Pay £660 more for Deluxe Dinning Plan, is it worth it?

[Supercod]

Hi, I will be getting the Dinning Plan free with our stay at Animal Kingdom, is it worth paying the extra £660 for the Deluxe plan (over 10 days, 2 adults and 2 children), that gives you 3 meals of your choice each day.. Way I read it we could use 2 of the 3 each day towards a signature restaurant, show dinners and character dinning.. as we already get FREE dining worth £1,039.60!, I am thinking the extra £66 a day in effect we not have to pay for any food or soft drinks the whole 10 days may be very worthwhile doing. What's the views on this, would it be cheaper to pay for 2 dinner shows, 1 character dinning, 1 signature restaurant and about 5 extra breakfasts on top of the standard dining plan instead of doing the upgrade?

 

[Rohais]

We did it for our wedding/honeymoon in September - it was great, a lot of food but definitely worth doing! Especially if you plan your meals cleverly We ate at so many restaurants that we wouldn't usually have, and so many signatures. It was nice having the appetiser and dessert option - don't feel obligated to eat every course at every meal, or box some desserts up to take home.

We loved the 2 snacks a day we received with ours too, spent on plenty of frozen drinks and goodies!

I'd say go for it, its a great price

 

[2Tiggies]

First of all, how many TS and signature meals do you WANT to do (forget about the cost if you can while you think about this). If money were no object, but you still had to do what you want to do within the 10 days you have, how much time would you devote to meals, including getting there in time to check in?

I have my own views on this and it is my personal preference because of what is important to us when we go to Disney and what falls down the scale in terms of priority when we are on a trip.

I'm not going to give my views just yet as you will probably find it easier to come to a conclusion if you work out first what you want

Once you have done that, we can all help you look at the most cost effective way to achieve it

 

[LeaversOnTour]

We have had the normal dining plan and had QS and snack credits left over, and bought over 10 bags of sweets home just to use the credits! But this saved us bring back presents for the kids at school as they all got mickey sweets instead, which i would have had tp pay for.

However, we dont use snack credits for EVERYTHING, water and Soda we buy OOP as we feel our credits are better spent on pineapple floats in MK. YUM!!!! and worms and dirt in AK YUM!!!!

For us the deluxe would be WAY too much food. I guess it depends on what you want to do as far as signature dining and shows, and how many of them you want to do.

Do the signature restaurants have "upscale" food for the kids. Because I wouldnt want to waste 2 credits on Mac N Cheese - Just my opinion

However, if we could go to CRT more than once in a trip I would. We LOVE it - Would love to do the Breakfast and the Dinner. We have only done the Dinner.

 

[Supercod]

Hi, thanks for the replies, to clear a few things up. We are going for 19 days, 9 of these will be not on the dinning plan, and 10 will be on the dinning plan (we need to split book due to going at Easter Time) so the first 9 days will be not going mental on the food and drinking front ;-)

Now reason I am thinking of the upgrade is we plan to do around 2 dinner shows, 1 character dinning, 1 signature restaurant and about 5 extra breakfasts during the last 10 days. And I am thinking the extra £660 now would be cheaper than paying for it as you go, but since it's been 7 years since I was last at Disney I am not sure of the current pricing and how the exchange rate effected costs back then.

 

[scottishgirl1]

We upgraded to Deluxe once when 2 of our 3 kids were still classed as children on the dining plan. we really enjoyed doing all the character meals and signatures that year and am glad we did it then as it we could not afford to upgrade any longer as from 2013 we would be upgrading for 5 adults.

at the moment we would definitely not get any value from upgrading as none of the kids would be interested in the appetizers and would still want kids meals a lot of the time.

 

[reindeer]

My adult daughter and I did Deluxe last visit. We ended up giving away 4 credits just could not eat that often. I would only recommend the up grade if you plan on doing several signiture meals. I also found that trying to fit all the meals in was very time consuming.

 

[mackay_j]

No way would I do it, you would be so sick of food after only 4 or 5 days. We were on the normal dining plan for 2 weeks this summer and even that was too much food for us (and my teens and dh and big eaters).

We did not use all out quick service dining credits. And used about 1/2 of our snacks in gifty things for the girls to give to friends and family.

We did 2 signatures - flying fish and cali gril both were good with flying fish being the better on food quality - but our bill was $480 so the 20-25% tip was over $100 and about $300 with a min tip of $60 for the cali. So if you were to do this every night it would add up to more than double the amount of tips than for non sig resturants.

Also there are some super non sig resturants that we would not want to miss. The ones we liked best and always try go to are (excuse the spelling as I cant remember them)

Kiona Cafe
sanna
taypanedo (japanese at epcot)
san Agelos Inn (mexico)

 

[2Tiggies]

Hi, thanks for the replies, to clear a few things up. We are going for 19 days, 9 of these will be not on the dinning plan, and 10 will be on the dinning plan (we need to split book due to going at Easter Time) so the first 9 days will be not going mental on the food and drinking front ;-)

Now reason I am thinking of the upgrade is we plan to do around 2 dinner shows, 1 character dinning, 1 signature restaurant and about 5 extra breakfasts during the last 10 days. And I am thinking the extra £660 now would be cheaper than paying for it as you go, but since it's been 7 years since I was last at Disney I am not sure of the current pricing and how the exchange rate effected costs back then.

Go onto the dining tab at the top of the DISboards/WDW Info page here and check out the prices for the extra meals you plan on doing that your regular DDP won't cover you for. Add it up, add tax and then see if it costs more than £660 at the current exchange rate. It will give you a fair idea. It may well work out cheaper to keep the DDP you have now and use credits for the most expensive meals and pay OOP for the cheapest ones (often a signature paid OOP is cheaper than using 2 credits and paying for 2 separate meals). If your total comes in above or close to £660, then it may be worth considering the upgrade. If not, you could free yourself and those funds up to pay for other things, whether it be extra meals, treats or a combination thereof. It's roughly $1000 at the current exchange rate

 

[2Tiggies]

would it be cheaper to pay for 2 dinner shows, 1 character dinning, 1 signature restaurant and about 5 extra breakfasts on top of the standard dining plan instead of doing the upgrade?

Just to clarify, are these all extras on top of one TS meal per day?

 

[magicgirl]

My OH and I did it for 2 weeks last year and loved it. However the money we spent on tips also went a lot which is something to bear in mind.

 

[Elise79]

Don't forget you are going to have eat the first week too - might be worth looking at what you want over the whole trip.

It may be cheaper to have some in the first week rather than upgrading the DP.

 

[wayneg]

We have done the regular DDP 4 times now.
Not a chance I would want the Deluxe but we don't eat breakfast and we don't enjoy the signatures.
The regular DDP is expensive enough for tips, I would have heart failure paying for Deluxe
Regular DDP is perfect for us, TS & CS credit just about right over a 21 night stay, come home with about 25 bags of candy with leftover snack credits.

You need to write down roughly what you want to do and price up OOP how much extra you might spend, no way would it would be worth doing for us.

 

[dixonsontour]

We did dxddp for 14 nights at the end of October.

Have previously done ddp twice.

Reasons we went for it where we (DH especially) fancied a change and there were alot more TS places I wanted to fit in - the costs of upgrading to dxddp were not much more than paying oop for the extra meals.

I'd definitely only consider it if you have a car and have done disney and the dining plan before.

We had no more than 2 meals a day - did either a character breakfast or early lunch then a 2TS signature dinner or a 2TS show in the evening.

It was precision planned - I like that but I know many don't.

Foodwise we ate better. I know QS is not all burger and fries but I definitely had less junk. Much better options for DD aswell - she adored the kids desserts at the signatures.

Will be doing a dining report shortly.

 

[Supercod]

Cheers for all the feedback, it's been very helpful.

One thing that's disappointing is that "tips" are not included in the DDP any more, it was when we 1st had it in 2005 (was really autopilot dinning then). So will be looking at 20% per meal so that's soon going to mount up. However you need to pay the tip anyway no matter if you do it on the plan or outside the plan.. and have decided after much research and debate to spring for the extra money and go for the upgraded plan ;-)

Now to sort out what we are doing for the 1st part of the trip, fun ;-)

 

[2Tiggies]

Now to sort out what we are doing for the 1st part of the trip, fun ;-)

Dieting to make way for the DxDDP?

 

[wayneg]

Cheers for all the feedback, it's been very helpful.

One thing that's disappointing is that "tips" are not included in the DDP any more, it was when we 1st had it in 2005 (was really autopilot dinning then). So will be looking at 20% per meal so that's soon going to mount up. However you need to pay the tip anyway no matter if you do it on the plan or outside the plan.

You are correct if you are going to eat onsite anyway then the tips will be same (as a party of 6 the add 18% on this summer for us) but if you would eat offsite without DDP then cost of food (and drink) is less meaning tips a lot less.
I was amazed this year how the prices had risen in Disney, it hit home when we dined at Sanaa, paying for 1 starter, a bread selection and tips cost almost as much as paying OOP for our whole meal & tips at Logans Roadhouse.

 

[2Tiggies]

You are correct if you are going to eat onsite anyway then the tips will be same (as a party of 6 the add 18% on this summer for us) but if you would eat offsite without DDP then cost of food (and drink) is less meaning tips a lot less.
I was amazed this year how the prices had risen in Disney, it hit home when we dined at Sanaa, paying for 1 starter, a bread selection and tips cost almost as much as paying OOP for our whole meal & tips at Logans Roadhouse.

Wayne, even CS only this year, I noticed how the prices had increased. I never paid attention to them while there that much but every year I complete an excel spreadsheet from my credit-counter and receipts and the average per day was up significantly this year from 11 months before. It's the 'small' stuff too, like beverages and sides where they just add on an extra 40c or something small - yet you buy 60 of those over a trip and other similar items and it adds up quickly!

 

[wayneg]

Wayne, even CS only this year, I noticed how the prices had increased. I never paid attention to them while there that much but every year I complete an excel spreadsheet from my credit-counter and receipts and the average per day was up significantly this year from 11 months before. It's the 'small' stuff too, like beverages and sides where they just add on an extra 40c or something small - yet you buy 60 of those over a trip and other similar items and it adds up quickly!

It isn't just the food, the merchandise has risen a lot in the past few months, we are replacing all our pic frames this year with these as we get 20% off with PAP. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Disney-Mi...394?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f0c7c933a
They have gone up 15%-20% between our August to Nov trips, wished we had bought them all in August.

 

[2Tiggies]

It isn't just the food, the merchandise has risen a lot in the past few months, we are replacing all our pic frames this year with these as we get 20% off with PAP. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Disney-Mi...394?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f0c7c933a
They have gone up 15%-20% between our August to Nov trips, wished we had bought them all in August.

Perhaps I was a little hasty to suggest that DD was burning through her spending money this trip then. She took a very substantial amount to spend which she had saved hard for over the last year so I was shocked when she asked for an advance on her allowance 2 weeks into the trip. To be honest, I ddn't really pay much attention to prices as I focused more on taking photos and other aspects this year and just gave the shopping and spending a complete miss. I will have to keep that in mind for our next trip and budget accordingly!