question regarding the Disney Dining Plan--please help!

[Karebear]

Hello All,

I am hoping that someone can help me with this. My neighbors are taking their 2 children--ages 5 and 7 to WDW for the first time over Easter break. As they have not been before, I have been helping them with their plans. They are staying at Pop Century and have purchased the basic Disney Dining plan for 2 adults and for 2 children. My question is this--I read the following on Mousesavers:

"All of the meal credits for everyone in your party are "pooled." Each individual doesn't have to use his or her own credits. For instance, if you have a family of 4 and stay for 5 nights, you'll have a "pool" of 20 table service credits to use. Credits are not designated as "adult" or "child" credits -- they are all the same. Therefore, if there are kids in your party, you can easily use their credits for adult meals and pay cash for the kids' meals. At meals, just tell your server what you're doing."

Is the above true? I just don't see how that could be.....Thanks to anyone who has any feedback.

 

[tjmouse]

As far as I know, that's correct. I read through some of the dining plan FAQ above and doesn't look like that has changed.

 

[aviva5675]

Its correct, but, when they order for the kids, the kids have to order off the childrens menus, and uses up a credit. They can pay for the kids OOP and save those credits for another meal, or a 2 TS meal, etc.

 

[daisyduck123]

For the OP:

We just returned from 8 days at POP on the Dining Plan....everything you stated is true.

 

[patrizella]

I am all about saving money--but this is cheating. Doing things like this to "cheat" the system brings one bad karma and hurts the rest of us. Do you think Disney won't figure this out? And when they do if their system can't create separate tallies for the child meals-then guess what-you'll be spending $38 dollars for a 3 year old to eat.

So, using this logic you can justify walking out of a shop with a souvenir because no one stopped you...

So sad


Don't mean to sound preachy, but come on...................

 

[gigi1313]

while what you read on mousesavers is true, the servers are cracking down on it... some won't allow it unless you have more people than your card states (i.e. friends not on dining plan dining w/you) and have become quite strict...

we were in epcot and wanted three adult counter service meals... it was dd (11yo) and i and my card said 2A... when i ordered 3 meals the cm said "nope" you only have two people on your card you can only have two meals... i first gently explained to her that i paid for 20 Adult CS meals and basically could cash 'em all in right then and there and feed everyone that walks by, be fat and gluttonous and eat all 20 myself or throw 'em all in the garbage, it was my perogative... and she continued to argue... finally i got a manager to override her...

we had similar problems at TS restaurants because our family was split on two cards because we had two rooms and two ressies (one for dad/son, one for mom/daughter) and some restaurants said "oh, we can take four off of this card today and next meal just use the other card" and others said "oh no, we cannot take 3A and 1C off a card marked 1A/1C"

so, my advice to your friends is use the plan as it is designed, don't try to rip off disney 'cause they are already getting a good deal on meals and if they want to stretch their credits, consider sharing meals (ds, dd and i were able to share a breakfast platter every day by buying a bagel and a cup of fruit out of pocket... ds got the bagel and the sausage; dd got the biscuit and the eggs and some fruit; i got the rest of the eggs, the bacon, the potatoes and some fruit and w/our resort mugs for drinks, we were good to go) instead

 

[adhelove]

Yes we used it for free in October of 2005. You can just use one meal or two if you want to pay for the others but the deal states that you will have a certain number of adults meals and certain amount of kids meals. My example would be when we ate at the Coral Reef it costs two meal deals a piece. We paid for one of the kids meals out of pocket. The next time we ate we still had the extra kids meal that we had not used yet. But you can't use the adult meals as kids meals and the kids meals as an adult meal. That is really cheating and you will be caught. You are still getting a great deal so don't cheat the system. We also doubled up on our adult counter service meals some days if we didn't want a sit down meal we used two counter service meals in the same day. You can use them any way you want but you can't cheat and get an adult meal on the kids ticket. The receipt will have your number of meals left every time you use it or you can call the front desk. It is a great deal especially when we got it for free!! I hope this helps. Just don't let them go off thinking they can use all of the meals as adult meals and only pay for the kids. It doesn't work that way.
adhelovesdisney