now he tells the service advisor to call the customer and sella brake job... "oh, Mrs. customer, you need a thousand dollar brake job." First and foremost, check the customers complaints FIRST, what I learned... Complaint, Cause, Correction first, give the customer the option of deciding whether to procede with the safety related condition first, then if they can wait on the other services, so be it. You not only are now a hero, but you took care of safety first, then you thought as a consumer would and were sympathetic to her finances and her families needs to still be able to pay other bills. Now, I'm not saying that Disney needs to have 300 different packages, nor should they have 7 packages, but, what they can do is offer us just that one extra ala carte option above the basic plan that is a win-win deal for both Disney and the client instead of forcing the client to worry about dining each day, affording it or not, whether it's cost effective and making the price difference such a wide and out of reach option, $4000 DOLLARS IS REDICULOUS! Plus, there's much included in those options as it is that we will not even use, basically a big waste and useless added items. I would include breakfast and dinner (a 1 credit restaurant pp each day), then, if the client wants, can pay the difference for each signature 2 credit restaurant as they wish. Personally, I think Disney would make more money this way too and it gives us more options. Well, I rambled on and probably make little sense to some people, but thats my feeling on things.
I wonder if some of you can help me plan our DDP? We're booked for 6/28 to 7/8/07 for myself, my kids ages 18, 15 and 10. We're on the Magic your way with dining plan (the basic) and so far, we've made our reservations for 1) Cinderella's Round Table CB, 2)Brown Derby/Fantasia DS, 3) Princess Story Book CB, 4) Hoop Dee Doo DS, 5) Polynesian Luau DS, 6)Alfredo De Roma in Italy (dinner), 7) Mickey's BY Barbecue CD and lastly 8) the Crystal Palace CD. Now, those listed covers SIX dinners and TWO breakfasts, we still need to plan for dinner for four more days and breakfast for eight days. On the DDP as it is now, we have no more dining credits left, in fact, we will have to pay for some of the reservations already made. It is amazing how my ten year old (as of 5/14/07 is counted as an adult in the DDP using up valuable credits, but when booking the trip, she is concidered a child. She eats very well though, but for myself, I'm satisfied with coffee and a mid to late morning breakfast snack or sandwich. There is still 10 more places we want to eat at consisting of 4 or 5 character breakfasts and 4 to 6other restaurants for dinner such as Boma, Biergarten, Rain Forest Cafe and the Living sea's, ect...,but we're flexible and can compromise from one place to another. We've tried to figure on Extra Magic Hours at the parks and park events to maximize our timing for dining and events. The way I understand it is, we are STILL entitled to counter service meals and snacks for each day. I realize we can use all of our credits in just a couple days or spread them out, BUT, IF, IF say myself does not want to eat, but the kids do, HOW does the dining plan get figured at that point? Figuring on this dining plan as it stands now, we will have a huge dining bill at the end of our stay, BUT, will it be equal to or exceed the value of going with the Disney premium plan? I have tried to use your Priority seating and calculator forms, but I'm still at a loss for what to do. Any help would be greatly appreciated! 
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Well, here's the new plan, but not in order yet; After reviewing what the out of pocket cost would be X4 for the signiture dinners and show combos as compaired to upgrading to the Premium Dining plan, I have found that premium package is out of the question and that Disney needs to come up with an in-between package that does not add $4500 for four people, they're out of their bleeping gords! It will be far better for us to spend out of pocket roughly $1000 to $1600 for the Signature Dinner shows and restaurants than to upgrade. I figured the Polynesian w/ garden view as it stood, then added the 10 day MYW w/"premium dining" option, the cost for 4 people = roughly $11,500. When I changed our resort to a moderate resort with the "10 day premium plan", the cost was over $9000. So, the original booking with the Polynesian resort and 10 day basic plan will have to stay as is, although more expensive than the other resorts, with my back condition and traveling with a 1 year old grandson and a ten year old, the option of having the monorail right there out weighs any savings other resorts can offer. What I'm figuring on is keeping my Signature dining reservations that I booked using the dining plan with a credit card hold (less the MBYB), making reservations for the 1 dining credit places and also better utilizing the counter service credits for days w/o reservations, then once we are seated, tell them I will be paying cash instead of using the dining credits. Now, last year, Disney cleaned out my checing accounts by charging my debit cards for ALL of the reservations we had for Signature dining, this resulted in a lot of over drafts, the problem was they did this three months before we were scheduled to arrive. What I think I ultimately did to cause this was using all of my dining plan credits while making the reservations at several restaurants and tossing in a few Signature reservations after the others were make, this was over a months time frame. Disney figured I had no more credits left and then once I added a few Signature seatings, thats when they charged my card. This time, I booked ALL the Signature seatings first, and so far, no charges have been applied to my card. They ultimately gave back all of my funds and admitted the mistake and wrote to my various creditors on my behalf, but what a huge headache that caused me, after all that and having to cancel my accounts and cards and being left w/o any money for over 10 days, I cancelled my reservations and another reason we cancelled is that NOT ONE Disney cast member could get their stories straight, each one described the plans differently, told me I could do one thing or another with the dining credits but not one had it right, until I read the fine print and worked with Disneys Guest Relation supervisors (of who's services were fantastic). Even after getting all the names for the reservation's cast members I spoke with, no one knew each other. Lets hope I don't screw up these reservations now. So, this is the best I can come up with so far, what do you all think????
I probably should have wrote "people just starting out trying to understand the plans" instead of the average joe. I am learning more as we go along and I'm sure the plan will work out fine now that I understand it better thanks to you.
