Tips for doing WDW without a dining plan

[tngal]

Hi everyone! I hope this is the right board to ask this question at.. We are planning our 2nd trip to WDW Nov 2014. 1st time we went, we had the Disney dining plan. While it allowed us to eat things we wouldn't have had we had to pay out of pocket, there were a few things that we just didn't care for. This go around we're thinking of trying WDW without the dining plan. Anyone have any tips for fixing food in your room when you do not have a microwave? Will Disney allow you to bring things like a toaster ? Thanks for your help !! Have a great day

 

[Marionnette]

Hi everyone! I hope this is the right board to ask this question at.. We are planning our 2nd trip to WDW Nov 2014. 1st time we went, we had the Disney dining plan. While it allowed us to eat things we wouldn't have had we had to pay out of pocket, there were a few things that we just didn't care for. This go around we're thinking of trying WDW without the dining plan. Anyone have any tips for fixing food in your room when you do not have a microwave? Will Disney allow you to bring things like a toaster ? Thanks for your help !! Have a great day

Toasters and other appliances that heat food (such as electric skillets and crockpots) are not permitted. There are toasters and microwaves in the food courts if you need to reheat or toast food.

Moderates and Deluxes have "pod" coffeemakers which can be used to make hot water for instant soups, noodles, hot chocolate, oatmeal, etc.

Do a search of this forum for eating in your room. The topic comes up often enough that there are several zombie threads out there with great ideas on how to stretch your food dollar.

 

[worm761]

We are going without the dining plan this time. We prefer appetizers to desserts so it just works out better for us.

First, most of the rooms don't have fridges on property right now. Though they might be back by your trip. Hopefully.
Most people that eat in the room are eating breakfasts like poptarts, cold cereal and whatnot. They aren't doing meal meals.

Personally, when doing a super budget trip I stay in the value resorts. I bring hot breakfast and heat it in the microwave in the food court. They have toasters and microwaves available. I bring breakfast bowls, premade breakfast sandwiches, and breakfast burritos.
Then I check All Ears for menus. http://allears.net/menu/menus.htm
At the counter service restaurants you can order a sandwich with no fries for about $2 cheaper than the entree with fries. So I will order just a sandwich for me and steal a few fries from DH or DS.
We also drive and I have been known to pack a picnic lunch to eat on the way down. I have considered bringing a lunch into the parks but DH is not ready to go that far yet.

 

[mom to minnie&mickey]

We always drive so we have our own car. We stopped at Wal-Mart and picked up cereal, juice, milk, bread, lunch meat, bagged salad, cans of salmon and tuna for the salad, dressing, fruits, chips, cheese, cookies etc. This allowed us to only have to buy one meal per day (usually dinner at the parks). We also ate off site at Sweet Tomatoes which was an excellent buffet at about $40 for the 4 of us!

 

[G719]

We just did our 2nd trip with no dining plan. Last summer we did the plan and just felt too stuffed. We stayed at AoA so we had a fridge and a microwave. But the food courts have a microwave. We ordered groceries in from the gardengrocer.com. We have cereal, oats, frozen breakfast sandwiches, and fruit for breakfast. We had ham and cheese and bread for lunches. We had peanut butter and got jelly from the condiment area at the food court. We also got water, juice, milk, and beer from the grocery order. And bell services will bring it to your room when it gets delivered.
When we did eat out, the adults shared a lot of meals. We also ordered kids meals at some places that have better choices like sunshine seasons. And I remembered that we learned on disboards that you can order a sandwich separately. You don't have to get the fries.
I kept my receipts and we saved about $300 since we didn't get the plan.

 

[marmalade]

We are not doing the dining plan this year after 4yrs of free dining. One thing I noticed with free dining, was that I was always to full to try all the great snack items WDW has to offer. So this year I think I am going to focus a lot of my eating towards "snacks" like the jalapeno pretzels, egg rolls, corn dogs, waffle sandwiches, the infamous Dole Whip, etc.... We were so busy running to TS and CS that we never had room left over in our stomachs to enjoy the smaller quicker meals.

 

[kandb]

One way to save a lot is to order a FREE glass of ice water at any of the CS in all the parks. I go to the dollar store and get a 10 pack of pink lemonade for a buck and bring them in my bag. We were there in Sept and during the day, would go in and order 5 ice waters and they were always free. Also during mealtime drink water with flavorings and this will save you a bunch. $3 sodas/bottled waters really add up for a family.

 

[njmom47]

We have never done the dining plan (I was such a newbie when we went before). Last time we went, we ordered from Garden Grocer, and got breakfast and lunch items as well as fruit, water and drinks. We took lunch and snacks into the park (in a soft-sided cooler, no glass containers) as we all seem to be on a different eating schedule. It may seem like the initial outlay for food is a lot, but I feel like overall, we saved money. We ate a few CS meals or ate at the food court but didn't always need a big meal, so we split or just got something small.

 

[tzeitel]

Our latest trip was OOP after 3 years of dining plans - we have done QSDP, DDP and DxDP. First I went through the menus and figured about how much we would spend on food. Came to about $1,000 for 2 adults and 1 child doing 2 QS meals, 1 TS + one snack per day/per person x 10 days. I figured we would not spend that much but I was sure we would spend the leftover $ in other ways
Then I went to Target and got Disney cards with the Target card at 5% off.

We are not breakfast people but I packed bagels (toasted them at the food court), Pop Tarts, granola bars, and banana nut pound cake to have for breakfast - we only spent $ at breakfast a couple of times when DD wanted pancakes.

The TS we had were mostly lunch, either an early lunch so it counted as breakfast/lunch or a late lunch that would cover lunch and dinner (or as we call it linner ). I do reward sites and used my points to get Landry's cards which we used at Yak & Yeti and TRex. I also have the Landry's loyalty card which has birthday rewards - it was funny since the reward was set to expire the day after we used it! DH did not really want to do Trex but I told him we could not pass up a free $25

It was pretty hot (this past October) so we were not super hungry, like the previous poster said - enjoy the snacks! I had a jalapeno pretzel for lunch one day and on one TS meal I just had an appetizer. Several times DH and I shared a meal - we are not share a meal kind of people, not that I mind sharing just that I don't usually leave much on my plate

 

[eliza61]

So truthfully the only time I thought the ddp was a good value was when the tips are included.
Most of the time though, unless you eat a bunch of character meals and/or buffets the dining plan is not going to save you wads of cash.
Now the Disney plan cost 58 bucks per person. so no way in heck would we eat 240 dollars a day for food. (my kids are considered adults)

My first tip is to figure out how you really eat, day in and day out.

Also it helps me to calculate the weekly cost not just daily spending. what did you order on the ddp that you would not pay cash for? I'm betting that there are very few things.
I found that when I'm on the ddp (and I know others do it) I tend to order not what I want but what's the most expensive simply to make sure I get the most out of my points. Then I try to rationalize it by saying 'I would never order that and pay oop". LOL the truth is I would never order steak every night anyway, nor lobster

It's funny when I question folks about "watching" the menu price, in reality they do it more on the ddp.
So normally would you go to a signature restaurant 7 nights on vacation or do a character meal 6 nights?

For my family "snacks" where the big ticket thing. For a while we were buying tons of ice cream, candy and such just because we were at Disney.

We always have a car so also what we do is have a big breakfast offsite. right outside of DTD is an Ihop, a denny's and a Perkins pancake house. I hop always had the 4.99 breakfast so for 20 bucks before tip we got pancakes,eggs, 2 pieces of a meat for each of us. rarely did we want lunch on those days.

 

[lauradis]

Lots of people don't do the dinning plan they just pick couple of meals and then buy Disney gc.

Hubby wouldn't do the eat in you room thing.

But he is not big breakfast person.

We just grabbed yogurt and breakfast bars for me an dd

One character breakfast, one resort food court breakfast in 8 days.

Small snacks durning day when ever, if we wanted lunch we ate whatever cs we wanted.

Scheduled late dinners because we like signatures better.

We got "free" dinning last time but I wouldn't pay full price for it ever.
when we went with my parents they always eat in room breakfast out of a cooler, she always packed lunches and we mostly ate dinners off site. She likes off site dinning and room better

 

[dpswift]

Whenever we have the dining plan we always have counter service meals and snacks left over and then we are rushed to use them at the last minute. The last time we were there we met a young couple heating cereal in the food court.

 

[Deb & Bill]

You could also put the money you would want to spend on dining on a Disney Gift card. Then, anytime you want to purchase a meal, you pay for it with the gift card. It should keep track of what you have left on the card each time you pay.

 

[DawnM]

We take a backpack cooler into the parks and take our own lunch on most days.

http://www.target.com/s?searchTerm=...ategories&lnk=snav_sbox_igloo+maxcold+maxpack

 

[chiefmickeymouse]

We have never done the dining plan. It doesn't make sense for us. We are all pretty careful about what we eat, and have one son who has a lot of dietary restrictions. We plan one meal in the parks a day, usually late lunch and table service about every other day. We bring breakfast stuff and snack foods (nuts are great for this, they keep you full for a long time). We usually stay at Shades of Green and they have a coffee place next to the bus stop where you can get all kinds of stuff much cheaper than in the park.

I hate the idea of having all of these reservations that you have to work around. I'd rather do what I want, when I want. We usually make reservations for the place we really want to go, Sci-fi Diner, Primetime Cafe, Calif. Grill, and that's it.

 

[kimmyann]

We found the dining plan to be a huge waste for us on our last trip, so we won't be getting it this August when we go. We just don't eat much in the summer heat. We also drive so I will be bringing breakfast items, fruit, & stuff for sandwiches for lunch since we will probably be at the resort during the hottest part of the day. Disney food just isn't very good imo & it didn't agree well with us anyway. Plus, I'd like to try some of the smaller menu items for a meal like egg rolls & things like that.

 

[Shelly F - Ohio]

We always eat cheap at Disney.

Here are a few tips for eating cheaply:

Breakfast at BC QS. You can get a breakfast sandwich - egg bacon or sausage, cheese- the sandwich requires two hands to eat it is that big. you also get a generous helping of potato/cornflake casserole. $7.99. Very filling and if you eat between 10:30 and 11:00 this will usually hold us till dinner time.


Lunch we either do Earl of Sandwich or stop at the Hess gas station for either a slice of pizza or 2 dogs for $2.00. THe Hess station just outside of MK have a very nice café area and a lot of food choices - subs, pizza, Mexican. Lots of tables and chairs. The last time we ate there we got 4 hot dogs, bag of combo's, two 20 oz bottles of pop and paid less than $8.00 total for two people! Some days they have a special on whole pizza for $8.00 and a free two liter of pop.

For dinner we usually go offsite to eat. We sometimes splurge and eat at a QS at Disney.