How do you handle all the food?

[akalittleeva]

After hearing about how much food is on the DDP - just wondering for those who have done it...

-did you feel full all the time?
-were you able to enjoy the food at each meal, or did you just eat it because it was there?
-did you feel hungry enough during the day to enjoy a snack?

I have our lunches and dinners planned about 6 hours apart and we will have a light breakfast in the room. I'm starting to think it might be a good idea to share a meal or two to avoid that stuffed feeling that I've been reading about so we'd be able to enjoy our meals and snacks. I know we could skip apps and desserts, but everything looks so good - I think sharing would work best for us. I hate to see good food go to waste. I think we would be able to use our unused credits from sharing through our trip as we arrive early on check in day and leave late on departure day...

 

[aka-mad4themouse]

For anyone who is a light eater or watching their weight, the dining plan provides more than enough food to keep you full. I'm not the kind of person to eat appetizer thru dessert everyday. DD16 is a vegetarian who is partial to salads and appetizers for her meals, as well as dessert. She and I could certainly get by with sharing our meal credits. And that's probably what we'll end up doing for a few dinners.

I plan to approach the dining plan as a way to prepay for my meals and not as a way to "get the most for my money". I think that attitude will make me less inclined to order foods that I don't want just because I can. And I definitely plan to block the mental image of my father admonishing me to "clean my plate". When I'm full, I'm done eating.

 

[gigi1313]

we found that eating breakfast and dinner w/snack in the afternoon was enough for us... there's no way w/the dining plan that we could enjoy three meals a day... 'cept for the days that we split meals, we had a light breakfast and a light lunch, still enjoying the full dinner (we did not split these)... any more than that and we would have been over-full!

 

[akalittleeva]

Never thought about skipping lunch - great idea! That might work somedays for us (we have a couple TS lunches...). Ds is just 10 and enjoys the adult menu, but doesn't have a huge appetite - so between the 2 of us, we should be able to share successfully on other days as well. It would be nice to be able to cover all our meals with the dining plan and not feel denied of anything or stuffed to the gills. Oh to find the balance...

 

[LaDonna]

I remember being full almost all the time.....and yes I also remember not being able to enjoy most of my food because I was full. I few times I took the dessert back to my room, but it still got thrown away because I was too full to ever finish it. I plan on this time splitting most of my meals, or at least we will skip breakfast and have a very early lunch! I'm actually wondering when most lunch places open??? We saved most of our snack credits because we weren't hungry enough for a snack, but icecream was a good choice because it isn't filling and tastes so good on a hot day

 

[Anewman]

We are big eaters to begin with, but we did not feel the need to wipe the plate clean at ever single meal. And we did take desserts back to room a couple times.

EVEN THEN on our last night we had a ressie at Ohanas that we chose to cancel, we were just not hungry enough to go to a all you care to eat type of dinner. We Walked in for what we thought would be a light meal at ESPN, now I know there is no such thing, the APPETIZERS were huge got the rest of the meal togo.

 

[amy4bruce]

We were at WDW in Dec 06 for 7 nights and on the DDP. We were full with no problem. We even had 6 snack credits left over that we used for Mickey Rice Krispee Bars to take home.
We would eat snacks for breakfast (sharing them) counter lunch and table service dinner. We would even take some desserts back to our room to eat late at night.
I am all for the DDP. I like not having to worry about what things cost when I look at a menu. Also since you pay ahead a time, it is like free food for us. Oh wait I am going during free dining in September. It is FREE.

 

[indigoxtreme]

We usually shared our CS's and had a light breakfast ie got 1 breakfast platter and used 1 snack credit for fruit bowl etc. Then we sometime shared the lunches as well. For our TS we never shared. This seem to give us something to eat for all meals. With breakfast and lunch being halved it was plenty to carry us throughout the day. We usually have a few snack credits left as well, depended on how warm it was. This was last Sept and this past Feb.

 

[babywewe]

How I did it...
light breakfast like a cereal bars that i packed.
Some days I had no breakfast.

Have an early lunch.

Have a late dinner 6-8pm.

 

[PortieOwner]

No problem at all. A Disney day is a long day, up by 630am, in bed by 10 or 11pm. Two or three decent meals in a 16 hour day are not unreasonable.

Portie

 

[kcashner]

We had an 8 night trip that was really 9 full days (arrived 9 am, departed 8 pm). We had plenty of food on the plan without buying any OOP except one 1/2 gallon of milk.

We used snack credits for breakfast. You can get a whole box of donuts as a snack credit...or a quart of milk, etc.

We frequently shared CS lunches (not really big eaters, and many of the portions are quite large.) I started with the idea that my teen could share her lunch with me and that if she was hungry later, she could use another CS credit...that solved the problem that she wasn't too keen on sharing initially.

We ordered the whole deal at dinner--2 appetizers, 2 entrees, 2 desserts. We frequently had the dessert boxed to take back to the resort if we were going straight back. We had a refrigerator (DVC), so storage was no problem.

We had enough credits left to get a "to go" meal from the resort to eat while waiting for the plane.

We were full but not stuffed, but only because of the sharing. Had we each ordered a CS lunch, we'd have been too full. We generally didn't do snacks during the day...we stayed reasonably full. Besides, ice cream in the parks leads to sticky and sometimes sicky kids. We did enjoy the food, but we were careful to limit the intake at any one time.

 

[LisaRay]

When we went in Nov. we were there for 10 nights on the dining plan! That is alot of food!
But some days we would split 2 CS for breakfast (there were 4 of us) and then split 2 for lunch. This worked pretty well because for breakfast it filled us up fine and for lunch it filled us up yet allowed for an afternoon snack! Then we used our TS for dinner.

The other thing we did was just a granola bar for breakfast which meant that we were hungry for lunch very early around 11am and then dinner around 6pm and that worked out fine too.

For the months of planning I did before the trip I learned all about getting you money out of the dining plan and all the tips etc. but once I got there I just decided to let it all go! I knew we would at least break even and several meals we would come out ahead so I just stopped worrying about that and really enjoyed having it all pre-paid and also really enjoyed saying yes to treats during the trip! For ex. on afternoon at the stunt show we all got a popcorn and drink and that would have cost us a fortune without the plan and we never would have done it but with the plan we could just say yes to the kids more often on things like that. Plus now that they have added so many other snack choices that will make the saying yes part even better!

 

[alicenwonder99]

How I did it...
light breakfast like a cereal bars that i packed.
Some days I had no breakfast.

Have an early lunch.

Have a late dinner 6-8pm.

That's what we did, too.

It felt so "wrong" to throw away so much food, but my younger children aren't big eaters and could never finish all of the food.

I would bring back to the room some of the desserts from the CS meals, like cookies, brownies, etc. They are HUGE! We would eat those for breakfast.

Even though I didn't eat all of the my food, I still gained 5 lbs from my last trip!

Mary

 

[akalittleeva]

When we went in Nov. we were there for 10 nights on the dining plan! That is alot of food!
But some days we would split 2 CS for breakfast (there were 4 of us) and then split 2 for lunch. This worked pretty well because for breakfast it filled us up fine and for lunch it filled us up yet allowed for an afternoon snack! Then we used our TS for dinner.

The other thing we did was just a granola bar for breakfast which meant that we were hungry for lunch very early around 11am and then dinner around 6pm and that worked out fine too.

For the months of planning I did before the trip I learned all about getting you money out of the dining plan and all the tips etc. but once I got there I just decided to let it all go! I knew we would at least break even and several meals we would come out ahead so I just stopped worrying about that and really enjoyed having it all pre-paid and also really enjoyed saying yes to treats during the trip! For ex. on afternoon at the stunt show we all got a popcorn and drink and that would have cost us a fortune without the plan and we never would have done it but with the plan we could just say yes to the kids more often on things like that. Plus now that they have added so many other snack choices that will make the saying yes part even better!

That is exactly what I plan to do now - we have a couple early TS lunches, so a snack in the room sounds great for breakfast, as does the sharing for other days. I would like to be able to use the snack credits for Dole Whips and such in the parks - glad to hear sharing worked for you and hopefully it will work for me. I'm not at all concerned about maximizing the plan - I think it is a great deal! I just want to be able to make the most of our dining experience - enjoying a wide variety of foods and snacks and saying yes to the kids more often - especially with snacks...

 

[zuzu310]

My Mom and I went last year and it was way too much food, but it was so much fun!She usually had a breakfast bar (because she has to eat with her medicines) and I usually had nothing but water. We ate early lunches (like 11-11:30am) and later dinners (6pm). We ordered whatever we wanted and ate only what we could. I barely ever finished an appetizer in order to save room for the meal and my favorite...dessert.Just try to forget the "clean your plate" rule and you will be fine. Also drink lots and lots and lots of water. You can't eat when you are nauseated from being dehydrated.

 

[disneyjunkie]

My son and I used the plan during our April 2005 trip. We only ordered what we knew we would eat. There were times when we skipped dessert or a starter.

Just because you CAN order a ton of food, doesn't mean you HAVE to.

 

[Nancyg56]

How I did it...
light breakfast like a cereal bars that i packed.
Some days I had no breakfast.

Have an early lunch.

Have a late dinner 6-8pm.

That is what we plan to do in August, it is just my DGD her aunt and me. DGD is not a morning eater, so a bagel will be more that she needs. Now last January, we ate a light breakfast, a later CS lunch which some of us shared, and then a late dinner. We had more than enough food.

 

[jjpenguin]

We are not that big eaters so we used a lot of our TS towards nice meals at the Signature restaurants that we could enjoy.
We shared our CS's most times and ate smaller portions a bit more often, sometimes adding a snack of fruit if we were a bit more hungry. I think the few times we each had a CS was when we used it for our evening meal.
Lots of snacks were used for water/drinks which was great to help us keep hydrated and not having to schlepp water bottles with us.

My way of looking at is was that the TS (with tip and tax) average the price you pay for the DDP, the rest is all basically "free". Yes we wouldn't have eaten as much if we weren't on the plan, but we definitely didn't feel full all the time.

 

[lilybeth11602]

We would do a light breakfast too them a cs lunch and then a late ts dinner like 8 or 9:00.Or the other way around, if we did a ts breakfast around 10 we would do a cs dinner late and just a snack midday if we wanted. We didnt have any problem using our credits and stretching them out over the day.We didnt gain any weight either.I think we walked off everthing we ate