Originally Posted By Amynleroy So the dining plan will almosr double the cost of out trip...is it REALLY worth it?
Originally Posted By sun-n-fun Although we have never used it, I think it would be worth it if you wanted to try many of the "nicer" sit down places at WDW. We (2 adults and 2 kids)tend to eat at counter service places and share meals, so have never tried the dining plan. We don't think it would be worth it to us. My SIL had it and came home without using some of it. Too much food for them.
Originally Posted By stitchcrazy I did the dining plan this past fall because it was during the promotion where it was free. The free deal is amazing. However I'm not sure that I'd ever pay to add it on as it was a ton of food. Really in the end a deciding factor would be how many sit down meals you plan on eating during your trip. If you're going to do sit downs every day or most days its a great deal. If you're going to do counter service fast food most of the time and only do one or two sit downs if any my husband and I for us at least have found the dining plan to cost more than its worth for us. Our last trip we decided how many sitdowns we wanted to do (we did 2 in the end), looked up their cost on AllEars' dining guide, guessed an average on what we thought we'd spend besides that and decided we'd spend less without the dining plan. The nice thing about it is if you have the dining plan you don't have to budget much for food money when you actually get there. But over our trips we've come up with our own ways to save money and that seems to work better for us.
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo For us it was totally worth it. We do a sit down a day, and we were at WDW every day of our stay. Therefore, we found it worth while. If you only want a couple of table service or are planning at spending time off site, it is not worth it IMHO.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom The actual answer is that it is worth it. I was just as WDW the first week in December and did not to the Meal Plan. I was staying in one of the Downtown Disney Hotels which offered a free all you can eat breakfast buffet. This greatly helped out with the expense of meals. I found the price of food on property to be outrageous. Despite having free breakfast we easily spent at least $70 including tax and tip, or more each day on a quick meal in the parks ( for convience sake and to try a few restaurants we had never tried before ). Granted we did ocassionally have drinks and then there was the midnight cap hot fudge brownie almost each night at Ghiridelli in DtD. The point is you will easily spend $35 per person each day on food. When you are participating in the Meal Plan you don't have to pay taxes on your meals. Those of us who were not participating in the Meal Plan had to pay taxes. One big downside to the Meal Plan is that some parks have very limited sitdown restaurant availability especially the Magic Kingdom. In order to utilitze your Meal Plan you may have to make resevations to eat at time when the sit down restaurant has available seats. In otherwords times that may not be convient for you or your party. And God help you if you can not make your reservations. You will be unable to find other arrangements. I heard someone on this board compare the Disney Meal Plan to eating on a cruise ship. I disagree with this anology. Since cruises have enough seats for each guest during meals. Yes, cruise ships may have to seatings. However, there is always a guarenteed seat. Disney doesn't have enough seats at sit down restaurants in the Magic Kingdom to accomidate every guest utilizing the Meal Plan who might be visiting the Magic Kingdom on any given day. When not using the Meal Plan I found it impossible to be able to enjoy a sitdown restaurant in any Disney park. I think for those who take advantage of the Meal Plan you will find the plan rigid and very inflexable. My advise to anyone utilizing the Disney Meal Plan is to make your resevations well well well in advance and be prepared to plan your vacation around your resevations. As for myself. I will be visiting WDW again the last week in January. My party will not be using the Meal Plan. Since I will be driving I plan on bringing down plenty of quick food items; muffins, yogurt, etc with me. My party has already agreed that we are going to be avoiding restaurants on property so we don't have to reexperience our worst dining nightmare like we did the first week of December. We simply are not going to rely on Disney to dictate to us when we are going to eat. So we will bring our own food. I'm an annual passholder now. And since I recently got back from a trip to WDW. Disney recently sent me a survey and I was very harsh regarding the Meal Plan. Upon on meal, my party had made resevations to eat in Germany for dinner. When we arrived at the Germany Pavallion the courtyard area was packed with guests waiting to eat. Since my party had resevations we only had to wait 10 minutes to get in. Once we got into the restaurant we could easily see that a good 1/3 or the restaurant was not being used. We over heard the staff in the restaurant say that they had called in additional staff to meet the demand. But they still never opened up ALL seating available. They simply only utilized 2/3 of the restaurant. I couldn't help but think that Disney had artificially created this long long wait now for sitdown restaurants. Those guests outside looked tired, hungry and angry. The Disney Meal Plan is all about Disney meeting its needs as it helps Disney anticipate the demand for sitdown restaurants months in advance. Thus, Disney can supposively allocate additional staff ( in theory but not in practice as I found out that night in Germany) when needed. Its not about meeting guests needs. And in terms of the sitdown meals I enjoyed my fist week in December. My party felt like we were being rushed through our meals. In the five days we were at WDW I believe the final tally was over $300 for food for two people ( that doesn't include breakfasts as they were free ).
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo "My advise to anyone utilizing the Disney Meal Plan is to make your resevations well well well in advance and be prepared to plan your vacation around your resevations." This is what we did, booking our restaurants 175 days out and planning our trip around it. Sadly, we had to miss our Ohana reservations one day because no one was hungry for lunch until 2 and then that meant we were not hungry at 6:30 when our reservations for. We still had 4 days in the resort, and there were NO slots other than a 9:50 pm seating on our last night. We had to pass sadly. The dining plan is not good for spontaneity - and when travelling with two rug rats and a difficult mother in law, it can make it tricky. But it was increadible value.
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo "My party felt like we were being rushed through our meals." Funny, with 10 sit downs, we never once felt that way, and our meal average meal time was probably about 2 hours. But mileage may vary.
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo " In the five days we were at WDW I believe the final tally was over $300 for food for two people ( that doesn't include breakfasts as they were free )." If you come to DLP, you better save up. Before kids, our food budget for 1 day was $150 - $200 per day at DLP. And breakfast is also included in DLP hotels.
Originally Posted By LacyBelle My experience was similar to Dave's. DH & I enjoyed the meal plan during our trip in early November. Yes, it was a LOT of food. We really didn't need to eat that much, but enjoyed it anyway. ;-) We planned ahead and made ressies five months in advance. DH & I are both planners, so the "rigidity" and timetable aspect didn't bother us. We also didn't feel rushed at any of our table service meals, with each one taking at least an hour and a half. Is it worth it? As others stated, that all depends on your own needs and preferences. DH & I liked the prepaid aspect of it and it became a bit of an adventure to keep track of what we _would_ have spent, so we could calculate our savings at the end. Good luck with your decision. Please let us know what you decide and what your experience is upon your return. Happy Planning!
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom <<If you come to DLP, you better save up. Before kids, our food budget for 1 day was $150 - $200 per day at DLP. And breakfast is also included in DLP hotels.>> Dave please don't get me wrong. I also don't mind spending money on food when I figure its a good value and its something worth paying for. Thats why I never complain when I'm eating out in Manhattan, Atlantic City or during my trip to Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and Alaska. My problem with Disney ( and the hotel where I was staying ) was that I really don't like being charged $7 for a sandwich with lesser quality than one I can get at a nearby Publix grocery store for $5.29 . Don't get me started on the entres in WDW. We ate in France, were rushed through the meal. And quite frankly ( other than the wine, and I prefer California wine over French wine ) the food was kinda bland. I had the veggie lasgana which was OK, but hardly worthy of its hefty $13.75 price tag. When I had gotten home I had some eggplant parmgain I had gotten from my Local Publix for $6.95. It was enough for four people ( I got several meals out of it ). It was also far more superior to the veggie lasgana. Also in terms of pricing of meals at WDW. I found the Big River Grille and Brewing Works to be an incredible value and very reasonable with the best beer I had on property! Given the diverse quantity and quality of the food available in the sit down restaurants, I find some of the meal prices to be outrageous for what you can get at comparable prices elsewhere on property and nearby. After all we are talking about Orlando. Not Taiwan where a can of soda is $7 US. I'm not putting anyone down for participating in the Meal Plan. My complaint is that for those who CHOOSE not to participate in the Meal Plan then I don't understand why Disney is locking us out of the sitdown restaurants? Why punish your guests for not staying on property? Disney isn't dedicating ANY seats for walkins. Disney is takign seating resevations first. And if all their seats fill up, tough luck for any walkins. Why doesn't Disney dedicate even 30% of the seats in their sit down restaurants for walk in? The only winner here is Disney. And Disney isn't doing it for guests convience sake. I already wrote about how at least 30% of the seats were left empty when I was dinning in Germany. No explaination for this and there were many many people waiting to get in.
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo You are preaching to the choir my friend. And I agree, Californian wine is far better. Or at the California Grill in Paris, one can enjoy both French and Californian wine!
Originally Posted By t1lersm0m I just want to say that for us the dining plan was free. But here's how I felt about it. We were able to order just about whatever we wanted off of the menu without worrying about price. We also didn't have to worry about having money each day for food. So even if we did have to pay for it, I think it would be worth it just to know that you don't have to worry about that money each day for food. It's already paid for before you get to WDW. But as others have said, you get a lot of food on the dining plan. We ate at California Grill one night, which counts as two meals, and we treated friends to a counter service and a table service meal the next to last day, and we still had 6 snack credits left the day we checked out. Our typical day was stay up late at night, sleep in the next day, get ready, have an early lunch at Pop Century food court, and a sit down dinner each night. Then do it all over again the next day. A few nights we had popcorn as a snack, some nights we had ice cream, one night we had Kaki Gori, one night we had snacks in Norway at Epcot (yummy, I had my first school bread!).
Originally Posted By tinkerbellfly We went when the plan was free. I have to say, it was worth it. It was the first time we did it and was able to eat places we otherwise wouldn't of ate at. If we had to purchase it, it would of cost us about $750. ( there is only 3 of us) At the end of the week, I tallied how much food came to and is was over $1000. That includes tip. So for us it was great.
Originally Posted By jazzfan4 The only thing wrong with the plan is what it does to reservations. It makes is tough to get into some Table service restraunts except at lunch with or without the plan.
Originally Posted By Stageman It's worth doing if you like eating as it's a lot of food. Some days we really didn't feel like eating a full three courses in the evening. A couple of restaurants have sampler plates just for DDP guests, especially with deserts, which stops you having to decide. You can use snack credits at the Food and Wine Festival but if you do that you may be left with a bunch of spare dinner/Quick service credits because your full up.
Originally Posted By KaylynBrooke The DDP is definitely worth it. It works really well if you have members of your party with expensive or daring tastes. The DDP allows you to get a larger, more exotic, or more expensive meal without the worries of whether or not you will be wasting money because chances are, even if you don't finish your food you are still saving money off of the original total.
Originally Posted By jodiefra We love the meal plan. We only get to WDW every two years or so and the plan does a couple of things for us. First, it means that almost all of our trip is paid before we go (except tips, souvenirs, and a few extra snacks). Second, it encourages us to try new things since we "have to" have a sit-down meal each day (or the equivalent). For example, we will be there 9 days in July and are trying 7 new restaurants that we probably wouldn't have gone to, including the Brown Derby. I agree with some of the down sides, including the fact that you are really forced to decide where you will be eating months in advance, but for us part of the fun is in the planning. Also I should mention that I have a fourteen year old son who is a bottomless pit so getting too much to eat isn't an issue (at least for him!)
Originally Posted By FenwayGirl My son and his family used the Quick Serve DDP last month and they loved it.
Originally Posted By SuzieQ We have the free dining plan for our trip and plan to eat our way through WDW this time, LOL! I love that I won't be looking at prices on the menus.
Originally Posted By darcy-becker We loved the dining plan. We thought the food at all of the sit down restaurants was great and we wouldn't have had so many sit downs with out the plan. It was really nice to have it all paid for up front. Yes it was a lot of food. I hardly ever finished my desert. A note on reservations, some of the comments have made it sound like you can only make reservations if you are on the plan but any one can make reservations dining plan or not.
