WWYD- OOP or QS minimal savings?

[divabydisney]

I currently have the QSD. (I didn't qualify for the FD special ) So I was calculating it all out. It would save me about $40 when it's all said and done. We would eat some meals in the room and some oop. Would the $40 be a convenience to you to keep the plan or should I just go with garden grocer and save the extra? I initially called to have dining removed all together but she convinced me to keep it on. IDK, also the free refill mugs aren't that important, I prefer pepsi products. My kids won't be heavy eaters. I guess the alternative is to just do all OOP as well but would probably break even?

 

[maleficentmom]

For me saving $40 is not worth the convenience I would have with the dining plan...especially if I was gonna spend most of my vacation time at Disney parks and Downtown...Mousesavers discusses this subject in length so you may want to look there... we usually do the regular dining plan,as we consider many of the meals as "entertainment"(characters,atmosphere). We stayed off property though this time(just did 2 parks,then Universal and shopping/pool)...at Grand Beach Resort,and for the price we were able to spend on 1-2 meals out a day and still save a lot of money.So it just depends on your plans really.

 

[DisneyCher]

I wouldn't bother with the QS dining plan just for "convenience" sake - it is just as easy for me to get out a credit card as it is to get out the KTTK.

 

[ilovemk76]

I currently have the QSD. (I didn't qualify for the FD special ) So I was calculating it all out. It would save me about $40 when it's all said and done. We would eat some meals in the room and some oop. Would the $40 be a convenience to you to keep the plan or should I just go with garden grocer and save the extra? I initially called to have dining removed all together but she convinced me to keep it on. IDK, also the free refill mugs aren't that important, I prefer pepsi products. My kids won't be heavy eaters. I guess the alternative is to just do all OOP as well but would probably break even?

I would drop the QSDP and pay OOP. Do you really plan to buy a dessert with every counter service meal? If not, then the $40 may not even be what you save.

 

[maggiew]

I've never had the QSDP but I have read nearly every DIS thread on the matter. Most people say that the QSDP is a lot of food! I don't think you will be needing to pay OOP for anything (unless you want to do a character meal or other TS). Many people get something for dessert that they can use for breakfast the next day. Or use the snack credits for breakfast and the desserts for snacks during the day. You can often share a meal and thus stretch your credits through all 3 meals of the day.

I don't know if that helps you, but if you calculated the OOP for other meals into that $40 savings, it might actually end up being more savings than you think.

Maggie

 

[worm761]

One thing to consider with the QSDP is that you will be there during food and wine festival and you can use those snack credits at the booths.

 

[Disneychix]

I have done QSDP (paid for it) and I did think it was a lot of food. We ate at Wolfgang Puck express and some of the other "bang for your buck" places. I thought it was worth it.

But I do agree with the PP who said it's just as easy to get out your CC or even room card to charge as it is to use a 'meal'. Using QSDP is just nice to have everything paid for and your done thinking about the $$.

 

[QVCshopper]

I love the QSDP, and we always come out ahead. You get a refillable mug, and I've never had to spend an extra cent on food. The snacks are great; if you are going during Food and Wine, there's no way I'd consider dropping it. You can use the snacks for SO much there. To me, you'll more than make up your $40.

Sometimes we can't get the QSDP (staying in DVC with family who don't want it) and I really really miss it. Plus, we use the snacks as treats for the kids sometimes, so less souvies.

 

[ilovemk76]

One way you can prepay your meals and not do the QSDP is to make a payment on your CC and go to WDW with a negative balance and then charge your meals. When you get home you will be very close to a $0 balance.

 

[Mikey'swife]

I really liked the QSDP. Especially if you go to WPE our meal would have been $70 for 2 adults 2 kids (not ordering the most expensive items) if we had skipped dessert it still would have been over $50.00

Unless you would be really happy ordering the cheapest thing everytime and never drink soft drinks and want to skip dessert- It will still save you money and let you splurge- since you are on vacation that is a nice perk to have the large combo instead of something small. If you already know you would come out ahead why not? Then if you get even more bang great if not at least you never had to skip something you wanted because it was too much.

Mugs are nice souveniers and good for coffee/tea if you don't like soda.

 

[divabydisney]

Thanks for all your responses. I still haven't decided but gives me stuff to consider. To calculate my savings I took menus and added up what I would order if I was there. I also tried calculating it out with using garden grocer. I don't think with us being there for 3 1/2 days that we'll really need that either.

 

[kellydizfan]

Well last time we went, we didn't do the quick service meal plan and I could kick myself. We decided since we had a vehicle, we could go off site to eat and also eat in the room and bring food with us to the park. What a pain in the behind all that was. We are going this time during free dining. I thought about upgrading the quick service and decided against it - savings there of about $500 for all 5 of us by not doing it. My 3 kids don't eat enought to warrent paying that extra money and they are picky. My girls have gotten better and I couldn't see paying sit down adult prices for them - especially my DS 11, then gratuity also. I will from now on, get at least the quick service, just for the convenience of having it. It was just as expensive to go off property and purchase food for the room as the quick service plan. We do have 3 sit down meals planed for this time, T-Rex, Rain Forest and Sci-Fi with the rest being counter service. Only 17 days to go - YAY!

 

[Sagginit]

part of what i love about the dining plans is not worrying about prices on vacation. i did not want to look at the menu and go oh hmmm well if i get this i pay $12 or i could do that for this price and add a side...... i went as two adults, we upgraded our free DP to DDP. a lot of food but we knew we could not survive on two meals a day and it canceled out our OOP costs for the extra meals. keep in mind you don't have to get that cake. if memory serves me correct you can get two drinks instead of dessert (we did this often so we never bought water) or you can get a more practical option as a snack for later (i remember getting bags of grapes and apples).

 

[Dizneydaz]

We used QSDP for the first time last year and I loved it! No more planning ADRs months in advance and then having to chagne them when there and our plans changed (we aren't overplanners on park schedules).

We had great food at most places. We do have a car so going to DTD to eat at WPE. EoS, or Cooke's was pretty easy. We had more food than we needed, though we managed to use all of our credits (okay, I did treat a nice couple at EoS to their meals on our last day) and the refillable mugs are a nice souvenir (we would buy them anyway) even if you don't like Coke products (though it would be hard for me if WDW switched to Pepsi since I'm a Diet Coke girl all the way!)

Luckily for us we only paid for the DDP one time, back in Jan. 05 when it first started. Since then we have had it for free. If I had to pay for it I would look at what I would normally spend for meals/snacks and see if it was worth it. Right now, with QSDP inc. 2 snacks a day I still think it's a pretty good deal, pretty good, not great.

As a PP mentioned though, one of the things I LOVE LOVE LOVE about having a DDP is that I don't have to worry about the cost of things. If my DD11 wants a snack I can tell her yes without worrying about the cost. She loves this as well. And even with that option we have snack credits left over to use on our last day for brining home stuff. (Maybe that's why they are eliminating one snack per day?)

And last but not least, using SC at the F&WF. A no brainer! We had such a good time being able to get whatever food we wanted last year (our frist F&WF) that we wanted to make sure we made it back this year so we could do it again-and we are!

Quick question-are your sure you can't get free QSDP? Based on your ticker it looks like you are getting there on Oct. 8th. If so that happens to be the last day for checking in to get free DDP. We are actually arriving on the 8th for our free QSDP trip. I jstu booked it this week when they opened up more dates. Or is it that your Cruise part is first and you'll be checking in after the 8th?

 

[patsal]

I'd go OOP because that is what I did this past vacation and it worked out much better for my family. No need to order things we didn't want and we could get snacks that we wanted that were not covered by the DDP snacks. We actually saved money by going OOP.

 

[Alexander]

One way you can prepay your meals and not do the QSDP is to make a payment on your CC and go to WDW with a negative balance and then charge your meals. When you get home you will be very close to a $0 balance.

Our CC company doesn't allow us to pay more than our balance. So this may not work out for everyone.

part of what i love about the dining plans is not worrying about prices on vacation. i did not want to look at the menu and go oh hmmm well if i get this i pay $12 or i could do that for this price and add a side...... i went as two adults, we upgraded our free DP to DDP. a lot of food but we knew we could not survive on two meals a day and it canceled out our OOP costs for the extra meals. keep in mind you don't have to get that cake. if memory serves me correct you can get two drinks instead of dessert (we did this often so we never bought water) or you can get a more practical option as a snack for later (i remember getting bags of grapes and apples).

Agreed!

I like having our meals already paid for. It is a lot of food, but we spread out four nights worth of food over five days. We also like having the refillable mugs so when we are eating a meal, we can just refill the mug and take a bottle of water with the meal for later. We spend very little time in the parks, so our resort refillable mugs come in quite handy. This trip we are traveling with my DS who is almost 13 and eating us out of house and home. I have no doubt that we will use every credit and every morsel of food will be eaten!

 

[divabydisney]

We are doing the cruise on 10/9, then doing the parks so we won't get there until 10/13. Just in time to miss FD A couple of things I was a little concerned with. 1) We are picky eaters and don't know what we would or wouldn't eat there. 2) I dont want to be limited to just qcsd in case they want one table dinner. I love the idea of it prepaid and the convenience though so that is where the issue comes in to play.

 

[Claire&TheBoys]

I did the QSDP for a trip when I was travelling by myself with my children. It made it easy to just order what they wanted and swipe the card. I wasn't interested in carrying around bottles of water (and we stayed at Pop where there's no fridge anyway) so we used quite a few snack credits for water. Using the QSDP gave me more freedom to get snacks more often (2 per person per day is a lot of snacks!). We did eat a couple of meals OOP - I booked one TS, the Garden Grill, and we ate at Boardwalk Pizza one night while walking around the Boardwalk. That gave me some extra credits for us to eat breakfast at the Pop food court, which my kids loved. I did buy a few other items OOP when one child didn't like the kids' meal choices, but I didn't spend a lot overall. Since I was by myself, I was able to keep almost perfect track of what we used our credits for and I figured out that we almost broke even - maybe a savings of about $20 over 5 days, not counting mug usage. For convenience, yes, I'd use it again. To save money, well, no, it wasn't a big money-saver the way we used it (several breakfasts, fewer dinners).

 

[KELLY]

Last year we were booked with FD as a bounceback for the RDP. But when they switched the values to the QSDP. I called and switched to that promo. The cm thought I was nuts. But it was a way better expereince for my family. We loved it. We go for 10-14 days so there is no way I want a adr everyday for that amount of time. We have done that many adr's in the past and we always sort of felt stuck. I hate to be looking at my watch wondering if we cannot get in line beacuse we need to eat.

I thought we would miss the character meals but in all reality we did 2 adr's one at CP and the other at garden grill and it was plenty. We waited in line for characters that lines weren't long and we seem to get more attractions done without the RDP. I know some people like having a sit down meal to relax. But for me it was just the other way. At the buffets I was up and down a million times getting my kids set. Than the characters would come around so there is the autograph books and camera to deal with.

We leave in 3 weeks and we hae 2 adr's one Tusker house breakfest and they other t-rex.

 

[Natalie's Mommy]

we decided not to do it because neither myself or my kids are big eaters and i dont wanna worry about lugging around extra pieces of cake or snacks i won't eat. my family also mainly drinks water so i will be ordering some and having them delivered or shipping some to disney with some other healthier snacks that my family would prefer!