Splitting a Stay and the Dining plan.. Fiasco!

[cobbler]

That is a lot of resort hopping. Lots of packing your items, checking out, standing in line to check in again.

I wouldn't do it 4x. Maybe 2x and that would be much less stress.

 

[snix11]

Yes, I have entertained the idea that i'm bonkers

This will be more of the 22 countries in 10 days European trip. But at least we will know which resort we want to come back to next time!

Providing of course the family is still speaking to me after this one

 

[ratfam]

snix11, looks like you've already gotten some feedback on this, but for DVC the length of stay for the dining plan purchase would be the length of stay on each of your separate DVC resort reservations. Good luck!

 

[Marthasor]

We were considering the DP, not because we actually think we are going to eat all that food every single day, but because we are planning on so many $$$ meals. Between Hoop de do, the luau, chef mickeys, the Yachtsman, ohanas, 1900 park fare for breakfast, fantasmic at mama melrose and last night at the CR we thought it might save us money using the TS credits.

We planned on eating breakfast in room, touring the parks till afternoon, lunch as snack or CS and then a "cool" dinner or dinner/show for the night times.

We looked at the premium package but even with all the extras we wanted to do, it still looked like OOP was the way to go.

Thoughts?

I would seriously, seriously think of scrapping the dining plan for a couple of reasons. I planned a trip for a family of 6 in December. I originally planned on doing the dining plan for the same reason you are doing it - lots of TS's, thought I could save some $$. I decided to ditch it early on because I had 2 picky eaters with us, one of whom just hit the "adult" dining plan age and I knew we would end up overspending on him with the dining plan plus we would be locked into that "gotta spend those credits or we'll lose out" mentality. I am SO glad we didn't do the dining plan! I ended up cancelling half of our TS ressies while we were on the trip because my family was so tired at the end of the day and did not want to stick to "the plan" I had forged for dining 90 days prior to our trip (now it's 180 days!)

With all of your resort hopping, I would still make your ADR's, but loosen up your plans a little bit. Buy the AP's, see if you can get a deeper AP rate on your non-DVC rooms, buy the DDE card and enjoy the 20% discount on your food. It will give you a little more freedom and you won't be kicking yourself if for some reason your group gets tired on the day you planned on Chef Mickey's and they really just want to go back to the hotel for some burgers!

 

[wdwfan1]

If you dont already have your APs, you can go to guest services with your one day ticket and have that applied to the cost of your APs. I did that earlier this year.