Upgrade from free DDP to DxDP worth it?

[Masonmj84]

I'm taking a group of first time Disney goers that includes DW, DS & DD (ages 8 and 2) and MIL during a free dining week in February 2012.

DW is letting me pick the restaurants with the following caveats:

(1) No restaurants with "Steakhouse" in the name.
(2) At least one restaurant per day that is fun for the kids.
(3) MIL really likes 50's nostalgia (*hint*, *hint*)
(4) It would be fun to surprise MIL and go to CRT the first morning (*hint*, *hint*)
(5) It would be fun to eat in a different resort every night.
(6) Splitting the group up for meals is not an option.

Given the above constraints, I am less than enthused about going under the DDP if we each have to use 3 TS credits out of 6 for CRT + 50's PT. So, I came up with the following DxDP line-up:

Arrival day: 'Ohana (dinner)
Day 1 (MK): CRT (breakfast); Artist Point (dinner)
Day 2 (HS): 50's PT (lunch); Flying Fish (dinner)
Day 3 (AK): Tusker House (breakfast); Jiko (dinner)
Day 4 (EP): Coral Reef (lunch); Citricos (dinner)
Day 5 (MK): Crystal Palace (breakfast); California Grill (dinner)
Departure day: Chef Mickey's (breakfast)

I believe this meets all of DW's conditions and personally think it will be worth the adult $33/day and child $10/day upgrade cost (now we each have to use only 3 TS credits out of 18 for CRT + 50's PT).

I also think it's a better strategy to have 2 TS meals per day, wherein 1 is a signature, as opposed to 3 per day without signatures (too much food and takes too much time). Moreover, I'm very excited about the signature dinners.

However, DW is worried that MIL (not a foodie) will find the signature dinners "snobbish" and the kids will be restless and bored (even if we book them as early as possible). So she's wondering if the upgrade is worth it. Would you do it if you were in our shoes?

 

[leitadisneyfan]

I think it is worth it if you want to go to a lot of sit down meals and 2T service meals. We did it in 2009 and it was the best part of our trip. We did character breakfasts each morning and most nights a 2T service meal Hoop Dee Doo was the best 2T service meal my family had that week. Have your MIL look at the menus on allears.com to see if there is anything she likes on the menus that's what I did with my dad.

 

[havoc315]

We did deluxe dining in Feb 2011 with a 4 yo and 6 yo. And doing it again in Feb 2012.

The signatures are not snobbish -- I don't consider any of the signatures we tried to be anything close to "fine dining." More like high quality dining, but not "fine dining." I guess some people with very simple palates may be overwhelmed even by Disney signature restaurants.. but if you have experienced truly fine food, you won't be considering Disney signature to be the least bit snobbish.

And our kids really didn't have any trouble at signature restaurants. Every restaurant on the dining plan caters to kids of all ages. Especially at the signatures, there are "fun" desserts for the kids -- like chocolate puzzles that they can paint with food coloring.
Some place like California Grill -- The kids will love the view from the window, or stepping out to the roof. And they have a fake sushi dessert for the kids -- if your kids are familiar with seeing adults eat sushi, they may get a kick out of the dessert.

I think your strategy is fine. My only question -- your evening restaurants are all over the place. Where are you staying? Factoring in transporation to the various restaurants can be quite annoying. We're staying at a monorail resort, and all of our dinners will be at Magic Kingdom resorts. (Artists Point, California Grill, Narcoose's, Aloha Luau, and CRT).

 

[Mikey'swife]

Sounds like a good plan! It is worth it if you want to eat these places. It is really hard if you try to eat 3 meals a day which I keep trying

 

[OllieDannyandMe]

I think it is worth it, and I would do it. But I would switch one of your Signature Dinners for the Hoop Dee Doo.

Personally, I would remove Citricos. The food is good there, but there is not much to entertain a young child. All of your other signatures are set in environments that have something to entertain (the WL, AKL, Boardwalk, and Contemporary are actually fun environments for little ones). Plus, night after night of fancy dinners gets old. So I would break it up by taking one away and replacing it with the Hoop Dee Doo.

Best wishes!

 

[disneybex]

I think it is definitely worth it. we have upgraded from DDP to DxDDP because the way we look at it if we didn't have free DDP we wouldn't be paying for DxDDP or OOP for all the great places (especially signatures) we get to try.

Your selection looks great for kids and adults

 

[3pletprincesses]

To my family it would be worth it as we do Disney often and loosing a bit of park time every day is no big deal. If you family doesn't mind averaging 3 hours at meals plus travel per day, go for it. It's alot of fun!

We did signature meals with our 4 yo DDs and had no problem at all. The restaurants alway give out coloring menus and crayons to keep them busy plus they will find plenty to talk about. Make it an habit to talk about wha tthey enjoyed and disliked that day é week and time flies much faster for them. Look at the menu and see if thereès something your kids will enjoy. I know my girls foud soemthing at every restaurant with no problems. They loved the desserts at signature meals.

Also 2 TS forces everyone to sit and relax a bit during the day otherwise it will be go go go all day. It makes it for a much more enjoyable trip IMO.

Signature food descriptions are always more elaborated then the meal itself. I doubt that your MIL won't find something to eat. Regardless of how you say meat and patato, it's still meat and patato

 

[diskids2]

We are thinking about upgrading as well....but can someone tell me what the cost is to upgrade from DDP to DXDDP...sorry for hijacking!

 

[nicole0992]

I think it's worth upgrading. I love the deluxe plan but do wish Disney had another plan that allowed for 2TS per night instead of the 3. We get around this by booking many signatures and dinner shows. We also aren't afraid to use a deluxe credit for a CS here and there.

 

[jeepsrj]

We are thinking about upgrading as well....but can someone tell me what the cost is to upgrade from DDP to DXDDP...sorry for hijacking!

I just upgraded our to DXDDP there is 2 of us and it was and additional $462 for our 7 night 8 day stay. Well worth it in my book seeing we were going to be paying over $300 OOP because of the extra places we wanted to eat ...... I've done this before and it was an amazing experience.

 

[angierae]

We are thinking about upgrading as well....but can someone tell me what the cost is to upgrade from DDP to DXDDP...sorry for hijacking!

Somewhere between 30-35 a day per disney adult, depending on what time of year you're going. I think it's around $10 for kids. (From DDP to DxDP - it's more to upgrade from QSDP to DxDP, but I don't know those numbers off the top of my head.)

We had DXDP on our last trip (upgraded from free dining) and will be doing the same on our next trip. For me, it's worth it because I consider the dining out and experiencing the different food and such as part of our vacation. I don't mind missing "park time" to sit down and eat a meal. It's a nice relaxing break and a good time to talk and enjoy the company of your family.

I don't have our "planned" dinners in front of me (We can't even book til 10/3) but we're doing a lot of 2's, as well - Spirit of Aloha, Jiko, Yachtsman are the three we are definitely doing, and we may do Brown Derby, as well.

And then there are days we're planning to eat breakfast somewhere at the tail end of breakfast service, then a late lunch and then a late dinner (8:30ish). But we don't have small kids, either.

But I think the best plan if you have little ones is to do lunch and 2TS dinners. At $35 a day you can probably even get away with having CS for lunch most days and still "get your money's worth". The signature restaurants have good kid's menus and we saw a lot of small kids at the 2TS restaurants we went to during our last trip and none of them looked particularly bored.

 

[trinchick]

We're upgrading to DxDP - actually downgraded our resort choice to make it fit into our budget.

Like you, we wanted to have a "fun" meal for the kids each day, plus a couple of 2-credit choices (HDDR and CRT in our case), so it made the most sense for us.

As a perk, I don't have to worry about the best use of our credits and when we should pay OOP (which drove me batty when we had the regular DDP). Plus with the DxDP we get 2 snack credits per day, which makes it so easy to say "yes" to DD whenever she wants something. What a treat for her AND for us!

As another poster mentioned, though, I'd really think about those evening meals all over the place. If you're relying on disney transportation, you're eating up a lot of your time (no pun intended - ha!) just getting to the meals. Already, you're committed to longer meals with more TS restaurants, so it's just compounded by all of the travel.

Last time we went to WDW, we went to Boma at AKL after our AK day. It seemed to make sense to just skip on over to AKL from AK. We didn't consider travel time back to our resort after dinner. It took us over an hour to get back to our resort (Boardwalk), which just felt too long after a full day in the park - especially for DD and for my mom. This time, we're trying to keep our ADRs to restaurants in the parks, with the exception of one resort restaurant on arrival day when we will not be visiting a park.