probably won't used the dining plan again

[marcyinPA]

We will be on the dining plan at the end of September. We got it free. However, we aren't big eaters (ok, well my dh is, but the rest of us aren't!) and we never order an appetizer and desset each. We usually order either an appetizer OR a dessert and we always share.

My question is, since there will be 4 adults (well, 3 real adults and one "child" adult) and we all get appetizers and desserts, is is possible to give your appetizer and/or dessert to another table where people are dining? Can we tell the server "Let that table over there order an appetizer/dessert on us" ???

Now that would be another way to spread the magic!!

 

[DeirdreTours]

Customer savings equates to revenue loss

With a perishable product this is often not the case.
Disney is selling three basic things- the room, the park and the food (for simplicity I am ignoring the optional doodads). A room that stays empty overnight is revenue lost forever and so is available space during the day in the theme parks. It doesn't matter if the rack rate for the room and park ticket and dinner are $300:

Room-$200
ticket $50
dinner $50

Disney gets zero of these dollars because if you aren't in the room and you aren't in the park, you aren't going to be eating the dinner.

But if you book the "free" dining package Disney makes $250 , that is:

Room $200
Ticket $50
dinner $0

minus their actual cost of the dinner (which is virtually never exceeds 30% of the menu price in a restaurant and is probably considerable less at Disney), say $17 for a total revenue gain of :

$233

Now there are some very small cost that I am not accounting for here--like the cost of the maid making up your room and the hourly wage of the waitstaff, but most of Disney's hotel and park cost are fixed--That is, an empty room costs them nearly as much as an occupied one. And a park that is open but lightly populated with guests costs them nearly as much as a full one.

Note: I pulled these numbers right out of the air to illustrate my point. The actual revenue that Disney earns will vary.

 

[dawgfan]

Exactly my point in profit variance. Like a Las Vegas Casino. If you ain't gamblin they ain't making money. They bet you are gamblin. That is 100% profit when the house wins. The house wins more often than it loses. Same with insurance companies. They lose periodically on a claim but win more than they lose easily. Disney has adopted a market view here that is consistent with modern resort/travel/ leisure product. Offer a package as a convenience that does not kill the consumer, price wise, but does offer the company profit margins not existent prior to the offer. It generates possible room occupancy. That is a revenue plus. The off set is the product of food. It is perishable but that is a figured and known value. You have to know that Disney has modeled all this expendure in perishable goods. Also note that many items have and will continue to be taken off the list of items that can be ordered on the plan. These may vary from trip report to trip report as consumers to WDW experience market fluctuations effecting Disney. The packaged meal will be the result (if not already mostly realized here). Consumers will get a meal that they will be pleased with. They will run the numbers on the amount of food they were offered and feel that they won without running the numbers on the food they actually ate. When the comparison to an average family of 4 without the plan comes out I bet that the plan is not as good or merely breaks even at best. Breaking even is something that Disney can live with but would rather avoid. If you really believe that Disney has allowed us to get into their market shares in a negative manner then you must certainly believe that Ford and GM and Dodge are REALLY offering that employees discount to all customers. Come on. Do you really buy the line "I am selling this at below sticker price" or even better "I am taking a $200 loss here" when you buy a car? I love Disney more than most folks, but there is always a reason for aggressive marketing. If offering free food is not aggressive marketing I don't know what is. They are hitting you somewhere. If that is at the room or the food it makes no difference. I believe they are hitting the food here. That is an easy profit margin given bulk consumption. In general the packeages on rooms in the past at Disney have been $200 more in expense than the room only with tickets purchased on your own route. Let's face it...it's a hassle to do all that seperate. It saves you money though. Disneys take on that is that they offer you so much more. Like what a pin and a luggage tag? This is simply corporate dynamics. Nothing that I fault Disney for. They are simply getting the most they can in their share of the market.

 

[housecat]

Now that I'm a grownup I know you don't have to finish everything on your plate, that food will not make it to those starving kids in China! LOL

Lol, soo true, except I use the same tactic on my kids, and it works!! hehe, do what ya gotta do, I guess, but half the time I feel like a hypocrite because I always leave leftovers My eyes are perpetually larger than my stomach, lol.

 

[housecat]

Exactly my point in profit variance. Like a Las Vegas Casino. If you ain't gamblin they ain't making money. They bet you are gamblin. That is 100% profit when the house wins. The house wins more often than it loses. Same with insurance companies. They lose periodically on a claim but win more than they lose easily. Disney has adopted a market view here that is consistent with modern resort/travel/ leisure product. Offer a package as a convenience that does not kill the consumer, price wise, but does offer the company profit margins not existent prior to the offer. It generates possible room occupancy. That is a revenue plus. The off set is the product of food. It is perishable but that is a figured and known value. You have to know that Disney has modeled all this expendure in perishable goods. Also note that many items have and will continue to be taken off the list of items that can be ordered on the plan. These may vary from trip report to trip report as consumers to WDW experience market fluctuations effecting Disney. The packaged meal will be the result (if not already mostly realized here). Consumers will get a meal that they will be pleased with. They will run the numbers on the amount of food they were offered and feel that they won without running the numbers on the food they actually ate. When the comparison to an average family of 4 without the plan comes out I bet that the plan is not as good or merely breaks even at best. Breaking even is something that Disney can live with but would rather avoid. If you really believe that Disney has allowed us to get into their market shares in a negative manner then you must certainly believe that Ford and GM and Dodge are REALLY offering that employees discount to all customers. Come on. Do you really buy the line "I am selling this at below sticker price" or even better "I am taking a $200 loss here" when you buy a car? I love Disney more than most folks, but there is always a reason for aggressive marketing. If offering free food is not aggressive marketing I don't know what is. They are hitting you somewhere. If that is at the room or the food it makes no difference. I believe they are hitting the food here. That is an easy profit margin given bulk consumption. In general the packeages on rooms in the past at Disney have been $200 more in expense than the room only with tickets purchased on your own route. Let's face it...it's a hassle to do all that seperate. It saves you money though. Disneys take on that is that they offer you so much more. Like what a pin and a luggage tag? This is simply corporate dynamics. Nothing that I fault Disney for. They are simply getting the most they can in their share of the market.

I agree...Disney IS out to make a profit. It's an extremely wealthy corporation that can provide me with the vacation experience of a lifetime. We look forward to our Disney vacations all year, including, but not limited to. the restaurants we dine at. The dining plan offers people who wouldn't normally step away from counter service to experience their fabulous restaurants, to do just that. That's awesome! So yeah, they're making more money...they've still made it easier for "the average joe family" to experience a little luxury. From most of the reviews I've read, seems like everyone's happy with it! And this was before free dining...GO DISNEY!

 

[Jaxs27]

Oh we just loved the dining plan. I guess we are pigs....

 

[bicker]

Just one thought I have been mulling over here...as we all know most of the time a package tyoe deal is usually convenient to us but a real profit margin for the company offering it. If not for that trade off many would not choose the package and the compoany would not sell it.

This is a good point. I remember that, at least through the 1990's, the standard advice for folks was to avoid vacation pacakges, because they would never end up saving money -- rather they were priced to cover what the prices of the individual pieces were, plus a little extra for the convenience of booking the package.

The dining plan is a package deal. They offer what seems to be a very heavy deal of food and a good selection in variety. It is a calculated gamble that you (AND everyone in your party as everyone must be on the same package=kids who do not eat much usually) that you will actually not consume as much as is offered.

That's a great way of expressing it, and it carries over to other offerings, and explains the policies for those offerings: Why are admission passes non-transferable? Because they are priced based, at least in part, on a calculated gamble that not every customer will use every day of the pass, or, for non-expiring passes, that some customers will hold them for a long while before using all the days, thereby lending the company money with no requirement to pay the customer interest.

 

[bicker]

Customer savings equates to revenue loss

With a perishable product this is often not the case.

True. It is only the case when the produce would have been purchased anyway, regardless of the savings offered to the customer. That's why companies direct sales to specific people, why there are key-encoded discounts and such: Because the company has identified potential customers that would only visit if they were offered a discount. The company's main interest is to ensure that discounts only go to such potential customers, and that their loyal customers, the ones who are willing to pay for the company's services at a premium, do end up paying the premium instead of the discounted price.

Now there are some very small cost that I am not accounting for here

And two very significant costs: The cost of customer acquisition, which in some cases is larger than any other single component of cost, and the opportunity cost associated with the incremental revenue between a discounted price and the premium (which some folks consider just another cost of customer acquisition, but it isn't -- it is a cost associated with a poorly-designed discount program).

The off set is the product of food. It is perishable but that is a figured and known value. You have to know that Disney has modeled all this expendure in perishable goods.

You're absolutely correct here: Disney has very strong modeling in place to ensure that their cost of wasted food is minimal. They order what they know they need. They know weeks in advance if some week is going to be stronger or weaker than early forecasts and can adjust their purchasing. Food is assuredly not a fixed cost at all.

If you really believe that Disney has allowed us to get into their market shares in a negative manner then you must certainly believe that Ford and GM and Dodge are REALLY offering that employees discount to all customers.

To be fair, they truly could be, but that just shows how crappy they treat their employees.

 

[bicker]

Oops... duplicate...

 

[mistaroo]

Had I not purchased the dining plan I would not have eaten as many meals and would have spent way less than what the dining plan actually cost.

I know what you mean and I feel the same way. The dining plan was wonderful fun and I really thoroughly enjoyed it. That said, I would not buy it again for the reason you mention: our normal eating habits cost less than cost of the dining plan. Also, some of our favorite snacks (dole whip for example) aren't on the plan so we had to pay for all those anyway. It was a nice thing to try and I am glad I did but I'm not doing it again.

 

[Lewisc]

Offering room discounts may motivate some guests to make a trip to WDW. It will also result in some guests who were already planning on making the trip, and may have already made reservations, simply spending less for a trip they were already planning on taking.

I know people think the resort costs are mainly fixed. That's true if you're talking about renting one additional room BUT Disney has the option of closing wings, floors, buildings and even entire resorts during the slow season. That does reduce expenses like staffing and utilities that would otherwise be considered fixed. It also gives Disney an opportunity to renovate and even to just to a better job maintaining the resorts. It also decreases the wear and tear in the common areas of that section of the resort.

The dining promotion is a win for Disney. The Disney owned CS restaurants are all within a narrow price range. I suspect Disney's cost for the soda and ice cream is a fraction of the selling price. Most of the TS Disney restaurants are the buffet and all you care to eat restaurants. Nothing is really cooked to order, you don't need a highly trained chief and the cost of the food items is not that high. The better Disney owned restaurants are all 2 credit signature restaurants.

The non-Disney restaurants are the ones that are stuck in the middle. They're not 2 credits but they are more elaborate and expensive than the vast majority of the 1 credit Disney TS restaurants.

 

[honeymo78]

One must ask themselves why the suddenly offerd the plan and to boot they offer it for free to introduce it.

Just to clarify, Disney didn't suddenly offer this plan, it has been around for many years in one form or another (wishes, silver plan, etc) the free part may be new but discounting that type of plan certainly isn't either. I remember discounts offered on the silver plan which made me mad b/c I was going on the gold plan. Clearly the reason it is free is that they are trying to bring more guests to Disney during the value season. If disney hasn't learned how guests are working the system in the 10 or more years it has been offered or hasn't been able to think of all the possibilities for dining in all those years then someone screwed up.

What brings this all into the spotlight is that many more people are taking advantage of this plan now that it is free or at least more of them have access to boards like this one.

 

[Joan1]

Here is my take on why they are offering it for free

1. to get people to try it and for those that think it is a great plan will want to book it again on a future trip

2. same as above but they are offering it during their slowest time of year since bookings were down due to the hurricanes last year that had people worried this year

 

[Dopey's twin Dippy]

i just read the other thread about the dining, and i was thinking something. why dont the people who cant eat all the food or use all the free dinners GIVE them to the people who booked All Stars with Free Dining, but actually are STAYING at another HOTEL........jes. i wish i had thought of that................... that way everyone would be able to eat FREE.......ha ha ha