Two questions on the MYW Dining plan

[mill4023]

We are going to be in Orlando for 9 nights. Currently, I have an off-site room booked for the first 5 nights and POR booked for the last 4 nights with a AAA discount. I'm thinking about trying to get the MYW package through AAA with the dining plan. Because we are spending one day at Universal and one day at Sea World, I wouldn't want to do the package with dining and tickets for the whole 9 nights. I was considering doing off-site for the first 3 nights, then doing the 6 night / 7 day MYW package with dining. If we do that, we will be arriving in Orlando on Thurs, April 28, but we wouldn't check-in to POR until Sun, May 1. In this case, will we be able to use our dining options before Sun, May 1? Or do we not get them until we check-in for the first night of the package? We have a PS at Chef Mickeys on April 28 and we were planning on doing Epcot and AK on Sat, April 30 and Sun, May 1.

The other question I have is on using a sit-down meal for a character meal. The info I've seen says you can exchange one sit-down for one character meal. Does that mean you can only do this ONCE during your stay? Or does it just mean that each sit-down can be exchanged for a character meal so you could do several different character meals?

 

[Tissa]

The dining package starts the day you check in to a Disney hotel. For you May 1st. It's linked to the number of nights you are staying. So you would get 6 counter service,sit down, and snacks a piece. You can use one sitdown for a character meal everyday if you want. If you are doing the tickets with a package you have to check into the Disney hotel to get your park tickets. Your park tickets,and dining are put on your room key. You can't get the tickets and stay offsite with a package. So If your plans are for Epcot before May 1st you'll have to do Disney 1st then offsite.

 

[jjohnson]

Since you have to be a Disney guest to use the plan, it would not go into effect until you check in. As far as character meals, you can use all of your sit-downs for character meals. Your only limited to the number of nights your staying ie. 4 night at POR would give you 4 sitdowns per person.

 

[mill4023]

Thanks.
I hadn't realized that you didn't get your tickets in advance if you do a package. I was thinking we would get them mailed and could start using them before we checked in to POR. If we are going to split the stay, I definitely don't want to do off-site after being at POR. That would be a bummer.

When looking at the Disney site, it looked like you could have the tickets be for a shorter period of time than the total hotel stay. So if I did all 9 nights at POR, could I just get 7 day tickets? What about dining? Is it possible to get that for fewer days than your hotel stay or does it have to be for all 9 nights or not at all?

And one more question, is it correct that a 10 year old is charged the full adult price with the dining plan, but is charged the child price if you just pay cash for a character meal? I thought I saw that for the dining plan, a child is 3-9 while for the character meal prices, a child is 3-11. I'm not sure it's worth it if it's going to cost $35 / day for our 10 year old.

I would really like to stay at POR for the whole trip, or at least for more than 4 nights. So the reason I'm considering the dining plan is to try to convince my wife and myself that it can save us enough money to make it worthwile to stay on-site the whole time.

 

[jjohnson]

You can get less days of tickets but I know the dining plan is equal to the number of nights you are staying. You could do two seperate reservations. 1 room only & 1 with package but then you would be paying more for park tickets.

Yes the 10 yr old is charged the adult price. I have an 11 DS & plan to pay cash for alot of his meals including HDD because he'll want to order off the children's menu anyway.

 

[CarolAnnC]

Also, all members of your party must be on the dining plan. You cannot drop the 10 year old, for example.

You may want to consider doing an Annual Pass with possibly AP discounted room and order a DDE card for meals. Just a thought..