New Dvc Okw Member: ? About Meal Vouchers

[tbickford]

I am thinking about purchasing Quick and Casual Lunch or Dinner Vouchers. On Ebay they list between $15.00 to $26.00 a ticket. Can someone give me some guidance on purchasing meal vouchers. We are a family of four 2 adults/2 children (twins 4 years old)! We will be at our OKW home for Thanksgiving 2002. This will be our first DVC trip. We are extremely excited, and nervous about what to expect, especially about these meal tickets.

Should we not purchase meal vouchers on-line like that? If a good idea, what would be a fair price for each tickets? OR should we just purchase the meal vouchers when we arrive?

Does anyone know off hand the park hours for November and December 2002?

Can WDW resort guests enter the parks 1 ½ hours before official opening?; If so, is it for select days only?

How can we obtain E-Ride passes?

Is Fastpass still available?

THANKS FOR ALL YOUR ADVICE.

 

[chris1gill]

Oh GOSH, don't buy the meal tickets on EBAY!!! Go over to the Budget Board here on the DIS & look for posts on Connections. We have the membership & love it. They offer the quick & casual meal vouchers for 11.00 & they offer the Sitdown Lunch vouchers (forget the exact title) for 29.00

The best value for the lunch vouchers is at Beaches & Cream at the BC, Morrocco's fast food restaurant (forget the name) & Pepper Market over at CSR. There are a couple others that are also very good deals. The vouchers can save big $$$ at these restaurants. Most other restaurants you will save between 2 & 4 dollars per voucher... We use the vouchers to splurge at Beaches & Cream big time....

The Sit Down Lunch vouchers are really great value for LeCellier, Alfredo's, A Steakhouse restaurant in the Contemporary (forget the name) & a couple of others.... again they can save you big bucks at these restaurants, other restaurants you can actually lose money, so you have to check out the menu's at www.wdwig.com Also, you can go to Mary Waring's site www.mousesavers.com & search for the Meal discounts at Disney & the connections program will come up. Connections also offer movie tickets for 4.50 & a 20% discount for Toys Rus, Kids Rus, Babies R Us, Kbkids, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Borders Bookstore & I forget where else!!

You can join through this direct link: https://www.connections123.com/join.asp?PC=ENT

or, you can go through www.mypoints.com & get a 25.00 Gift Card (forget to where)...

There is a 30 day trial for 1.00 & you can order your vouchers & Disney Park Passes, they offer the very BEST discounts on Park Hoppers from 4 day PLUS options & up... They offer a 10% discount... Bigger than any other discount I've found. BUT, if you are going back to WDW within a year you might want to get an Annual Pass for the four themeparks or the upgraded Annual Pass which includes the themeparks & Water parks & Disney Quest...

Fastpasses are aquired at the individual attractions in the parks.

They no longer offer the early entry mornings, that was discontinued last fall
I think I answered all your questions!!

 

[KathyR]

Does anyone know off hand the park hours for November and December 2002?

They are not out yet, but should be in a few months. You can look up last years hours off the homepage of this website www.wdwinfo.com. for a guide to what this years will be.



How can we obtain E-Ride passes?

You can purchase these at the front desk of your resort or I believe community hall in the MK. You will need your resort ID's for each ticket .

 

[CarolMN]

If you do choose to buy the meal vouchers, chris1gill has given you good advice. They are overpriced on ebay. You cannot buy them on site as far as I know and I would advise against ordering any at all for your children.

Personally, I am not a fan of the vouchers, especially the $29.00 sit down lunch vouchers. If you normally do not order a drink, appetizer, entree and dessert, you will be surprised at how much food there is. To "get your $$ worth", you will have to order the most expensive items on the menu. IMHO, if you are not normally big eaters, these vouchers only encourage you to eat more than you should.

Prior to a recent trip, I was able to purchase four $29.00 vouchers for $80. (Fellow DIS poster was selling them for the reduced price because her trip was cancelled). I gave two of them to my brother & his wife and the four of us used them at Le Cellier and Marrakesh. We actually split one voucher between two people - shared the entree, appetizer and dessert and ordered an extra drink. We all left more than satisfied. I don't remember the bill's total, but I do remember we only saved a few dollars ($5 - 6) over the cost of the vouchers. If I hadn't bought them at the reduced price, we would not have saved anything at all. If we didn't have the vouchers, we would have ordered a lot less food!

I don't think the Q & C vouchers save all that much, either, for the same reasons - more food than I would normally eat without the vouchers. Might work if two of us shared, though. If you read some of the threads on the budget board, it seems that there are a few places that do "provide your $$ worth". Again, it seems that you have to order quite a bit of food, and also the most expensive items to "save" $$.

All that said, the vouchers did enable us to eat a very nice lunch in two very nice restaurants. The vouchers were convenient and it is a way to ensure that some of your meals are paid for before the trip.

The restaurants that participate in this program are limited, and some are not easy to get to if you are dependent on Disney transportation. I have read that the Pepper Market no longer accepts them. I agreee with chris1 gill about checking out what Mary Waring has to say about the Connections vouchers on her MouseSavers web site. Here is the direct link:

http://www.mousesavers.com/connections.html

Whatever you may decide, have a wonderful trip!

P.S. FastPass is still available - Disney may even have added it to some attractions since your last visit!

 

[JulesMom]

We used 1 adult lunch voucher and 1 child lunch voucher at ESPN for all 4 of us.

Each voucher gives you 1 appetizer, 1 entree, 1 drink & 1 dessert.

DD had 1 appetizer, I had 1 appetizer, DH & DS each had an entree and we shared dessert. I feel like we got a good deal.

 

[chris1gill]

JulesMom, that's a good point, I forgot, when you order the child's sit down voucher you can get any appetizer and any dessert off the adult menu, the entree itself comes off the kids menu... it can be a good deal if you do your homework...

Oh, the other place that accepts them & offers a great deal is the Rainforest Cafe at Animal Kingdom...

We eat one large meal a day, so the vouchers work out excellent for us... we would normally eat an appetizer & dessert for that one meal & of course we always share those things with the kids.

Apparently Pepper Market did have an issue for a couple of days, but they are back to taking the vouchers no problem...

Before buying the vouchers you really need to look at the menu's, but also remember the vouchers include tip & tax, even the casual lunch vouchers include 15% of the total the bill would have been... Just an FYI on that, there has been confusion in the past.

 

[auntsue]

We bought the breakfast vouchers for the character meals. I feel that by the time you pay the $69 fee to join, you really have to save a lot of money to make it worth it. With the breakfasts we saved anywhere from $1.75 to $5 per voucher. I bought 35 of them because there were 11 of us and that was the only way we would save enough to cover the fee. I haven't used the Connections program before or since so I don't know if I would join again.

 

[SueM in MN]

Here's a link to the DIS page of fastpass info.