When DP not free, is it still worth it?

[Bibbidi]

It seems with the DP that you're inevitably going to buy some meals OOP--mostly breakfast in our case. I am looking at next year and staying at the Poly with AAA discount and paying for DP. As I'm looking at my budget and planned meals, it seems that it's far less confusing and will cost me the same in the end after all the OOP stuff to just pay for food as I go. I'm figuring around $30/meal for CS and a couple more expensive TS dinners at around $80 (our girls eat like birds so they would be pretty inexpensive).

 

[formernyer]

It seems with the DP that you're inevitably going to buy some meals OOP--mostly breakfast in our case. I am looking at next year and staying at the Poly with AAA discount and paying for DP. As I'm looking at my budget and planned meals, it seems that it's far less confusing and will cost me the same in the end after all the OOP stuff to just pay for food as I go. I'm figuring around $30/meal for CS and a couple more expensive TS dinners at around $80 (our girls eat like birds so they would be pretty inexpensive).

If you are planning on eating three meals a day then the DDP will almost certainly be more economical for you, even if your girls are 10+ years old. If they are under 10, it will be even more economical.

You said your kids eat like birds, so meal-sharing will work out great for you. Every meal you share is a credit saved. Every credit saved is a breakfast that you don't have to pay for OOP.

You'll need to work out exactly what you plan to do with your meals to determine if it's really the best option for you, but keep in mind that every TS meal (even the cheapest ones) will cost more than the entire day's DDP, so it's like getting the CS and snack free.

The only situation where I can see this plan NOT working for you would be if your girls are over the age of 10 AND you don't plan on ordering appetizers and desserts anywhere when you pay OOP. Generally speaking, people who plan to eat in the parks anyway almost always find the DDP to be a good value.

 

[kcashner]

It really depends on how/where your family likes to eat.

For example, assume you have a car and plan to eat off property some of the time--DDP will not be a good value. Assume you like to eat a character breakfast and a TS meal--frequently signature dining, and that you don't like CS (I'm not making this up, that is my sister's family). DDP does not work for them.

If you basically eat one CS and one TS per day, I can't see a situation where it doesn't work for you. Since your kids eat like birds, they can share meals at all but the buffet or all-you-can-eat places. At those places, the cost of the meal with tax and tip basically equals the cost of the meal plan...so your CS is "free." By sharing meals (whether CS or TS), you have the credits you need for breakfasts--so no OOP there. If you have extra TS credits, you can use them for Signature dining or a TS breakfast.

My daughter is a teen, and I am a very light eater. My plan is for us to basically share a CS breakfast and lunch (so our 2 credits will cover both meals). We'll each use the TS at dinner. I've done the sharing when we were not on the plan, so I know that part works for us. At dinner, I can relax and not worry about what she orders (hee hee). I expect little or no OOP cost, and the convenience of the plan makes it well worthwhile for us. She had fun looking up the menus on line and figuring out where she wanted to eat.

 

[vpalmer]

For us it was very much worth it and we did pay for it in December. If you do character meals it does not matter how much food your daughters eat, they will still get charged full price. We did 5 character meals in 7 days and found the plan to be highly worthwhile. I would not worry about buying a third meal a day especially if your daughters are light eaters. The two meals a day is so much food that the third meal can be as simple as a bowl of cereal eaten in your room of you can even use a snack credit for fruit.

 

[JimMIA]

It's worth it for us, because of the composition of our family (2 adults, one 4 y/o), the things we like to do, and the way we like to eat. We are buying the DP for the first time next month for our DVC visit.

We'll be doing two character dinners (LS and 1900 Park Fare), and three dinners at Epcot restaurants (Le Cellier, Coral Reef, and Teppenyaki), so we'll do fine with the DP. That dining schedule is not unusual for us -- it's not something we are doing because of the dining plan; it's what we would do anyway. We can't do all that on $87 per day including tax and tip, so the DP will save us money.

The other situation where I think it makes sense is if you have always wanted to do character meals (especially dinners), but haven't because of the high cost. The DP makes character meals possible for folks who otherwise probably would not do them.

 

[Servants of Evan]

I always recommend that a person go to allearsnet.com and check out Deb's incredible selection of Disney menus. Figure out where you're going to eat and what you're likely to order. Do the math. Add tax and gratuity and see what your totals are versus the cost of the DDP. What I like is that people can order what they want without worrying about what it's going to cost. It's already paid and it's less money that they have to carry around. If you've got a few adults (or adults by Disney standards) you can order different appitizers and share to try different things you might not otherwise.

 

[abaldacci]

for us it was worth it but you will not need b-fast just pick up milk and cereral for morning you are so stuffed the rest of the day you don't need a big b-fast. We are staying 10 days and I had it booked with our plan but free dining came back out and yah 7 of our 10 are free.

 

[pezpam]

DD and I are not necessarily light eaters, but we found that the DDP covered pretty much everything we needed food-wise. With a late breakfast or early lunch, especially at a buffet, we were set until dinner. Sometimes we used our snack credits to tide us over, but usually didn't even need that and we used most of them on drinks when we got hot and didn't want water, plus we had several left over at the end - got several drinks and snacks for the plane.

 

[Tam1067]

When I ran the numbers at allears, I found it to be a pretty good savings. You've got to remember, as others have noted, that the DDP includes tax and tip, two factors which add a lot to the final price of a meal. If you eat one TS and one CS a day, you're saving money. If you like to have two TS meals a day (say breakfast and dinner), you'd still save I think because that 3rd meal would be OOP whether you got TS or CS for it. I'm not even talking about sharing meals which lots of people do. The only people I see it as not working for would be those who never eat TS at all, or those who eat 3 TS a day.

 

[drogerstn]

We eat TS meals for lunch or breakfast (meals are less expensive at these times) and not at night and we don't eat appetizers or dessert, so the plan is not worth it for us. If we are eating a TS meal in a park, we like to do it during the middle of the day as a break from the crowds and heat. Also, we want to remain flexible and not feel like we are locked into eating TS meals if our plans change. We spend much less than $38 per day per person on food at WDW.