Dining Plan or no Dining Plan-What to Do?

[Chuck S]

We are planning a trip to WDW for February 2008, staying for eight nights. I have been looking into the dining plan and wasn't sure if this was a good deal or not. This thread is very helpful.

I was still wondering though.... what are the changes for 2008?

Is it that we will have to pay out of pocket sales taxes & gratuities?
Anything else?

Thanks in advance for the help!

In 2008 the standard dining plan will drop by $1 per night, but it no longer includes appetizers or gratuity.

The Deluxe plan includes 3 meals per day, your choice of Table Service or Counter Service, appetizers are included, and 2 snack credits per day, as well as one refill beverage mug per person. Gratiuity is still not included for about $70 per adult.

 

[Kurby]

we seem to do a lot more planning then a lot of people do but for us when we plan a trip we plan what park we are doing on what day including DT then we plan the restaurants we want to eat at.

we look at the menus and decide what we would prob choose to eat that night. and because we are already looking at the menus we could work out the cash cost.

for us - in the past we wanted to try restaurants we might not have gone to before because the cost would be too high for a dinner we found the DDP cost effective because we would spend the cost of the DDP on dinner alone giving us essentially lunch and snack for free.

with the change that is coming in 2008 we'll have to revisit the numbers to see if it is still a deal for us.

 

[robinb]

It's worth it for us, but I'm not sure if it will be worth it to you. AFAIC, the cost of the plan pays for the TS meal and the CS meal and snack is all gravy. Look at your current ADRs and see if there are a few that you would not have made if you didn't have the DDP. Then add up the cost of the table service meals and use an average of about $11 per adult and $5 per child for the CS meals and $2.50 per person for the snacks.