quick dining vs table dining plan...easiest with kids?

[Laura549]

We are planning our first family trip to Disney and trying to decide on which Disney dining plan to get. Between the quick service dining the standard dining, in your experience what is best with kids? I am concerned that my boys( age 7 and 5) aren't going to want to take the time and wait for table service meals especially of crowded. Also it seems stressful to me to have to make sure we are at the restaurant at a certain time, seem a little easier to just be able to eat whenever your hungry. I would appreciate your opinions and experience! Also how much do tips generally cost you in addition to meal plan? Thanks!

 

[Mousemommy1]

We as a family personally like the downtime that a TS meal forces us to have. Plus, on hot days it's nice to get out of the heat and into some air conditioning.
Our older girls have been 7 times since they were 3 and 5 (they are now 11 and 8) and have never had an issue stopping to have a meal.

 

[Alesia]

We are planning our first family trip to Disney and trying to decide on which Disney dining plan to get. Between the quick service dining the standard dining, in your experience what is best with kids? I am concerned that my boys( age 7 and 5) aren't going to want to take the time and wait for table service meals especially of crowded. Also it seems stressful to me to have to make sure we are at the restaurant at a certain time, seem a little easier to just be able to eat whenever your hungry. I would appreciate your opinions and experience! Also how much do tips generally cost you in addition to meal plan? Thanks!

My advice is to not get the dining plan.

We only eat 1 table service meal about every 3 days. The rest of the time, we eat what we want when we want and spend way less money than what the dining plan costs. In 2009 we saved over $600 by not getting the dining plan.

 

[Disfan1968]

I am concerned that my boys( age 7 and 5) aren't going to want to take the time and wait for table service meals...

First, to respond to your question. Quick Serve will certainly be easier than table service, unless you do buffets, in which case they are pretty much just as easy. But then again, buffet food at Disney is generally not considered as good as most menu based sit downs.

As for the kids not wanting to take the time for table service meals... I do get that you want to make the kids happy in general, but our kids already know (at 5 and 4 years old) that table service time is non-negotiable for us. It's the ninety minutes of the day that is generally tailored to Mom and Dad's needs. The kids can have the other twelve.

 

[aaarcher86]

We do character meals for breakfast and dinner with a QS for lunch.

As far as the ease - QS meals are like a fast food restaurant. Pretty easy. The difficulty comes in if you aren't allowed to sit at a table and one person goes and gets food. You're all kind of hovered in line or off to the side which can be annoying, but equally as annoying as walking around with food and there aren't tables available. They can also have some pretty hefty waits depending upon the time you're trying to eat. The TS meals for us are great. Since they're character meals, it doesn't really feel like they're missing the fun, but an hour to eat in the AC isn't something they'd complain about anyway.

If it's your first trip you really need to run the numbers on the DDP and how you like to eat to see if it's worth it.

 

[Mickeypooh99]

In all the times we've been to Disney I've never been told we can't sit down at a table while one of us gets food. I see people mention that here a lot so I'm sure it must happen, I just have never seen it personally. We always go at thanksgiving and it's usually pretty crowded, but I don't see people walking around not finding a table either.

We never do a dining plan. We eat at 2-3 table service per trip, always have breakfast in the room and quick service the rest of the time. We definitely save money over the dining plan. However, if mom and dad want sit down the boys would have to go with it. It sure doesn't hurt to take relaxing breaks during the day. The problem is that it's me who doesn't want to stop to waste time eating. Lol.

 

[mkla2015]

If you aren't sure about the table service, I would suggest going without the dining plan- we enjoy table service but not everyday with a 5yr old and 3yr old- for our family, we schedule 3-4 table service (on an 8-10 day trip) and then do the QS the rest of the time. We aren't as restricted this way. DH hates sticking to a schedule while on vacation.

 

[bluezy]

We prefer to eat mostly at quick service restaurants at Disney. We usually do one or two table service meals over a 7 day trip but plan those on "slow" days (not our main/full day in a park). We tend to be a "go with the flow" family and having to be at a specific restaurant at a specific time just doesn't work with our touring style. However, just because the restaurant is labeled as "quick service" doesn't mean you have to rush through your meal or that you can only get hamburgers, pizza, or chicken nuggets. There are numerous QS restaurants with more "upscale" offerings. We've had many leisurely meals at those restaurants (especially at Sunshine Seasons and Wolfgang Puck Express). Now, if there are people waiting for tables, we won't linger after we're finished eating, but we try to eat at off times so there are usually plenty of empty tables and we just hang out as long as we want to. And other than Flame Tree BBQ, all of the QS locations we eat at are indoors and air conditioned so we get a nice long break in a cool place.

 

[Thing 1]

We always do at least one sit down meal a day on trips. It just works for us and it did even when the kids were really little. Its nice to sit down and just escape the parks for a bit. We try to balance out character meals, fun meals like Sci-Fi and some Signature meals. We mostly do the DDP just because we like to have it all planned and paid for in advance. Im pretty budget minded most times and we would drink water, order on the lower cost end of the menu and skip desserts. DDP lets us not do that and that is really important to us.

 

[luvmy2babies]

We generally do buffet or family style table service meals so there isn’t much waiting on food. I also schedule the meals for similar to the time we eat at home to try to avoid trying the children’s patience, which is short when it comes to being hungry.

That being said, what I have found with my children after doing a couple of trips where we had the standard plan with a table service meal every day (except for arrival and departure days) and another trip with no dining plan where we had just 3 table service meals in 8 days was that I like the freedom of not having a daily reservation. On a couple of trips when it was time to prepare and head to our reservation we found ourselves not really wanting to stop what we were doing to put the time in at a TS restaurant even though they were restaurants we had been to and enjoyed. And this was despite having a mix of meals, some breakfasts, some dinners and maybe one lunch. What we have decided is that if we do the regular plan on a longer trip we’ll probably not have a reservation every day; but maybe do some places that take two credits and/or save two credits for pizza delivery one night to space things out or go with the quick service plan and I will pay for a couple of TS meals out of pocket. For a shorter trip like 5 days or less especially if it is in the fall like the one I’m considering now, we’d just do the quick service plan and eat when hungry.

The exception would be if we have a table service restaurant at our resort because we tend to do shorter days when it is warm and head back to our resort around 3 and do pool time prior to dinner. If we had a table service restaurant at our resort we wanted to eat at a few times, I might feel differently. So far we have only stayed at Value resorts though.

I tend to get the plan in some version because I like having stuff paid for up front and I usually break even or come out ahead because of where we eat. I’d suggest like another poster said, doing the math. Allears.net is a good source for looking at menus and crunching the numbers to see if the plan will work for you. When I didn’t get it, I had a room discount and didn’t want a package that trip.

 

[Mousemommy1]

We as a family personally like the downtime that a TS meal forces us to have. Plus, on hot days it's nice to get out of the heat and into some air conditioning.
Our older girls have been 7 times since they were 3 and 5 (they are now 11 and 8) and have never had an issue stopping to have a meal.

ETA: I guess I didn't actually answer the question. While we like TS meals, we don't buy the dining plan. We always do better paying OOP and using our TIW card.

 

[Anesthesia Fine]

We did the QS dining plan on our last trip and it came out about even (my youngest two were 7 and 4 at the time, which I'm sure helped). We ate three TS meals that we paid OOP: one at Epcot, one at DTD, and a late character breakfast at MK. It struck a good balance: mostly we were able to eat when we needed to for maximum "hangry meltdown" avoidance, but also had some nice sit-down time in the AC, which made for a more relaxed time after.

 

[bluezy]

I missed the question about choosing a dining plan in the original post. We've only done a dining plan on one trip -- when we got the Quick Service DP for free. We found we wasted a lot of food on the plan. We don't eat dessert with every meal and many times I'm not overly hungry and just eat a kids meal so getting an adult combo meal was way too much food in general for me as well as two of our kids who were 10 & 11 at the time. We've found that when there are 5 of us dining and we're paying OOP, we order 3 combo meals and then 2 people just get a salad or a sandwich (with no side dishes) and we share the 3 sides from the combo meals and we have more than enough food. We've kept track of our dining costs including all of the snacks and bottled water we buy in the park (yes, we could bring our own bottled water into the park or ask for free water at QS restaurants, but we choose to buy cold bottled water when we're thirsty.) and ordering whatever we want off of the menu (including dessert when we want it), we still come out several hundred dollars ahead by paying out of pocket. For savings purposes, I use the cost of the QSDP as our food estimate and just keep that money in our vacation savings account. We charge everything back to our room and then pay it with our credit card which we pay off with the money we have set aside in our savings account. And sometimes we've purchased gift cards to cover the cost of some of our food (which came in handy when our kids were old enough to go off by themselves for a few hours but I didn't trust them with charging privileges).

 

[MandiC]

Honestly, for your first trip with young kids...I would get the table service plan. It only includes 1 TS a day, which isn't bad at all, and you can choose whicever meal you want to use your TS meal on. Lots of character meals that are a lot of fun with the kids and cut down on waiting in line to see characters at other points throughout the day. We only waited in line to see Tinkerbelle, Little Mermaid in fins and Rapunzel. Would have been much more they wanted to see if we hadn't seen them at meals. (we did see other characters that we just happened upon with no lines, but that was for a February trip, low crowds)
Some of our favorites were buffet meals which you don't have to sit around and wait to eat for! Tusker House breakfast was awesome, great buffet food, my favorite of our character meals. Hollywood and Vine has the Disney Jr. characters if your boys like them, and it is also a buffet. We didn't eat at Chef Mickey's but I do believe that is a buffet and a very popular character meal. If you want to see the Beast the only way to do that is dinner at Be Our Guest which takes 2 table credits.
We enjoyed both table service and quick service, I liked having the downtime and getting to see the different restaurants (cause lets face it, Disney does theming pretty well ) I don't know we will ever go back without the dining plan, I just enjoy not having to think about meals once we get there...and I'm on vacation too so no way am I cooking

 

[jen7233]

My kids are 8 and 6. I am not doing a dining plan. But I did book a few reservations. I don't like to be tied to a plan, but I do want to ensure I eat at these places. Both my husband and I wanted Teppan Edo. I wanted to try O'hana dinner. Then, I booked twice the Whispering Canyon once for breakfast and once for dinner. That's it, and our trip is arrive on a Monday, leave on a Monday. We plan to do QS, or get some things for the room the rest of the time. However, if our mood changes while there, we can try out walk-up and see the wait. This works for us. We aren't doing character meals.

 

[nalajms]

It's harder to breakeven on the regular plan unless you book mostly character buffets for dinner. If you don't feel your kids will do well, then get the QS plan. But be for warned if you go at busy times.

In all the times we've been to Disney I've never been told we can't sit down at a table while one of us gets food. I see people mention that here a lot so I'm sure it must happen, I just have never seen it personally. We always go at thanksgiving and it's usually pretty crowded, but I don't see people walking around not finding a table either.

All summer! Every summer trip we've encountered it at Cosmic Rays. They have CM stationed at every door. I couldn't even bring my stroller in to use the restroom. And it's not a matter of eating early or late, it's just packed.

 

[bluezy]

All summer! Every summer trip we've encountered it at Cosmic Rays. They have CM stationed at every door. I couldn't even bring my stroller in to use the restroom. And it's not a matter of eating early or late, it's just packed.

I've seen it at Pecos Bills as well.

 

[Momof3WDW]

We like the TS for the downtime and the A/C. We have always done the dining plan (although it has always been free dining) because we like to be able to choose whatever we want to eat, not worry about the cost. I am an accountant so I am by nature a penny pincher, which my husband hates. So this keeps the money arguments out of the conversation while on vacation.
Our kids enjoy the adventure getting to a TS, especially if there is a boat or monorail involved. We also try to do 1 or 2 character meals that they would enjoy also. My kids are a bit younger, but we also bring play n go packs (coloring packs you can get a Target for $1) that helps with the TS that you have to wait for your food.
If you do QS just plan on eating at off times to beat the crowds. This will help with finding a table and enjoying your meal without 1000 other people around or a family hovering waiting for you to finish so they can have your table.

 

[ajwolfe]

My boys enjoy the TS meals. We usually do the DDP and have 1 TS a day. It's our downtime to relax before we go back to touring. Like a pp the TS meals are what DH and I enjoy - getting to try new places, etc - so the kids know that is our time and most of the time they are just as excited to do a TS too. My boys have loved every character meal we have done - it's a great way to get in a meet and greet without standing in line too!!

 

[Disneylover42]

If you want to see the Beast the only way to do that is dinner at Be Our Guest which takes 2 table credits.

Be our Guest is only 1 TS credit.

I do agree though that the regular dining plan with little kids is a great way to see all of the characters and not have to wait in long lines to do so otherwise. We still enjoy sit down meals for dinner for the break alone, especially in the summer or holiday seasons.