Which dining deal would work in my favour?

[Think I'm Tink]

The Disney Dining Experience (discount) or DDP (meal plan)? I will be at WDW from Sept 29 to Oct 9.

I know I'm coming to WDW a week after the free dining, but do you think that it would be worth adding a 1-day base ticket each and the DDP to our reservation? I have budgeted a little over $1000 for the 2 of us for 10 days, or average $100 per night. And that's flying by the seat of our pants for some meals. But the DDP is about $80/night + 2 base tickets for the package and we'd have definite places to eat every day. The monkey wrench in the whole deal is that I will have a DDE card. I still think I could take advantage of the DDE card also. I have heard that the snack credits can be used for fairly expensive items at the F&WF, which kind of makes me think it might be worth the DDP. Both DD(17) & I will have PAP's, but I don't mind holding onto the base tickets for a trip at a later date.

So far I only have a few ADR's made at sit-downs, but I'm sure I could come up with a few more if I need to!

Any words of wisdom and/or experience will be welcomed!!

 

[hockey mom]

I think you would be better off using your DDE card. You already have it paid for so I wouldn't purchase the dining plan.

 

[cdnmickeylover]

It really depends where you want to eat and whether or not you can get an AP discount on the room. We have AP's and go through this decision every trip. (Our next trip is for free dining though - no brainer, we're getting the one day pass and free dining!).

We usually look to see what kind of discount we can get on the room using our AP's. If we can't get a discount we are more likely to get the one day pass and go for the dining plan -- we like to eat and it's part of the trip for us. If we can get a great discount then we tend to lower the scale of our eating and use the DDE discount.

Even when we use the dining plan though we still use the DDE as it covers alcohol and sometimes a little snack in the food court (we tend to stay at POP) when we don't want to use a counter service credit.

Fiona