TigerlilyAJ
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2011
Are you thinking about the DDP or DDP+? Got some buffets or character meals on your Must Do list? Think that an adult beverage at two meals a day sounds like what vacation should be? The dining-plan math works in your favor.
There are lots of ways that the dining plans don't work. No one is here claiming otherwise. But I see some basic errors done over and over when people here tell others Don't Do It! The two biggest are:
1) Not keeping up with Disney price increases when throwing out figures like "A CS meal is $15, a TS $40, a snack $5." Some people decided the plans weren't for them in, like, 2017, and have never really sat down and crunched numbers since. I just made a spreadsheet a mere 9 months ago, July 2019, to prep for our January 2020 trip with the traditional DDP. Now, making a new one here in April for a Oct 2020 trip, I'm struck by how many meal prices I have to update (emphasis on "up"). A couple dollars per person per meal adds up, tipping scales toward the plans, as the plans' prices have increased at a lower percentage year over year compared to menu prices. Sorry, no quick answers to whether the plan works for your trip. Crack open an Excel or Google docs spreadsheet and start entering figures.
2) Ignoring Alcohol/Specialty Drinks. Anyone saying a meal costs X dollars is not figuring out alcohol. Its inclusion for guests 21+ is a game changer. For example, at Woody's Lunchbox (CS), I enjoyed a $9 grilled cheese and $4 tomato soup side. These are the kind of numbers that lead people to statements like "A CS meal is $15." But I didn't get a free cup of water or a $4 pop to wash down my meal. I ordered a $12 Grown-Up's Lemonade. That meal OOP would be (9+4+12)*1.065 (sales tax), or $26.60 despite me eating the least expensive "vegetarian" entree. And baby, I did this at every meal, TS or CS. For those under 21, people who don't drink, or those who might not want to imbibe at *every* meal, you can order specialty drinks. At Woody's, my kids (two Disney adults, two young kids) got to have $5.49 root-beer floats with their meals, a huge hit and included with their CS credits. At CRT, my kids had strawberry smoothies, my DH a beer (he stuck with beers around the resort and was pleased with the quality), and I champagne. That glass was $20, something I would never consider paying OOP. At Story Book Dining, we all had the fun specialty drinks (with and without alcohol), adding $41 to our tally. I had to pay 18% of that in the form of tip, but that still left $33.62 we had included on top of the basic price of $318 the meal cost with just basic drinks--which we still got along with our specialty drinks. So more than 10% in additional value to what a lot of bloggers and people here would quote as the cost of dining there (neglecting $20.67 in sales tax as well, so the meal really would be $54 more than the simple menu price).
Man, we had fun. Every meal felt like a celebration with all the flourishes.
I also have never understood the widespread acceptance of the idea that the average snack is $5, so the "two snacks are $10" of the plan cost. $5 is closer to a minimum, not an average--and that's before adding the sales tax that included in your plan price. Kat Saka's kettle corn is $6.49 ($6.91 after tax), Mickey Pretzels are $6.79 ($7.23), churros $6.19 ($6.59), Blue bantha milk is $8 ($8.52), funnel cake with ice cream is $8.49 ($9.04), Insta-worthy cupcakes are $6 ($6.38) as is the non-alcoholic Night Blossom drink in Pandora. OK, a basic Dole Whip is $4.99 ($5.31), but the floats are $1 more and with the pineapple upside-down cake $2 more, but the same 1 snack credit cost. I really think that $6, or $12 for the two is a more realistic current figure, and still easily topped in practice.
OK, back to today's trip planning. Now, I was looking at the regular DDP for our short, 4-night stay. (January was a 7-night trip.) We want to go back to Woody's, Docking Bay 7, and Ronto Roasters, so it's easy to do CS only at DHS. Same with AK, where we want Satu'li Canteen and Pongu Pongu noms and fries. So then we save TS for our MK days, where I find CS options far less appealing. Then, I found a 2-night opening at DH's new fave, CL Deluxe room at BWI. So we now have a reservation there, doing AK and DHS out of pocket, supplementing with breakfast at the club along with a light dinner and snacks and alcohol at the club, too. But then we move to two final nights in a Cabin at FW, where, I have to note, a cabin and the DDP+ plan for six costs less per night than the CL deluxe at BWI (but an AP discount will hopefully change that). The kids want CRT breakfast, HEA dinner, CP breakfast, GG breakfast, and San Angel Inn. That's five TS meals over 2.5 park days with 4 meal credits available on the DDP+. Obviously, CRT should be OOP rather than use 2 TS credits. (In fact, as prices for other character meals have increased and caught up, it has become almost criminal to use two credits on CRT, esp at breakfast.) I added it all up, adding on sales tax and deducting 10% on OOP costs for my AP discount.
OOP $1434 With Tax and Tip $1792.50
OOP with AP 10% Discount $1290.60 With Tax and Tip $1613.25
CRT OOP + DDP+$1439.80 With Tip $1720.80
ETA: The DDP+ figure of $1439.80 is wrong! I used the cost of a the Deluxe plan ($575/day for my family) in that amount instead of the correct DDP+ figure of $448/day!
The new math:
CRT OOP + DDP+ $1285.8 With Tip $1520.25
So, $93 less than OOP and with 24 snack credits included! And that's before you consider that the OOP cost has no specialty or alcoholic drinks. So, even using the conservative estimate of $100 more for fun drinks for six at five TS meals (so totally unrealistic) and $5 for each snack credit ($120 total), it's a big savings. We could leave all the snack credits unused and still come out ahead.
But this realization of the Oopsie in my first run of figures had be double checking other things and looking at possibilities using all four of the plans over our split stay or some combination of a plan and OOP. It took ALL day, mainly because there were so many different possibilities to consider. My findings now in my latest reply (Mon, April 13) to this thread! (I'm excited.)
But that's strictly meals only. No specialty drinks for kids, no alcohol for DH and me. At an additional $20-40 per meal, that $1720.80 includes $100-200 in drinks that we definitely want, erasing the $107.55 advantage of my AP discount OOP scenario.
And all that is before considering the the DDP+ gets us two snacks per person per day, or 24 snacks for my family. Even at a conservative $5 estimate, that's another $120 we get on the plan, letting us go crazy on our last full park day, spent at Epcot, getting Karamell-Kuche corn to take home with us on our long drive home (it stays good a long time!), sushi snacks, macarons, and gelato.
Or I might ditch all that for four nights at AoA or the Cabins (esp if no solid AP discount comes out) with DDP, so we really focus on snacks rather than meals at Epcot, swap San Angel for Minnie's Halloween Dine at H&V. That would be $1508 for six of us over four nights and would erase the CS OOP costs at Satu'li, Woody's, Ronto Roasters, and DB7. See, doing this exercise has made me (probably) change my mind for our vacation.
Check today's prices, remember that 6.5% sales tax matters, and think what would you and your family really like to drink on vacation. Enjoy!
There are lots of ways that the dining plans don't work. No one is here claiming otherwise. But I see some basic errors done over and over when people here tell others Don't Do It! The two biggest are:
1) Not keeping up with Disney price increases when throwing out figures like "A CS meal is $15, a TS $40, a snack $5." Some people decided the plans weren't for them in, like, 2017, and have never really sat down and crunched numbers since. I just made a spreadsheet a mere 9 months ago, July 2019, to prep for our January 2020 trip with the traditional DDP. Now, making a new one here in April for a Oct 2020 trip, I'm struck by how many meal prices I have to update (emphasis on "up"). A couple dollars per person per meal adds up, tipping scales toward the plans, as the plans' prices have increased at a lower percentage year over year compared to menu prices. Sorry, no quick answers to whether the plan works for your trip. Crack open an Excel or Google docs spreadsheet and start entering figures.
2) Ignoring Alcohol/Specialty Drinks. Anyone saying a meal costs X dollars is not figuring out alcohol. Its inclusion for guests 21+ is a game changer. For example, at Woody's Lunchbox (CS), I enjoyed a $9 grilled cheese and $4 tomato soup side. These are the kind of numbers that lead people to statements like "A CS meal is $15." But I didn't get a free cup of water or a $4 pop to wash down my meal. I ordered a $12 Grown-Up's Lemonade. That meal OOP would be (9+4+12)*1.065 (sales tax), or $26.60 despite me eating the least expensive "vegetarian" entree. And baby, I did this at every meal, TS or CS. For those under 21, people who don't drink, or those who might not want to imbibe at *every* meal, you can order specialty drinks. At Woody's, my kids (two Disney adults, two young kids) got to have $5.49 root-beer floats with their meals, a huge hit and included with their CS credits. At CRT, my kids had strawberry smoothies, my DH a beer (he stuck with beers around the resort and was pleased with the quality), and I champagne. That glass was $20, something I would never consider paying OOP. At Story Book Dining, we all had the fun specialty drinks (with and without alcohol), adding $41 to our tally. I had to pay 18% of that in the form of tip, but that still left $33.62 we had included on top of the basic price of $318 the meal cost with just basic drinks--which we still got along with our specialty drinks. So more than 10% in additional value to what a lot of bloggers and people here would quote as the cost of dining there (neglecting $20.67 in sales tax as well, so the meal really would be $54 more than the simple menu price).
Man, we had fun. Every meal felt like a celebration with all the flourishes.
I also have never understood the widespread acceptance of the idea that the average snack is $5, so the "two snacks are $10" of the plan cost. $5 is closer to a minimum, not an average--and that's before adding the sales tax that included in your plan price. Kat Saka's kettle corn is $6.49 ($6.91 after tax), Mickey Pretzels are $6.79 ($7.23), churros $6.19 ($6.59), Blue bantha milk is $8 ($8.52), funnel cake with ice cream is $8.49 ($9.04), Insta-worthy cupcakes are $6 ($6.38) as is the non-alcoholic Night Blossom drink in Pandora. OK, a basic Dole Whip is $4.99 ($5.31), but the floats are $1 more and with the pineapple upside-down cake $2 more, but the same 1 snack credit cost. I really think that $6, or $12 for the two is a more realistic current figure, and still easily topped in practice.
OK, back to today's trip planning. Now, I was looking at the regular DDP for our short, 4-night stay. (January was a 7-night trip.) We want to go back to Woody's, Docking Bay 7, and Ronto Roasters, so it's easy to do CS only at DHS. Same with AK, where we want Satu'li Canteen and Pongu Pongu noms and fries. So then we save TS for our MK days, where I find CS options far less appealing. Then, I found a 2-night opening at DH's new fave, CL Deluxe room at BWI. So we now have a reservation there, doing AK and DHS out of pocket, supplementing with breakfast at the club along with a light dinner and snacks and alcohol at the club, too. But then we move to two final nights in a Cabin at FW, where, I have to note, a cabin and the DDP+ plan for six costs less per night than the CL deluxe at BWI (but an AP discount will hopefully change that). The kids want CRT breakfast, HEA dinner, CP breakfast, GG breakfast, and San Angel Inn. That's five TS meals over 2.5 park days with 4 meal credits available on the DDP+. Obviously, CRT should be OOP rather than use 2 TS credits. (In fact, as prices for other character meals have increased and caught up, it has become almost criminal to use two credits on CRT, esp at breakfast.) I added it all up, adding on sales tax and deducting 10% on OOP costs for my AP discount.
OOP $1434 With Tax and Tip $1792.50
OOP with AP 10% Discount $1290.60 With Tax and Tip $1613.25
CRT OOP + DDP+
ETA: The DDP+ figure of $1439.80 is wrong! I used the cost of a the Deluxe plan ($575/day for my family) in that amount instead of the correct DDP+ figure of $448/day!
The new math:
CRT OOP + DDP+ $1285.8 With Tip $1520.25
So, $93 less than OOP and with 24 snack credits included! And that's before you consider that the OOP cost has no specialty or alcoholic drinks. So, even using the conservative estimate of $100 more for fun drinks for six at five TS meals (so totally unrealistic) and $5 for each snack credit ($120 total), it's a big savings. We could leave all the snack credits unused and still come out ahead.
But this realization of the Oopsie in my first run of figures had be double checking other things and looking at possibilities using all four of the plans over our split stay or some combination of a plan and OOP. It took ALL day, mainly because there were so many different possibilities to consider. My findings now in my latest reply (Mon, April 13) to this thread! (I'm excited.)
But that's strictly meals only. No specialty drinks for kids, no alcohol for DH and me. At an additional $20-40 per meal, that $1720.80 includes $100-200 in drinks that we definitely want, erasing the $107.55 advantage of my AP discount OOP scenario.
And all that is before considering the the DDP+ gets us two snacks per person per day, or 24 snacks for my family. Even at a conservative $5 estimate, that's another $120 we get on the plan, letting us go crazy on our last full park day, spent at Epcot, getting Karamell-Kuche corn to take home with us on our long drive home (it stays good a long time!), sushi snacks, macarons, and gelato.
Or I might ditch all that for four nights at AoA or the Cabins (esp if no solid AP discount comes out) with DDP, so we really focus on snacks rather than meals at Epcot, swap San Angel for Minnie's Halloween Dine at H&V. That would be $1508 for six of us over four nights and would erase the CS OOP costs at Satu'li, Woody's, Ronto Roasters, and DB7. See, doing this exercise has made me (probably) change my mind for our vacation.
Check today's prices, remember that 6.5% sales tax matters, and think what would you and your family really like to drink on vacation. Enjoy!
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DDP can be a really fun focus on a trip.
