As a vegetarian family, we never pay for the dining plan. It just never works out as a deal for us, and even when it's free, it's still not much of a deal sine we tend to do as earlier mentioned..and buy perhaps an appetizer and a few sides instead of an entree, which isn't an option when you're on the plan. So we'd wind up with food we didn't really want while paying out of pocket for the food we did really want, which would make being on the dining plan useless really.