Question: Dining plan or not when staying DVC?

[SINYMom]

Last year my husband decided that it would be cheaper to rent a car, shop for food and, cook during our DVC stay. While the car did allow us to hit Sea World for a day, it also meant hitting the supermarket more than once, and wasting my precious vacation time doing things I rather not do while on vacation, mainly, shop, cook and clean the dishes.

We ate out a few times TS meals as planned and, we enjoyed a good breakfast. That said, when we came home I did the math, and not that fuzzy disney math we all use to our advantage but, the real deal with all the receipts. As it turned out, if you add in the cost of a rental car, numerous trips to the supermarket and, a few meals out, we spent more than we would have had we just gotten the DDP.

So, this year we bought the DDP, for five of us for seven nights and, I wil be placing an order with We Go Shop. No, wasting time - picking up/dropping off the car, shopping, cooking, cleaning dishes, pots & pans.

I'm ordering the basics, milk, cereal, fruit, frozen waffles, snacks, water, laundry cleaning things, wine, cheese, crackers , and that's about it.

We will have breakfast in most mornings saving the DDP for lunch (CS), dinner (TS) and treats like ice cream (snack). I made my ADRs 180 days out, which I don't mind as we like to plan our days and my boys love to eat out on vacation (and they get to have dessert every night) as we really don't eat out much at home.

So, IMHO, the DDP works even when staying at DVC.

 

[photobob]

But then those other five days, they would have to use up the plan outside the theme parks at the resort dining facilities. If they are staying ten nights, they have to purchase the DDP for ten nights. Unless they make two separate reservations. But they could not be linked and they could very likely have to move for the second reservation. And the homeless for the first day of the second reservation.

That was the point I was wondering about too. If you have 5 day park passes and ten days on the DDP you have five days that you will have to have meals at either a resort or DTD. You also mentioned going and doing other things around Orlando.

 

[Mr Man]

We have done the DDP on the last 7 of 8 trips to WDW. We are going to give it a rest for our BWV stay in Mar 2009 and bring in groceries to our suite and just do a few meals out. We will probably pick up the DDE card.

We have two very young and rambunctious boys and those TS meals have become a distraction (ok, the youngest yells the entire time......it is hard to reason with a 20mo old.....).

We also find the TS reservations sometimes get in the way of our Touring Plan (not to mention naps etc).

Once the boys are a bit older I am sure we will go back to the DDP.

We generally buy AP, as we plan our trips in threes i.e. Spring Break is our main WDW vacation so we activated our AP on the first day of our Spring Break 2008 trip.....and then used it for our Aug 2008 and will be able to use it once more for our Spring Break 2009 trip (our weeks off vary from year to year).....

3 trips to WDW (27 days total) in one calendar year on one set of AP's is a good deal.

 

[jfelcie]

I guess that we do not visit, eat, spend, drink or tip enough to make the DDE worthwhile. I do love the DDP and will be using it again in October. When I am on vacation I do not want to think about cooking or grocery shopping. I also wish that there were more CS options available on The Boardwalk. We usually get a one or two bedroom and use the kitchen for breakfast and snacks.

 

[bangzoom6877]

I guess that we do not visit, eat, spend, drink or tip enough to make the DDE worthwhile. I do love the DDP and will be using it again in October. When I am on vacation I do not want to think about cooking or grocery shopping. I also wish that there were more CS options available on The Boardwalk. We usually get a one or two bedroom and use the kitchen for breakfast and snacks.

I would use the kitchen for breakfast, but that would consist mainly of either cereal and milk or waffles (at least now that's mainly what my boys like to eat). It's also very quick when trying to get to the parks early. We did cereal and bagels in the room (grocery store bagels, which I don't touch, but DS3 loves them!) and rented a fridge at Pop last month for milk and water and juice. That's also why the dining plan worked for us. We did breakfast in the room 3 out of the 5 mornings we were there. We did the character breakfast at DHS one morning before the park opened, and the last morning just before we left we did breakfast at Chef Mickey's, then vowed to ALWAYS do a character breakfast on the final morning, that it was a perfect ending to a wonderful vacation, and gave the kids something nice on the last morning.