Solo Trip - Meal Plan or Not?

[Allison Joy]

Okay. I am in the early planning stages of my second ever Disney trip and my first solo trip. Probably going some time in September or early October.

My first Disney trip was with two seasoned veterans in 2016.

I'm trying to decide if a dining plan is a good idea for me or not.

I like to have eggs every day for breakfast, but that will probably have to be negotiable at Disney. And it's also not really a "full" breakfast as far as a table meal at Disney is concerned. Like... I eat a couple of eggs with cheese, and that's it. No toast, no bacon, etc. (Although I DO like bacon for breakfast. It's just not something I need every day.) I'd like to do some character dinning, so long as it wouldn't be awkward as a solo adult, but don't feel I need a table dinner every night or anything like that. I also eat very small portions, and while I have a regular "bedtime snack" that may include a cookie, I definitely don't eat or need to eat dessert every night. I also don't feel like I need a souvenir cup because I only drink water, and feel like the best plan might be to just fill up my water bottle? But I don't remember how the refillable cups work, so I might be missing how they'd be helpful for someone who only drinks water.

I do have a friend who's a certified Disney vacation planer, so I have her as a resource as well. She's actually the one I went with on my first trip in 2016.

Anyway, any thoughts or suggestions, even beyond the meal plan, would be appreciated.

 

[gottalovepluto]

Water is free at all Disney QS so the value of the cup is 0 if you’re good with your own water bottle.

Lay out a potential plan for your trip, look at menus and guess what you’d eat and drink if you weren’t on the dining plan. That’s the only way to know if the dining plan will actually math out for you.

 

[scrappinginontario]

Based on what you've described, I don't feel you need the DDP. You will likely pay less by purchasing meals and snacks out of pocket.

I was so sure we 'needed' the DDP until it wasn't available for a couple of trips and then I found out we spend far less purchasing food as we want it rather than using dining credits. We now use a grocery delivery at the beginning of our trip to have some breakfast foods and snacks in the room then purchase other items as we want. Much less expensive for our family of 2.

I will say we had 'free dining' in 2024 and it was almost more stressful having the dining credits. We just could not eat all the food offered and ended up sharing credits with 2 families we knew who were at Disney the same time. Our family far prefers the freedom of purchasing what we wish rather than using up credits. In the days when you could exchange a QS meal for 3 snacks the DDP was more valuable to us but now that that is no longer offered, we just don't need either version of the DDP.

 

[Chili327]

Not to save money, just use a Magicband for convenience.

 

[loves to dive]

From how you have described the way you eat, no you don't need it and it would probably be a waste of money. It's easy enough to get eggs for breakfast at WDW, all the QS restaurants in the resorts offer some sort of scrambled egg meal. You would want to glance at the menus where you are staying to see what they offer. If you don't eat large meals, lots of times the kid's meals at QS are going to be a good bet. And just for the record, eating QS does not mean you are eating chicken tenders and hamburgers. I've been going to WDW since 1983 and have had a total of maybe 3 hamburgers in the entire time and of those, maybe one was from QS. I often eat the kid's meals because I don't eat big portions and at times even eating a kid's meal means I have the fruit that you can get with it later on because I'm too full.

 

[Brian Noble]

I'm trying to decide if a dining plan is a good idea for me or not.

In general, the Dining Plan does not save money. The only way to make it pay is to be reasonably particular about where you eat and what you order, choosing the more expensive options at each step. For most people, just buying what they want when they want it is less expensive.

Perhaps more importantly, the Dining Plan puts limits on how you eat. For example, I almost never have exactly as many table service meals as nights on my reservation. Some trips there are more, others there are fewer. I will often get an appetizer (which would not be covered), but will often skip dessert (which is). If I get dessert, I'm also ordering a coffee, but that's after ordering iced teal for the meal, and the Plan would only cover one of those. If I've made a reservation, but discover I'm not that hungry, I will sometimes make a meal out of a couple of appetizers, for which the Plan pays zero dollars. I don't drink alcohol (well, at least not anymore--I've already exceeded my lifetime quota!) and while Disney has joined the rest of the world in starting to take their NA drink program seriously, it's still not an "efficient" use of the Plan.

It sounds like you would find the Plan more confining than helpful, and it probably would be more expensive to buy it. I don't see a reason why you should.

 

[goofyernmost]

No meal plan needed. One of the joys of solo travel is being able to eat what, when and where your mood strikes you. You are kinda locked in with the meal plan. When I stayed onsite I used the counter service in the parks during the day and for breakfast and dinner, if I could get a table at one of the sit downs in the park I did that, if not the restaurant's at the resorts worked fine. Of course, it has been a long time since I did that and many changes have happened, so it may not work that way anymore. Hopefully some that have used the resorts onsite can better tell you what is available therein.