We are on the deluxe dining plan for the 1st time. How do my reservations look?

[DisneyFansInLINY]

Day 1

Chef Mickeys for brunch
1900 Park Fare for dinner

Day 2

Hollywood & Vine for breakfast
Sci Fi for lunch
Brown Derby for dinner

Day 3

1900 Park Fare for breakfast
The Plaza for lunch
Tonys Town Square for dinner

Day 4

Via Napoli for brunch
Chefs de France for lunch
Marrakesh for dinner

Day 5

Teppan Edo for brunch
Coral Reef for lunch
Le Cellier for dinner

 

[MyTwoPrincesses]

It looks yummy, but with 3 reservations a day (and some days you have brunch AND lunch!), will you have time to tour and will you be hungry for the next meal? Personally, I wouldn't do more than 2 TS a day (breakfast and dinner) and have either a CS lunch or snack for lunch.

 

[TDluvsDaisy]

Day 1

Chef Mickeys for brunch
1900 Park Fare for dinner

Day 2

Hollywood & Vine for breakfast
Sci Fi for lunch
Brown Derby for dinner

Day 3

1900 Park Fare for breakfast
The Plaza for lunch
Tonys Town Square for dinner

Day 4

Via Napoli for brunch
Chefs de France for lunch
Marrakesh for dinner

Day 5

Teppan Edo for brunch
Coral Reef for lunch
Le Cellier for dinner

You will be stuffed to the gills. Each of the restaurants are really good (although we've had horrible wait times for Coral Reef). However you might want to put some signature dining restaurants in there for dinner and do a late breakfast or early lunch and supplement snacks as needed. I highly recommend trying Citricos one night.

Days 4 & 5 will be taken up mostly by dining.

 

[Colleen27]

As others have said, 3 meals a day is a lot. I'd look at maybe planning some signature dinners and cutting out a few daytime meals. We've done the deluxe plan twice and will be on it again in March, but on the first trip we planned two three-meal days and realized very quickly that it was just too much. We ended up changing the second and using the extra credit for room service instead of a quick service breakfast on our resort day.

How many nights are you going to be there? When? What are the times on your ADRs? It is hard to give more than a very general opinion on a list of restaurants without more information. You have a lot of fun choices, but I'm not sure how much you'll really be able to appreciate them with trying to pack 3 meals in every day.

 

[DisneyFamily123]

Have a great trip! Here's a few thoughts.

We did the deluxe DDP and with appetizers included, we needed a good amount of time between meals. We usually had 2 meals a day either early lunch (11/11:30) and early dinner (4/4:30) or lunch (12/1) and later dinner (7/7:30). That seemed to work. There were a few days when we had a character breakfast at 8am/9am, lunch at around 1:00, and a much later dinner at 7:30pm.

I'm reviewing many of your restaurant choices (link below), the one for Brown Derby is done. You picked some fun places to eat!

Hollywood and Vine was fun for breakfast. DS5 liked dancing with Oso and Handy Manny. Sci Fi is also fun to dine in the cars and watch the old movie clips -- food not as good as other places. We really liked 50s Prime Time this trip - great food, fun theme, milkshakes awesome.

Went to 1900 Park Fare for breakfast in 2009, dinner in 2010. Enjoyed it both times but I wished we did something different for dinner. It is an easy way to see Cinderella without a line but we saw the princesses in the parks too.

We like Marrakesh. You will read some bad reviews but many people like it very much. It's an interesting restaurant with fun music and belly dancing. Service and food was great. We enjoyed the experience of being there in Morocco but I don't think the food is so different that picky eaters could not be happy.

Chefs de France. Be on time for your ADR, I heard they are strict about that. Remy does make appearances some days but might not so I'd let that be a surprise.

We followed the times guides at this web site and were able to time our ADRs right for the belly dancing at Marrakesh and Remy at Chefs.
http://pages.prodigy.net/stevesoares/

Coral Reef was very enjoyable. If you can wait a little bit, I'd request a table next to the aquarium if you can. I think those tables seat 4 max so it might not be possible if you have a large group.

Have a great trip!

 

[DisneyFansInLINY]

Thank you everyone for your responses. I am going to be 7 months pregnant when we go to Disney next month so the eating all day thing works for me lol. Plus touring WDW isn't that big of an issue for us as I have been there at least 100 times. My daughter is 3 years old and is excited to see Mickey and the princesses. For us, this is a relaxing vacation before the new baby arrives so we will be going at a slow pace. There is no rush to see everything as we will go again soon. We just want to make sure we get our moneys worth with the dining plan lol.

 

[catne]

Thank you everyone for your responses. I am going to be 7 months pregnant when we go to Disney next month so the eating all day thing works for me lol. Plus touring WDW isn't that big of an issue for us as I have been there at least 100 times. My daughter is 3 years old and is excited to see Mickey and the princesses. For us, this is a relaxing vacation before the new baby arrives so we will be going at a slow pace. There is no rush to see everything as we will go again soon. We just want to make sure we get our moneys worth with the dining plan lol.

Having done the Deluxe several times, only comment I can make is if you absolutely want 3 meals a day, make sure the reservations for each meal are at a minimum 5 hours apart...if breakfast is at 8:00 AM, lunch no earlier than 1:00 (closer to 2 PM would be even better) and if lunch is at 1:00, dinner no earlier than 6:00 (7 PM would be better.)

If your meals are closer than that, you will never eat close to your Money's Worth...people often make the scheduling mistake of trying to stick with the schedule at home but forgetting the volume of food you're getting (who has a full breakfast buffet for breakfast every day? Most people would eat 3-400 calories for breakfast but at a buffet you'll undoubtedly eat more than that.) Same at lunch & dinner...at home you'd have maybe a sandwich or a bowl of soup for lunch...not a full appetizer per person, a large entree, a beverage & a dessert. Then repeat at dinner. Guarantee you after the first 24 hours or so, you will just barely be hungry for the next meal after 5 hours. Even when we ate just 2 meals a day, we were barely hungry enough for a cereal bar for breakfast (still full from previous night's dinner) We never even use our snack credits while on the deluxe -just not hungry or thirsty in-between those huge meals...we use the snack credits up at the end to take home pastries & treats.)

 

[Max Webster]

Day 1

Chef Mickeys for brunch
1900 Park Fare for dinner

Day 2

Hollywood & Vine for breakfast
Sci Fi for lunch
Brown Derby for dinner

Day 3

1900 Park Fare for breakfast
The Plaza for lunch
Tonys Town Square for dinner

Day 4

Via Napoli for brunch
Chefs de France for lunch
Marrakesh for dinner

Day 5

Teppan Edo for brunch
Coral Reef for lunch
Le Cellier for dinner

Are you joking? Are you planning on doing anything in the parks, other than stuff your pie holes?

Way too much food. You will be racing from restaurant to restaurant just to get to your next ADR.

 

[3prettyprincesses]

Thank you everyone for your responses. I am going to be 7 months pregnant when we go to Disney next month so the eating all day thing works for me lol. Plus touring WDW isn't that big of an issue for us as I have been there at least 100 times. My daughter is 3 years old and is excited to see Mickey and the princesses. For us, this is a relaxing vacation before the new baby arrives so we will be going at a slow pace. There is no rush to see everything as we will go again soon. We just want to make sure we get our moneys worth with the dining plan lol.

I agree with your strategy. We always get the deluxe dining plan as well since we enjoy sitting down to meals 3 times a day! For us, the restaurant is usually something to look forward to and we don't stress that it's too much food or we're wasting park time. It breaks up the day nicely too as we're not planning to go commando through the parks anyway. Meal times are fun since we chat over what we've done so far or what we're looking forward to doing still. Have a great trip!

 

[anjalee6]

We found that three table meals with our little ones (2 and 4) is just too much sitting. It might be relaxing for you, but I think it might be a little ovewhelming for your kids to do 3 table meals each and every day. I think 2 is a good number. We found that if you order really expensive things during those meals or add signature restuarants at least once a day, then you get your money's worth. You have to spend $78 a day for each adult to cover the plan. We went on allears.net and looked at the posted food menus and it helped. You might want to think of at least not doing 3 tables service meals everyday.

 

[shawnh199]

We enjoy doing 3 meals a day on the deluxe plan. We do a character breakfast before the parks open, lunch around 1-2pm and dinner around 7ish. It works great for us. The prepark opening breakfasts fuels us for the morning. By lunch time, we are ready for a break, and it's great to sit in an air conditioned restaurant to relax and enjoy a meal. Our girls usually nap before the food comes out. We generally walk-off lunch so dinner is the only one we feel "full" afterwards. We don't necessarily eat everything on our plate, although depending on the restaurant we just might. Once again, it's nice for a relaxing dinner and we either head to fireworks/parades or head back to the hotel for a swim before beadtime.

People talk about wasting a lot of park time by having 3 TS meals a day, but we have never sat in a restaurant for more than 1.5 hours and it's usually 1 hour. If we were doing counter service meals we would be there for atleast a half hour as slowly as my girls eat, not to mention how long you wait in line to order at some of these places. And, I don't have to worry about finding a table, especially with the new rules that don't allow you to grab a table while someone else goes and orders the food. Having my girls (4/8) waiting in line with me is just a mess sometimes.

The one thing we have had issues with is using our snack credits. We just don't seem to find time to use them. We have actually made a list of what snacks we definitely want to get next time so that we will think of them. When we didn't use our snacks it worked out by loading up on big lollipops and rice crispy treats for snacks later on.

Enjoy your trip - and the food. The food is just as big a part of our trip as the parks are.

 

[tinkmom2]

For us the Deluxe dining was too much food! We had my Mom along with us and she would bring dessert back to the room with her because she felt bad about wasting it. Now we found one QS and one TS a day works well for us. We would have a big breakfast and really not be hungry for lunch most days. Dinner is where you really can spend some big bucks. Or if you like character meals and signature restaurants that take up two credits the deluxe will work better for you.
You can click on my trip report in my signature. In the beginging I have a link to my dining at WDW which included Teppan Edo. We absolutley loved it!

My 2 cents lol We really didn't care for Tonys. Some love it but we thought the food was horrible!

 

[TJA]

My thoughts:

We did the DxDDP last year and LOVED it. Not too much food at all. However, we did it like this:

Character breakfast
Snack credits for lunch
2-credit dinner

or

Snack credits for breakfast
Sit-down lunch
2-credit dinner show later on

We found this to work VERY well. Never felt rushed or like we were constantly eating. I personally feel it's very important to leave one of the 3 meals per day open for snack credits as I've illustrated above. With the DxDDP, you get so many snack credits that it's worth it to put them to good use! For breakfast when using snacks, get danishes or pastries, pop tarts, little cereal boxes, stuff like that. For lunch snack credits, get a pretzel, french fries, popcorn, etc.

 

[chocovrdmicears]

Are you joking? Are you planning on doing anything in the parks, other than stuff your pie holes?

Way too much food. You will be racing from restaurant to restaurant just to get to your next ADR.

Well that was pleasant, constructive criticism.

 

[Disneyadore]

I love your plan but do you have enough credits?
I could be mistaking of course.

 

[kathie859]

for even the best behaved child

I think I'd rethink the plan and use 2 credits for a few signature meals.
Your little one would most likely enjoy CRT. Also, I noticed that you have no reservations in the AK that I saw. You may want to rethink that.

Have fun planning!

 

[deannanb]

Day 5 looks rushed - you won't want - brunch and then lunch and then dinner like that.

I had 5 days of park reservations just like yours (not same places, but same idea) - we ended up canceling a bunch of lunch reservations because we just wanted to eat and go - or didn't want to go to the other side of the park just to eat. Most of the counter service places were just fine for our lunch.

Don't be afraid to use the credits for a CS meal - If you look at the deluxe plan as having the convenience of having the meals already bought - use them how you want. I felt as though we were rushing to get to meals just because they were reserved.

 

[AlixaLock]

We have a similar schedule for our upcoming trip. We have 3 young kids in our party. We're doing really early breakfasts, so that has left time for spacing out the ADR's. So, I think you're plan looks yummy and RELAXING!

Let's face it, every family is different. Our kids, for example, eat out all the time, they know how to sit in a restaurant and how to behave, but I know families for whom this would absolutely not work. To each his own. We love to tour the parks for a few hours and then sit down for lunch for an hour and a half or so and then rinse and repeat for dinner.

I have to admit that I don't get why people are so "against" 3 TS meals a day. There are tons of healthy and lite items on every Disney TS menu I've seen and I don't get why eating 3 sit down meals is always equated with "stuffing your pie-hole?" There is more to it then food ... It's also about sitting down and taking a breather. Recharging the battery. Like I said, to each his own, but I think your plan looks great!

 

[Colleen27]

I have to admit that I don't get why people are so "against" 3 TS meals a day. There are tons of healthy and lite items on every Disney TS menu I've seen and I don't get why eating 3 sit down meals is always equated with "stuffing your pie-hole?" There is more to it then food ... It's also about sitting down and taking a breather. Recharging the battery. Like I said, to each his own, but I think your plan looks great!

For us it is a question of time. We're not early risers so we limit our pre-park-opening breakfasts, and with the kids we don't really do late dinners either. Fitting 3 sitdown meals into the day without pushing our limits at one end or the other just puts them too close together with too little time on the rides and such in between.

In the OP's situation, at 7mo pregnant, I'd probably plan more 3 meal days but packing them all into lunch/dinner hours on the Epcot days would still be too many meals too close together. Three full meals in a 9 or 10 hour window is a lot of table time!

 

[iluvwdw5]

IMO ... I would bag half of these TS and try for some Signature ressies instead. Once we did 2 back to back (lunch/dinner) big meals and it ate up SO much of our day and our kids (2, 4, & 6) did not have the tolerance for this kind of CONSTANT dining. For your own enjoyment, I suggest going back over some of these ressies and rethinking them. Good luck!!