How much extra dining when you stay club level?

Someone28624

Mouseketeer
Joined
Feb 14, 2019
Next week is my first club level stay. A very quick 2 night/ 3 day trip at AKL. I usually get the dining plan but obviously didn't this time. I'm curious how much food people who stay club level usually buy outside of what's provided in the lounges. Obviously we'll be spending quite a bit of time in the parks and won't want to run back to the resort every time we're hungry. But I'm guessing we'll mostly be buying snacks? Can you take bottles of soda and water out of the lounge with you for the day?

Thanks
 
Next week is my first club level stay. A very quick 2 night/ 3 day trip at AKL. I usually get the dining plan but obviously didn't this time. I'm curious how much food people who stay club level usually buy outside of what's provided in the lounges. Obviously we'll be spending quite a bit of time in the parks and won't want to run back to the resort every time we're hungry. But I'm guessing we'll mostly be buying snacks? Can you take bottles of soda and water out of the lounge with you for the day?

Thanks
We do breakfast every morning in the lounge and take a drink with us when we leave. Only on our resort day will we do the dinner offerings. We will take advantage of the free alcohol every chance we get :) but it does make dining easier as we do one ADR per day then maybe a snack.
 
Next week is my first club level stay. But I'm guessing we'll mostly be buying snacks? Can you take bottles of soda and water out of the lounge with you for the day?

I find lunch to be the meal that we need to buy and snacks. Definitely breakfast is handled in the lounge for us. We like to take an afternoon break to swim and/or relax and we just make sure that time matches up with the time hors d'Oeuvres are served, between 5p-7p, before going back to the park. You can take anything you want from the lounge. You can take your plates and drinks and go back to your room to eat or save for later. Have fun with your first CL stay - beware once you do CL you don't want to go back! lol
 
We eat breakfast in the lounge, take cans of soda back to the room or to the pool, and come back in time for dessert and drinks. We often find enough food for dinner, too. We usually come back to the resort in the afternoons, so we are able to make good use of the lounge. :)
 


As others have said, breakfast is easily covered in the lounge. Pop, water (if bottles are available, some CLs don't have bottled water) and food can be taken out of the lounge. We usually do a dinner ADR every night so we aren't around the lounge for the 5-7pm offerings, but we do tend to utilize the lounge other times of the day. With that said, we're trying AKL CL for the first time the end of Feb and aren't planning any parks or ADRs, so we'll be spending a lot of time in the lounge taking advantage of the evening offerings. Hope you have a great trip and enjoy your first CL stay :wizard:.
 
We did Club Level once and while it was very nice wasn't really worth doing again....all we got was Breakfast in the morning and drinks...were out all day at DW and really didnt utilize all the benefits that Club Level gives you...Just my opinion
 
2 nights is sort of a short trip to truly take advantage of CL, if you are in fact park commandos, in my opinion.

Breakfast is a definite meal replacement for us. AKL CL has the best breakfast of all the CLs, in my opinion (although the new Gran Destino Tower CL is giving them competition).

Daytime offerings are mostly just snacks/munchies, so we often plan a lunch as our bigger meal of the day.

AKL CL evening apps are tasty and abundant, but being a meal replacement will vary by individual eating style. They aren't meant to be dinner, but we sometimes find we're pretty full from the day anyway and something small works fine.

We don't let any of the food services (other than breakfast) really dictate our overall plan, but I would try to be back to AKL at least one evening for the 5-7 apps as I think they do a really nice job there, and the setting of the lobby is lovely.

FYI, water bottles are available upon request at AKL, they aren't out in the fridge (to the best of my knowledge based on recent CL thread reports).

Have fun!
 


AKL CL has the best breakfast of all the CLs, in my opinion

AKL CL evening apps are tasty and abundant, but being a meal replacement will vary by individual eating style.

We don't let any of the food services (other than breakfast) really dictate our overall plan, but I would try to be back to AKL at least one evening for the 5-7 apps as I think they do a really nice job there, and the setting of the lobby is lovely.

FYI, water bottles are available upon request at AKL, they aren't out in the fridge (to the best of my knowledge based on recent CL thread reports).

Thanks for posting this. We've stayed at AKL twice, but are trying CL for the first time next month and will be spending alot of time at the resort. Looking forward to our stay as AKL CL has been on my list to try :).
 
Thanks for posting this. We've stayed at AKL twice, but are trying CL for the first time next month and will be spending alot of time at the resort. Looking forward to our stay as AKL CL has been on my list to try :).

Nice! It's our next stop as well, after a roughly 2 year hiatus - which has been way too long!
 
Next week is my first club level stay. A very quick 2 night/ 3 day trip at AKL. I usually get the dining plan but obviously didn't this time. I'm curious how much food people who stay club level usually buy outside of what's provided in the lounges. Obviously we'll be spending quite a bit of time in the parks and won't want to run back to the resort every time we're hungry. But I'm guessing we'll mostly be buying snacks? Can you take bottles of soda and water out of the lounge with you for the day?

Thanks
This is going to be an issue then.
There is plenty of food in the lounge but you have to be there to eat it. If it's not convenient to run back, you aren't going to be able to partake of the offerings.
We always arrange our plans to be in the lounge for breakfast and dinner. At least. Usually try to get in the tail end of snack and then beginning of dinner.
Long hours in the park doesn't work well for that.
So it's possible to never buy anything but we do usually do TS for lunch each day, and that's it. No snacks. Never breakfast and only rare dinners.
 
AKL CL is the only Lounge that puts out a menu of offerings. I’ll post pics from July . It should give you a pretty good idea of whether the offerings would be a suitable meal substitute.

“Breakfast” is what I would call an “enhanced” continental breakfast. There’s breads, bagels, pastries, cheese, hams, hot oatmeal, yogurt, fruit, and usually an egg casserole dish of some sort, plus coffee, tea, juices. As long as you are not expecting omelette, bacon and waffles, you should be able to make a meal out of this.

“Lunch” is snacks, such as crudités, trail mix, crackers, and in AKL’s case, they have a soup, such as butternut squash (very yummy). I don’t think you could make a meal out of this, plus, it may be inconvenient to go back in the middle of the day.

“Appetizers” are from 5-7pm, and they are heavy appetizers, usually mini-salads, crudités, charcuterie and cheese, and a couple of small-plated hot items. Whether this can be a full meal or just an appetizer prior to dinner depends on the individual preferences of your crew. We did have “dinner” on one of the 3 nights we were there. We had a TS lunch and had “dinner” at the lounge because they had falafel, which is my DD,s favorite thing in the whole world. The other two nights, we had both lunch and dinner at restaurants (not at the lounge).

So, to summarize, I think you can have most or all breakfasts in the lounge, enjoy drinks whenever convenient and possibly make a meal out of the evening apps, depending on your individual preferences.
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We did it once years ago and breakfast was the only food we ate there. Just didn't work out that we were around during the other times food was set out. I'll add, I wouldn't have paid for it, we were upgraded so that was the only reason we were there. It would have been much less for us to pay a discount rate for a room and eat all our meals in the parks or resorts otherwise.
 
We did it once years ago and breakfast was the only food we ate there. Just didn't work out that we were around during the other times food was set out. I'll add, I wouldn't have paid for it, we were upgraded so that was the only reason we were there. It would have been much less for us to pay a discount rate for a room and eat all our meals in the parks or resorts otherwise.
This was us also. We always thought of purchasing CL and happened to get upgraded to it (original room issue). We are glad we did tried it for free because (for us) it just did not meet our expectation. We got tired of the breakfast offerings after 3 days, DDs wanted waffles etc. We do not drink alcohol and I think the free drinks is the biggest + of CL. The night time food is only out from 5-7 and the majority of the time we are at the parks during that time. Like AngieTN said, if you are not going to be at the resort during the serving times then why pay for something you are not really going to use.
 
Depends on what time you'll be at the resort. If you're there, you should probably eat the food! Our touring style had us back at the resort every day for supper (5-7) so I ate supper pretty much every night at the lounge. We had lots of snacks & lunches at QS in the parks.
 
This is going to be an issue then.
There is plenty of food in the lounge but you have to be there to eat it. If it's not convenient to run back, you aren't going to be able to partake of the offerings.
We always arrange our plans to be in the lounge for breakfast and dinner. At least. Usually try to get in the tail end of snack and then beginning of dinner.
Long hours in the park doesn't work well for that.
So it's possible to never buy anything but we do usually do TS for lunch each day, and that's it. No snacks. Never breakfast and only rare dinners.

I'm sure we'll go back to the resort at for a break once a day. I'm just thinking I might want a snack at the park once in awhile too.

It looks like the lounges have a pretty decent spread of food! Thanks for the info everyone!

I did book Boma for breakfast one day because I love boma breakfast, but now I'm thinking I should probably cancel that. Or maybe change it to a dinner.
 

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