Why do you use the DDP?

[TheLittles]

Figured I would ask this question in hopes that I can see if it actually saves people or not. The last trip I went on was the first ever that I had a DDP. I usually always paid OOP. We had Deluxe which turned out to be pretty good Since we got to try tons of great food. I am trying to decide whether or not to do it for my upcoming trip. So, for those that do the DDP, especially if you do DDDP, why do you do it? Do you do it to save money and if so have you ever figured how much it saved you? Or do you just like having the convenience of having all of your meals already paid for once you get there?

 

[TheLittles]

Oh to add, we will have a child under three sharing with me so that might save some too. Especially at buffets. But will it save enough to justify the DDDP? Not sure.

 

[preemiemama]

We do the dining plan every trip. Typically the regular plan, and make ADRs mostly in Epcot. With 3 of us all on the adult plan, we still figure we save at least $50 a day (combined) on the plan. But we are people who DO eat the desserts and use snack credits for breakfast not a bottle of water in the park. We also use the refillable mug for drinks in the am and while at the pool. For us, it is worth it beacuse it is how we eat.

The deluxe plan we do for times when we have a lot of 2 table credit meals. We would not eat 3 full meals a day, but a table service breakfast and then a meal at LeCellier or Flying Fish is worth it to us, plus we get the appetizers included. We don’t typically do this plan, so are not sure how much we save here comparatively.

Bottom line, if you think it is a benefit to you, do it. You know how your family eats and what you will enjoy. If you will not waste meal or snack credits, then at the worst you will break even.

 

[olwyngdh]

We have never done the DDDP, but do the regular dining plan--and the dining plan is one of the reasons we will not stay at Shades of Green again. For us, whether it saves us money or not isn't the issue, the issue is that we will actually eat if we are on the dining plan instead of grudging every penny spent for food and ending up eating baked potatoes or splitting turkey legs. Never again. My husbands belief in dinner being raman noodles in the room after parks close is not my happy place.

 

[TheLittles]

Yeah my biggest reason would be that it was already paid for so I was not sitting thinking about money my entire trip but I just wonder if anyone has actually tallied everything up and seen a savings.

 

[wendybeth75]

I think you can look at it two ways. If you tally up everything you eat while there and compare it against what the dining plan costs you most likely will save, especially if you chose some of the higher priced meals or restaurants. This was the case for us when we bought the dining plan last fall. We came out $200 in savings for the regular dining plan. We went in the spring and had a Tables in Wonderland card and paid OOP and had more TS and fewer QS and saved much more over the DP. We also had the 20% discount and DD13 and I shared a few meals because she eats light sometimes. Now, there was the "mental" part of it for me. I had to come to terms that we just paid $156 to eat and O'hana and Boma. That was probably the hardest part for me. DH it doesn't bother so much. We have also found that you can eat close to what a QS is in places like Sci Fi or Prime time and Plaza, those places would charge you a TS credit, but the burgers are just a few dollars more than those at a QS. I guess the moral of the story is to do whatever is going to give you the most carefree experience. If it helps you enjoy your vacation more then I say GO FOR IT! That's one of the reasons I love FD so much!

 

[grafxgirl]

When we do the dining plan we choose restaurants with the highest prices and choose the most expensive things on the menu because it does save us money. When we do not do the dining plan we go with the resaurants with lower prices since we are paying out of pocket.

 

[excited4disney2012]

We get the dining plan when we go. But just the regular one. We tend to skip breakfast, have a bite for lunch then have a nice sit-down dinner. So it fits our eating habits. Sometimes we order appetizers with dinner and alcoholic drinks (sometimes throughout the day and/or with dinner).

I would flip if I had to pay $64 for a steak (Le Cellier) or $150 (Jiko) for dinner.
Literally.

When I am on vacation, I don't want to stress about anything.

 

[Elandon]

Because it keeps my family from complaining about prices. I hate complaints on vacation.

 

[QueenofPrideRock]

Figured I would ask this question in hopes that I can see if it actually saves people or not. The last trip I went on was the first ever that I had a DDP. I usually always paid OOP. We had Deluxe which turned out to be pretty good Since we got to try tons of great food. I am trying to decide whether or not to do it for my upcoming trip. So, for those that do the DDP, especially if you do DDDP, why do you do it? Do you do it to save money and if so have you ever figured how much it saved you? Or do you just like having the convenience of having all of your meals already paid for once you get there?

We'll be using DxDDP for the first time this trip, so I'll be calculating at the end to see how we did. A big part of it, for us, is peace of mind -- knowing I can order any dish without having to worry about "is this in our budget??" since it's already been taken care of! This is especially true at signature restaurants where I always tend to want the most expensive thing on the menu, haha...

 

[dbramer]

We do DDxP when we go. We like having our meals already paid for and darn it...we are on vacation, so we are going to eat like it...

 

[mcd]

My sister and I upgrade to Deluxe when we get Free Dining. We do a late breakfast and a 2 TS for Dinner every day. Use our snack credits for snacks and eat at some great restaurants. We get to try things that we would normally not have and enjoy ourselves. I refuse to feel guilty over spending that much for food, since I only get to Disney once every 4 years. Just my 2 cents.

 

[mommasharn]

I agree with Queen. I know it's stupid, but it seems free when I'm there since I've already paid for it! No stress, just enjoy. I have the freedom of saving all year, purchasing the plan, and then just worry about enjoying myself. It's like going on a cruise. The food there isn't obviously free, but if feels like it!

 

[Holly Quinlan]

We will be upgrading to the Deluxe plan when we go next year if free dining comes out. its around $150 up charge per adult for our 3 night stay . I've already been planning out our meals and mine comes out to around $400 not even including the 2 snacks per day so it is a big savings. You just have to plan. If free dining is not released and we were to just pay for the dining plan with one table and one quick service each day we would be spending $30 more on the dining plan vs paying out of pocket. But it depends on where you plan to eat.

 

[momof2halls]

We just got back from 8 days at wdw on friday and were on the regular dining plan. We loved the convenience of it being prepaid and not having to worry about how much the food we really wanted cost. I added up our meals and we saved $500 by using the dining plan. We had 2 adults and 2 children (8 & 4). We ate lunch 3 days at our resort quick service and used our mugs as our drinks and was able to use the meal drink bottled water the next day in the park.

 

[purrpletulips]

We first used DDP on our honeymoon and loved how we didn't have to worry about how much our meals cost since they were prepaid. We had the deluxe plan and found it was sometimes too much food but loved being able to order different dishes and share.

We had the deluxe plan again the last time we went (upgraded during free dining). Again the convenience of being prepaid was so nice and we liked that we had all of our meals planned ahead of time. Our 18m old was with us so we ate at a lot of buffets but even at the non-buffets found we had enough food for her and us.

While we love the DDP we likely won't get it next trip because our children will be old enough that they would have to eat from the kids menu. They are both very adventurous of eaters and we typically order an adult entree for them to share because the typical kids menu items are not what they like.

 

[xipetotec]

Up until 2012, it was still a borderline good deal for us.

We got the resort mugs with it, we like to eat at a nice sit down ( sometimes character ) meal every day. AND since we travelled in big groups, it allowed us to sort of "put a cap" on what you get.

But with the increases between then and 2014, when we ran the numbers for this year, it was simply not a good idea for us. ADD TO THAT the fact that as DVC members, we could now use Tables in Wonderland and get 20% off food AND drinks... it was a no brainer. I can't imagine ever going back.

 

[Infamousmare]

We have done the Deluxe DDP for the past 4 years for a few reasons:
1. We've always gone during free dining promotions and the cost to upgrade was minimal.
2. We are always traveling as a large party and it saved us more than doing the room discount.
3. The convenience of being able to pay over time and then arrive and have to deal only with gratuity was a lifesaver. No waiting for mom to hem and haw and try to order the cheapest thing on the menu or trying to split the bill and figure out which jerk ordered the steak and who only had a dinner roll.
4. I love a great meal and I LOOOOOVE Disney restaurants!
5. I am a planner, a list maker (can you tell?) and a rather meticulous person by nature. Having reservations made and meals taken care of ahead of time was huge (and you pretty much have to in order to use all those credits to your advantage!). Never once did we have to suffer through ten people saying "I don't care, what do you feel like?" as we're starving and it's 300 degrees. Reservations are set. Show up and shut up.


That being said, here are a few caveats:
1. It is a TON of food. We almost never ate the dessert.
2. You have to be careful about planning your meals or else you'll wind up running to make ADRs or getting caught up in too many meals, too little time for everything else.
3. I would never personally pay OOP for the DDP. In years past, it made sense; however, with the increase in price, it no longer makes sense to me. Again, this is personal and I don't care what others do.

We are staying offsite this year because the finances just didn't work out, but we still love Disney Dining. It made sense for me to buy an AP and a TiW card to get a discount on the meals we will have at the parks. Now, instead of cramming a ton of ADRs into our vacation, we have eaten at enough of the restaurants to have narrowed down our absolute faves. We're averaging 1 TS meal per day instead of 2 or 3 with the DxDDP. (or is it DxDP? I'm so bad with acronyms...)

We loved the dining plan when it was free/low cost to upgrade to the Deluxe. It gave us the chance to prepay for a lot of nice meals out. Now we just don't feel like we need it because we've experienced all we wanted to and feel very comfortable just going to the few places we really like.

 

[buzzrelly]

We have never done the DDDP, but do the regular dining plan--and the dining plan is one of the reasons we will not stay at Shades of Green again. For us, whether it saves us money or not isn't the issue, the issue is that we will actually eat if we are on the dining plan instead of grudging every penny spent for food and ending up eating baked potatoes or splitting turkey legs. Never again. My husbands belief in dinner being raman noodles in the room after parks close is not my happy place.

Haha! This just made me LOL! Sorry, but I feel your pain! This is how my DH would be...that is, if I actually TOOK him to Disney! My mom and I love going to Disney together, love all things Disney, and love the DDP. I went last year with DH and it was fine but he definitely kind of put a damper on my fun. We are going again in June as a big group. We weren't able to add the DDP this trip, but if he EVEN suggests I eat goldfish crackers for dinner, I'll throttle him! Already looking forward to a trip next April with just my mom, the kids, and the DDP.

 

[OasterP]

I will preface this to say I have never done any of these, as I haven't gone since I was a child, but I have run the numbers hundreds of times for my September trip. My family would never do Deluxe so I didn't run those, and honestly I never thought we would get a dining plan at all.

I think it will depend on how you want to eat. Not necessarily how you COULD eat, but how do you want to? Originally I planned for us to stay offsite, eat in the room a lot, and eat cheap in the park. I was planning on one Character meal for my (then) four year old son.

Then free dining came up for Visa holders and just "for fun" I started running numbers. It definitely will cost us more to stay on site and have "free" dining than I had estimated for off site. But not considerably more. And then I realized what I COULD do for meals if I did free dining.

I ran the numbers of what we would pay out of pocket for the food we are planning (and I estimated CS and snacks b/c I have no idea) based on the dining plan and we will certainly get our moneys worth. We are staying 11 nights and have managed to stretch our 11 meals to 14 b/c I know there are several where we will share (obv. not buffets) and one we'll pay for one of our meals in cash (Kona breakfast). Included in that we are doing six character meals. So it definitely "paid off" for us. However, I know for a fact if I were paying out of pocket no way would I be eating at 99% of those places.

So for us, for an additional cost of around $550.00 we have the peace of mind knowing for the most part all we have to pay is tips, and we get to eat at places we wouldn't have otherwise.

I think you just need to figure out what experience you are looking for. And only you know if the Deluxe would work for your family. There is absolutely no way we'd enjoy that just b/c I'd feel sick most of the time from overeating!