Thoughts on Dining Plan, Newbies and Touring

[crisi]

First, we LOVE Disney sit down restaurants and book one for every day of our trip, so this isn't a criticism of that touring style.

But I've been thinking that for a lot of people new to WDW, Disney isn't doing them a lot of favors with the dining plan. In my opinion, it takes a trip to Disney or two to really understand the place. People often don't comprehend how large it is, how many things there are to do, how much time will be spent just moving from place to place or waiting. Two hour meals are not condusive to commando touring (or variations on commando touring). And while I think most veterans eventually leave commando touring behind, I wonder how many newbies return having never eaten their dinners, or being disappointed at how little they managed to fit into their days. Planning meals for newbies causes frustration - "how will I know what park I'll be in or what I want to eat!" - Which I think is a little less for vets who have lists of favorite restaurants and places they want to try, and aren't as overwhelmed with the choices in tickets/parks/hotels/activities/attrations/shows to add dining reservations on top of all that.

As I said, we love dining at Disney, but we've gone enough that we aren't trading Pirates of the Carribean for a steak dinner - or if we are, its an informed choice.

 

[kellyg403]

We went on our first trip in Dec. and we loved Disney. But, I will say that I did about 8 months of research leading up to the trip. I can imagine for those who go the first time planning on seeing everything and never coming back that it would have to be difficult to have the dining plan. Especially if you just pick up and go without thinking it out. The sheer vastness of WDW is something you read about on paper but until you get there you really can't put into perspective the size.

Had I not done the research, I do think that we would have come away unhappy and not as excited to go back ASAP. Heck, without the research I would not have even known how important it was to make the ADR's and then I would have really been upset with the dining plan. It would have been impossible for a party of 8 to find a place to eat if we didn't.

So, I think your thinking is probably right on target.


Kelly

 

[AUTUMN SUN]

Believe me, by the time I finished studying the disboards I had become a veteren before I left . My trip to Disney during the busiest holiday week of the year turned out wonderful . I had TS everynight and usually during lunch as well . Made a few cancelations.WE got to see everything we set out to do in all the parks! I wouldnt call it comando style but it was a heck of a lot of fun planning.

 

[BibbidyBobbidyBoo]

I'm not sure I agree or disagree with every point said so far.
All I know is that our first trip, was the week of Christmas (Christmas Eve thru New Years) and we were a family of 5 and we didn't know a THING before our trip. Our trip was spur of the moment, hadn't found this board until after that trip, not one PS made before the trip- didn't know anything about the parks/etc. either. We just booked it and went.
TS still can be done even if you are naive like we were and didn't have a clue that you'd need PS's for everything. We even ended up with princess breakfast at Epcot without a PS! (in our experience we waited no longer for that breakfast than we have for breakfastses that we've had ADRs for! LOL)

Now we WERE turned away from a few places at MGM- I remember that. But we did eventually find a place to eat that was fine and it didn't take all that long- most of the places to eat there weren't all THAT far from one another. We did ofcourse hear about this PS (now ADR) thing while there and started planning our next trip 3 days after our trip when I found this board! LOL!!!

My point being our first trip was completely unplanned and was still managable.

If someone books a trip and gets the dining plan- isn't there something pertaining to the dining plan information that suggests calling ahead for ADR's for TS?? So if a person has dining plan, they have a little warning before they get there? Doesn't the info about the dining plan tell you what restaurants, etc. and you can get a pretty good idea that it's not going to be a 10 minute TS meal when it's a buffet with characters at that meal (for example)?

Or are you talking about people just calling, being offered the dining plan and paying for it- without finding out anything whatsoever about the dining plan?

 

[crisi]

I'm talking more about not realizing what the committment to a table service meal every day is going to be. With or without ADRs (but having paid for it and then being turned away from two or three spots would be maddening). Not that people are so stupid that they don't realize that a sit down meal will take an hour or longer (I'll give nearly everyone the ability to figure THAT out), but that reaching your ADR could take an hour if you are in the wrong park, and that an hour spent eating means not spending an hour doing something you can only do at WDW.

(One of the reasons I like character meals, despite the (IMHO) poor food quality is that you really can't do them anywhere else. That is an hour I think well spent for anyone with an interest).

Winging it can lead to some frustrations for newbies (and vets), with or without the plan. But the plan represents a commitment. When we used to commando, we'd make a few TS reservations and wing the rest of the days - if we fit in a table service meal (and wanted one), that was good, if we ended up being so busy that we had chicken fingers, that was good too. But we had the flexibility to say "I'd rather ride Splash one more time than go to dinner - lets just grab a burger."

 

[melomouse]

First, we LOVE Disney sit down restaurants and book one for every day of our trip, so this isn't a criticism of that touring style.

But I've been thinking that for a lot of people new to WDW, Disney isn't doing them a lot of favors with the dining plan. In my opinion, it takes a trip to Disney or two to really understand the place. People often don't comprehend how large it is, how many things there are to do, how much time will be spent just moving from place to place or waiting. Two hour meals are not condusive to commando touring (or variations on commando touring). And while I think most veterans eventually leave commando touring behind, I wonder how many newbies return having never eaten their dinners, or being disappointed at how little they managed to fit into their days. Planning meals for newbies causes frustration - "how will I know what park I'll be in or what I want to eat!" - Which I think is a little less for vets who have lists of favorite restaurants and places they want to try, and aren't as overwhelmed with the choices in tickets/parks/hotels/activities/attrations/shows to add dining reservations on top of all that.

As I said, we love dining at Disney, but we've gone enough that we aren't trading Pirates of the Carribean for a steak dinner - or if we are, its an informed choice.

Excellent point, crisi! I couldn't agree more. I keep reading about the dining plan and thinking that in spite of how it enables trying new restaurants we maybe wouldn't otherwise try, or actually saving some $, it does reduce park time one has to be willing to give up. And even as veteran visitors, I'm not sure our family is ready to trade another go round at POC to get to dinner at wherever we made our 180 day ADR's.

So I totally agree that for the newbie it poses problems. It will likely encourage them to go back sooner/faster/more often because of all the things they missed going to DP restaurants and taking 2 hour dinners?? (good for Disney!)

Come to think of it though, any dining plan at any resort results in a loss of flexibility because of time committment. It's another vacation-style choice, I guess...

 

[BibbidyBobbidyBoo]

I keep reading about the dining plan and thinking that in spite of how it enables trying new restaurants we maybe wouldn't otherwise try, or actually saving some $, it does reduce park time one has to be willing to give up.

Oh, I see what y'all are saying now.
I will agree with that- and also agree that someone who has never been but purchased the dining plan may not have a clue what it really takes (not just planning ADRs ahead of time but the time it takes to get to the restaurants, actual time eating especially if waiting for characters to come around, etc.) or how hard it might be to actually use every credit. Honestly when we went the last 2 trips on the dining plan even having been there before we still had difficulty using all our credits. (mostly ended up with leftover CS and snacks- which we quick like used up the last day and took snacks home with us LOL)

It really does take some time... which is okay if you've been before but I see what you're getting at. If it was one of our first trips going "commando" or short trips and we'd already paid for dining- we might be a little frustrated at how much time it took up to actually use the dining plan, especially if we didn't even know about booking ADR's way ahead of time!

 

[N.Bailey]

Our 1st trip was wayyyy back in the day. At that time, while it was a good deal, they had the food and fun dining plan. I believe 2 meals had to be at sit down restaurants per day. I can't really recall all the specifics of it, but we spent entirely too much time in restaurants. At that time, there was no Dis either, so........

I think the plan that's available today (while I don't think it's as good a deal as that one was - though I've seen worse than what's available today) I do think today's plan is better because only 1 meal per day has to be spent inside at a full service restaurant. I think for most families, that's a welcome break during the day too.

Add that and the Dis, and I think most that come here are well prepared for anything that's tossed their way.

 

[tmanaster]

I grew up in Florida so I have been to WDW many times as a child, but this past summer was my family's first trip. We used the dining plan last June and while I loved trying all the different places, I did find that it took up a LOT of time considering I wanted everyone to see so many things since it was their first trip. Since my children are young (at the time, 7, 5 and 2 yo twins) we did mostly character meals as well as Boma, Hoop de Doo and CRT for dinner. They had fun, and loved seeing the characters but I do feel it took too much time and made us structure our time too rigidly every day. We are going again in Nov, and I'm not purchasing it this time. We'll do a couple of Table service meals, but not every day. Next time I will. For us it will be an every other trip thing to do!

 

[MomofKatie]

I'd say for the total newbie, going into a short trip with no planning and having no idea what Disney is all about, the DP might sound good, but not work well in practice. IMO, you are exactly right about commando-style touring and TS dining not going hand-in-hand. Not to mention the fact that lots of first-timers don't even know they need ADRs to get into most of the popular places.

We used to do short 2 or 3 day commando trips before we found DIS and became Disney fanatics. We very rarely ate TS, because of time and $$ constraints. I think when we were young and foolish, taking more than 30 minutes out of our frantic touring schedule would have made us really freaked out.

I do feel sorry for all the clueless vacationers I see at the parks who got a pkg that they really can't take full advantage of- they get frustrated that there just isn't time to do everything their (usually non-Disney specializing) TA told them they "just had to" pay for.