What do you do without it???

[shewill]

I have never had the dining plan and feel I save money with out it. It also makes the TS meals I do eat seem special.

 

[NewsiesGoil]

Well, this year we're doing the QS version because, honestly, although we liked the restaurants we went to, we weren't crazy about being tied to a reserved meal. I still liked the idea of having our meals prepaid, though, so QS seemed like a good fit. We're going to do a couple of TS meals OOP (I refuse to miss Biergarten and my sis is insisting we do HDDR again) and I'm just going to budget for them like I do MNSSHP and souvenirs.

 

[chocovrdmicears]

We love the Dining Plan because it works for the way our family eats. That being said, there are a gazillion ways that it wouldn't work for many. No one needs to *skimp* on eating if they don't use the Dining Plan. It isn't an "all or nothing" thing. As many have posted - they just don't enjoy eating the way the Dining Plan dictates - certainly doesn't mean any of them go hungry. $ for $ I am not convinced that the Dining Plan saves you much money. For me, the budget person of our trips, it's the pre-paid option that is a selling point for me. Could we eat happily for less on vacation? Probably - I just don't want to think about it.

 

[nurtz]

We don't use dining plans and eat where and when we want and we order exactly what we want. Over 20 trips and we haven't starved to death yet! It always seems that some people think those who choose not to use the dining plan are somehow missing out on great Disney dining. We can eat anywhere the dining plan is accepted plus some pretty good places where it is not. Nope, not missing a thing!

 

[flamingglobessigmund]

We stayed at AKL on the club level because we did the Sunrise Safari and got a rebate Disney gift card on check-in. We ate breakfast in the club, ate some counter service & snacks in the parks, and DTD, paying out of pocket, and had refreshments back at the club.

I wasn't interested in having ADRs. I wanted a more laid back vacation. It really was enough food for us.

 

[n2mm]

Well for me, I order what I want where and when I want it without being a slave to the plans...much easier and usually less expensive than a dining plan.

I have to agree. Also a TiW cardholder too. I like splitting an appetizer and not having to get a desert. I also don't buy a desert with CS. I've tried both ways and find not using the DDP is so relaxing. We sometimes have 2 TS a day. I don't find any savings in the DDP myself -- I've done the math many trips. I hate keeping track of credits and I don't like not being able to cancel a TS reservation if I'm not hungry because I have to use that credit. After trying both several times, I'm sticking with the TiW discount for all my other trips.

 

[BDJazz]

My wife and I almost got the dining plan for our trip last year and we are glad that we did not. We ended up buying an annual pass and TIW card which more than paid for itself. Doing the math, we saved money going this route over the dining plan and we loved having the flexibility to cancel some ADRs if we needed to. We did this a couple of times on the trip. We felt that if we had the dining plan we would not have been able to be as flexible with our dining choices as we were. Without the plan you are free to eat wherever and whenever and not worry about losing credits or not having enough.

 

[lesabrowning]

Dining at WDW is not a one size fits all for sure. We do the dining plans and always save money. Sometimes we do DDP, sometimes DXDDP. We never feel we have to order appy or desserts or even sodas just because they are included. We never over-eat just because it is included. I just decide where we want to dine and add up the costs. If the dining plan will cost me less, then I go with the dining plan. I do think that if your family dines at a lot of buffets or character meals you will see a dining plan savings faster than those that tend to go to more typical restaurants where you can share meals.

 

[LordAthens]

We are another couple that doesn't do the dining plan and we don't skimp.

First things first, I don't like having to plan what and where I eat based on a plan. Eating at Disney to me, is no different than eating at home. If I want a steak, I'll go get a steak. If I want some simple chicken fingers, I'll do that instead.

I like to eat at Downtown Disney and for dinner on our last trip, over half of our dinners were at DTD restaurants. Taking a look at the 2010 WDW Dining Guide, out of the 15 eateries listed, 9 of them do NOT accept the DDP, 5 of them being some of my favorite places to eat; House of Blues, Bongo's, Rainforest Cafe, Fultons and Ghirardelli. Those are 5 places we wouldn't have been able to eat or would have had to pay out of pocket for, and I can tell you we stopped at Ghirardelli nearly every day of our trip. To be fair, that's a very high ratio of places that won't accept DDP compared to the rest of the resort, but again it's some of my favorite places.

Other times, we might not have the time to sit down at a TS or even wait for a TS. We're very spontaneous, we generally don't decide on what park we're doing until the day before which pretty much kills any chance of being able to book a reservation at this ridiculous 180 day bit. Heck, we usually don't plan our vacations until a ~3 months before we decide we want to go!

We generally do cereal for breakfast (who wants to get up at the crack of dawn on vacation to go sit down for breakfast to be at the park for opening?), usually "graze" throughout the day on snacks or do a CS then for dinner, sometimes it's a CS, sometimes it's a TS.

When we're at home, we rarely do deserts and when we go, we share. We much prefer an appetizer which again, we share. So why would we buy a plan that includes a desert at every meal for 2 people? That's 4 deserts per day (for a couple), when we *might* have 1 when we go out for dinner at home.

I personally feel that it's just simply to much food for the average person. The last thing I want is to be stuffed to the point that I don't enjoy my vacation. A dining plan would make this hard since I was brought up to not waste food. This goes back to why we as a couple share an app or desert.

The couple that we're going with this year got the DDP last time there were there and loved it. I started asking questions why they loved it so much and it wasn't the value or selection of restaurants but simply that it was prepaid. We had a 2 hour discussion (debate even?) between the 4 of us on if we should get it again. I expressed my points, that I didn't like being limited on where or what to eat, etc.

It finally came down to me getting our room charge from our '06 trip. The total room charge bill was just a little over $1100. I went through line by line and subtracted items that I knew wasn't food (World of Disney, Summer Sands, Pinstations, etc). I left things in that I couldn't remember what they were (Fantasmic, Frontier Trading Post, Pirates Bazaar, World Traveler, etc). The total came to just over $700. To my memory, everything we ate was charged to our room charge with nothing on other forms of payment (other than tip, which was left as cash usually).

That was for a 10 day trip, so some basic math, 700/10=70/2=35, so $35 dollars per day, per person. Granted, that was 5 years ago, so I'm sure food prices have gone up a little bit, but that's still a 13 dollar savings per day, per person. Over a 10 day trip, that's $260 or the cost of one of our airlines tickets. Some other things to keep in mind, as I said there were some things on there I couldn't remember, so they were left in. They could have been pins, or other little souvenirs. Additionally, while neither of us are big drinkers, there were a few beers and cocktails included in those bills that wouldn't be covered under the DDP.

In the end, we all decided to forgo the DDP. I'm going to keep track of the receipts this year and total everything up to see if we made out, broke even or spent more than what a comparable DDP would have cost us.

Don't get me wrong, if you love to eat, don't get stuffed easily and love desert, the DDP isn't a bad plan. But it certainly doesn't fit everyone's eating styles.

If Disney was wise, they would come up with a point based system, similar to DVC. I would also go as far as saying to break it down based on what you're getting ala carte.

You would buy say, 20 points per person per day, more if you feel you need them, less if you feel you don't. Maybe a snack is 2 points, a "combo" (drink/fries/entree) at a CS is 7 points, maybe you don't need a drink or fries and you just want a burger, 4 points. An appetizer at a CS is 4 points, an entree 8. If you decide you want to snack all day long, fine. If you decide you want 2 CS's for that day, fine. If you want to do the "traditional" snack / CS / TS, fine. If it were me I would buy on the side of "short" so I didn't have leftover points at the end of stay and just pay for everything else out of pocket. Possibly more confusing than just saying "you get this, this and this", but for people like me who want more flexibility out of it, I would actually consider buying something like that. I would also suggest it be bought as a "bulk" of points for the family instead of a per person thing. Of course, that still doesn't fix the problem of non participating eateries.

To throw in another though, I think Disney is shooting themselves in the foot with not allowing 'common folk' to buy a TIW card. I'm not a FL res and right now until we buy into DVC, I won't be buying an AP. For whatever reason, Mousewitz decided that we shouldn't be able to buy them. I would buy it in a heartbeat, maybe I'll save money, maybe I won't, but it would encourage me to visit places that we normally wouldn't like V&A's or maybe make stops at Yachtsman a little more frequent. I love steak, but seriously, $42 for a NY Strip? I get a bigger NY strip that is just as good at my local Outback for less than half the price and a better strip at my local "high class" steak houses for $30. I would typically get a filet, but I used strip pricing to keep everything accurate.

My 2c.