QSDP Reviews! (w/pics) - 2 Adults, 2 Weeks, 56 CS and 56 Snacks!!!

[westgrove]

We arrived back to the UK on Saturday after 1 week in NY/ Washington DC followed by 2 weeks in WDW staying at CSR.

I'll start off the thread with my basic thoughts on the QSDP;

-As I understand it when people from USA get free dining offers at moderate resorts they get standard dining. Unfortunately UK residents only get the quick service plan, although to make up for it ( a bit) we still get 2 snacks per day rather than 1 and so this is how we came to have 56 meal and 56 snacks!!!
-There is so much food I wanted to try and I didnt get the chance to!
- I planned to buy food OOP thinking we usually have 3 meals a day at home but 2 each day was plenty! We usually had a late morning breakfast at about 10am and an early dinner between say 4 and 6pm.
-DH was particularly careful at first with his SCs and frowned when I used them for bottled water etc but he soon came to realise, as did I, that using them all would be a massive challenge in itself!
-I really fretted before we went about whether to upgrade the dining plan but I'm glad we didnt as the QSDP really suited us. Being 2 adults with no kids and going in May we didnt need to plan each day too much before we went and I would have found having ADRs to get to all the time abit frustrating I think because there was just never enough time!
-We did one 'TS' OOP (actually a buffet at the Bier Garten) and we also did the Wishes Dessert Party so I'll review those also
-We went to Universal for 2 days so I will mention what we ate there too

 

[chocolateMinnie]

Subscribing - we were also snack credit hoarders when we did dxdp in 2010 LOL we brought about 50 of our 56 snacks homewith us as gifts.

 

[Bev J]

Looking forward to your review!

Bev

 

[westgrove]

When I get the chance I'll find out how to link each post to the front page but for now on with the show!

11th May

We arrived in Orlando airport after 2 very unnerving flights! and after quickly going around our lovely resort got the but to DTD to try the famous Earl of Sandwich

The queue was quite short and the lady taking our order must have saw me looking abit unsure and explained the dining plan options

We both got the 'Original' sandwich (hot with roast beef, cheese and horseradish cream), we also both got a chocolate brownie sandwich. DH had diet coke and I had water.

Oh my goodness ... wow! this was every bit as good as I'd read it was, the horseradish cream really made it extra yummy , there was plenty beef and it was good lean cuts.
The brownie sandwiches were soft and moist with really sweet white frosting in the middle.

After much discussion we decided that the scoring system would be based on 'Flounders' and this was definitey 5 out of 5!

On the way to the bus we went to the DTD Goofy Snacks shop
We went abit over board and got;
1 red velvet cake pop
1 chocolate cake pop
1 rasperry white choc cookie
1 choc peanut butter cookie

We had the cake pops in our room, they were both really nice and the marshmallow in the ears wasnt something I'd read about and it was really good. DH liked his but thought it was a bit dense in texture.
We ate our cookies the next evening, they kept well and the rasperry one which I had was really nice, however DH said his was 'claggy' and wasnt too impressed, so I tasted some to see for myself and yes it was...claggy. Quite doughy and sticky in texture with all the peanut butter and when I chewed it it stuck to the roof of my mouth and not in the nice way plain old peanut butter does. So overall we said the snacks were 'Ok' and awarded 3 out of 5

 

[westgrove]

12th May
This was the day we realised how much food you get in the dining plan!!!
We got up early and went to Pepper Market Buffetat CSR for breakfast.
We ended up going here a few times throughout the holiday, we didnt get pics on this day as we left the camera in our room and went back for it later. When I get into the second week's reviews there will be a pic there.
There is a lot of choice such as;
porridge/oatmeal
fruit - fruit salad
yoghurt
cereals
pancakes
french toast
waffles
omlettes
scrambled eggs/frittata
sausage
bacon
little cubed potatos
biscuits
gravy
various baked goods and more stuff I cant remember just now

I'd say the quality of everything varied between ok and good. Nothing was really great and nothing was bad. For a CS credit it was great and got us filled up for the day, though I'm not sure if it was worth almost $40 for the two of us. I especially wouldnt recommend it if you're a light eater and paying oop.
My favourite was mickey waffles ( sadly after the second time we went the waffles were square and stayed that way - they were much thinner and drier )
DH loved always had loads of ham, bacon, sausage, biscuits and gravy etc and really liked it

NOTE: When you finish breakfast your server brings the cheque to your table and you pay them there, but when we went for an 'a la carte' evening meal another day we had to pay at the register on the way out which confused me for a while!

The receipt confirmed gratuities werent included and offered up the equivalent of 15% and 20%, (which off topic seems to be on all WDW receipts to be honest I do find abit patronising )
Seeing as it is a buffet and our server brought us a drink each then the cheque I thought it wasnt really worth that much , even though she was nice. We gave $4, a little over 10%. May thats a bit cheap of me but I felt better when I noticed some people didnt tip at all!
This was 4 out of 5

In MK we went to the Main St Bakery
DH got a hot tea and I got an iced french vanilla coffee
The tea was Ok, it's never as good as British tea! I think it was one of the lipton ones you find a lot in yellow packets
The iced coffee was refreshing, not too sweet but compared to the ones you have at 'real' coffee shops the coffee didnt taste, well, real but I enjoyed it so we gave these drinks a 3

Mid afternoon we went to Cosmic rays and both had the bacon cheeseburger with fries and chocolate gelato. DH had diet coke and I had water.
The topping station was good to get the burger how you like it, I had lettuce and onion on mine and DH had, well, pretty much everything on his!
The buns werent the best, a bit on the dry side but ok. DH though his burger was good, but I thought mine was bland despite the toppings and once or twice I tasted a weird plasticy taste like it had been stored on polystyrene or something. The gelato was thick and creamy and we both enjoyed it but neither of us could finish it- we're not used to dessert at lunch time and it was rich too.

We gave this meal 3 out of 5

Finally, after going to the Florida mall we have a late dinner at the Pepper Market. I had a steak burrito and DH had nachos. I liked my burrito alot, it could have had more vegetable in to make it perfect. DH liked his nachos but said there was too much cheese sauce. We both had a dessert from the chiller, both like a chocolate mousse cake which were nice but a bit blander than I expected. Unfortunately no pics of this meal as we left the camera in our room.
We gave these a 4

 

[Dizneydaz]

Great start to your DTR. I'm enjoying learning new words, like "craggy" !

I love EoS and can't wait for them to open the one up at DLR soon.

 

[vettegirl]

Signing on, can't wait to hear more

 

[weswife]

enjoying your review!

 

[GoofySon'sMom]

Joining in! Love your reviews so far!

 

[we3travellers]

More, please! I am really excited about this review as we are staying at CSR this Aug. and I am still considering purchasing QSDP. Mainly because of PM. As you said, breakfast buffet would have been almost $40 for 2 and is not worth paying OOP. DH is unpredictable when it comes to meals and I am worried he may eat a few meals at PM and I will be peeved if we are paying OOP. But on QSDP it's a good deal. DS5 is not a big eater and paying for buffets is always a waste of money. Thank you for this!

 

[Schmoodle]

Signing in and looking forward to the rest of your reviews - two weeks is a lot of Quick-Service! I think 10% is perfectly appropriate for a buffet with good service, not cheap at all. I agree that having the amount on the receipt is a bit patronizing, but I guess some folks on the dining plan figure it's all-inclusive and tipping is not required and need a reminder. Not surprised you didn't care for the tea, but I guess you're used to tea-disappointment in the US. I'm curious if you found any tea you liked at WDW - maybe Animal Kingdom?

 

[mlg32]

Great start can't wait to read more!

 

[westgrove]

I'm glad my reviews are proving to be of some interest/use!

We didnt drink all that much tea and didnt get a great cuppa til we arrived home! but I do remember that when we got tea at our hotel I think it was Twinings and the English Breakfast Tea was good but Twinings is not as strong as a most British Brands. We also had a couple of Earl Grey teas which were a nice change.

 

[westgrove]

13th May

We had a full day today. We left CSR at 7.15am and went to Universal for the day where we went to both parks and then watch an Impact Wresting pay per view live event and got back to our room about 1am.

Before we left we went to Café Rix at CSR and used to CS meal credits to get 6 snacks;
2 bottled water
1 cinnamon roll
1 pain au chocolat
2 choc chip muffins for later

The pastries were golden and fresh and very soft. The muffins which we had at lunch time were also soft and moist. These got 4 out of 5.

For lunch we had read about Monster Café and were looking forward to it. There was a small queue and we ordered 1 large diet coke, 2 chilli dogs and fries. We wondered around every area and DH picked Frankenstein’s area as his favourite and we sat there. The food was a let down, it was warm if that and the bun was very dry so I left most of it. DH thought the same and we only gave this a 2 out of 5.

We finished off with the aforementioned muffins and headed off to Islands of Adventure.
When we got to the Harry Potter area I was very keen to try a Butterbeer. We went to the Hog’s Head and I got a frozen one as I’d read that a lot of people prefer it. Luckily DH wanted a normal one so I got to try both.

Now, wherever there is a decision to be made DH will almost always pick the best one. And I always have a little inner-sulk for a few seconds when I taste whatever scrumptiousness he has and then have to hand it back. However, this was not one of those times. Hours of disboard reading had served me well and my drink was much better. DH didn’t agree but I don’t know if that was out of principle of factual.
It was super sweet and ice cold so still refreshing in its own way. My favourite bit was the white butterscotch-y foam they put on top to make it look like a real pint. DH’s drink was more like a really sweet creamier cream soda (or IRN BRU if you know it) and being less cold I thought was a bit sickly. The drinks got 4 out of 5.

…turns out I was right about the sickly thing. The main Harry Potter ride had a 10m wait so we went virtually straight on and then… sat on a bench for half an hour with DH feeling ill sipping water! Aawww bless him!


After several more hours we were back in Universal Studios park and went to Mel’s Drive In for dinner before going to the Wrestling. I had water, grilled chicken sandwich and fries. DH had double bacon cheeseburger fries and diet coke. As with lunch, the location was fun, the food was ‘warm’ and practically tasteless. Oh and twice the price I’d pay for something better at McDonalds. It got 2 out of 5.

At this point I realised how much I loved having the QSDP. We got it “free” but even if I’d paid I think I’d have been happy.
If you did the sums maybe we wouldn’t have saved any money doing it this way instead of paying oop each day but we didn’t have to budget for food at all in the holiday and when it’s already paid for you don’t care as much if the food isn’t great.
It seems like an odd thing to say but DH and I that well off and if I paid $30 or more oop for food that wasn’t that great it would really put a dampener on our spirits atleast for a short time and really hit-home that we’d wasted that hard earned money.
Having it all paid in advance takes the element of cost away a lot and yes, I may have wasted money on a few meals but it didn’t have an adverse effect on the rest of the holiday that we’d paid a hell of a lot more than $30 for!

 

[westgrove]

May 14th

Today we went to EPCOT in a bid to snack around the world.

We began mid morning and ate in Norway first.
We had one of the much talked of School Bread.

This was ok - please dont hurt me!!! haha I know alot of people love this. The bread was well, bread. It would have been better with a softer maybe sweeter bread and more filling and more topping! We both gave this a...

The next thing we ate was egg rolls from China.

These were fantastic, crisp fresh and hot with plenty filling and bigger than I'd imagined. However, what they really wanted was a nice dip to go with them and they'd have been super, as it was they got a 4 out of 5.

When we got to Germany it was around lunchtime and DH insisted that he wanted a bratwurst so we both had one, as always me with water and he with diet coke. We got desserts to picked a pretzel and a bavarian cheescake.

The sausages were nice, hot and seemed good quality but the bread was a bit hard/dense. These got a 4 out of 5 but the desserts dragged down the overall score. The pretzel was huge, dry and had sooo much salt on it was truly awful I wanted to give it a one but DH said to give it a 2. The cheesecake was also not very nice. It tasted like a mixture between whipped cream and cream cheese left to go sour with no other taste/texture to speak of. As such we gave this a 3 out of 5.

So much for eating around the world, we didnt get anything else after Germany! Well, I tell a lie - we went to Karamel kutche and got a few snacks which were eaten either than night or the next day.
We got a caramel square covered in milk chocolate with sea salt on top (4/5), a caramel and milk choc coated pretzel stick (3/5) and a caramel chocolate cookie (4/5).
We only have a picture of the cookie from the next day and that was a bit squashed!

 

[ADisneyQueen]

Thanks for posting. I like to see reviews of the QSDP and there aren't too many on here.

It's not really true that US residents always get DDP with Mod resorts, I think it's just the general public codes. Any pin codes you get are usually QSDP with value and mod resorts. That's what we were offered and we are leaving Weds. and decided to stay at POP with free QSDP( only one snack per day). If they had offered me free DDP at a mod I would have stayed at Coronado.

The egg rolls look really good. Wish I had one right now!

 

[mousiemom]

great reviews so far, keep um coming!!!

 

[KELLY]

Thanks for the reviews so far. We are on the QSDP for the 3rd year in a row.

Thanks for posting. I like to see reviews of the QSDP and there aren't too many on here.

It's not really true that US residents always get DDP with Mod resorts, I think it's just the general public codes. Any pin codes you get are usually QSDP with value and mod resorts. That's what we were offered and we are leaving Weds. and decided to stay at POP with free QSDP( only one snack per day). If they had offered me free DDP at a mod I would have stayed at Coronado.

The egg rolls look really good. Wish I had one right now!

You may be like us once you do the QSDP you won't want to go back. We go for 11 days and never get bored on the QSDp there are lot of options.

 

[CanadianPaco]

Wonderful reviews!!! Thx for sharing!

 

[westgirl]

Subscribing.....we've got free qsdp for out trip in November so looking forward to reading more x