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Jim - thanks for sharing this. That’s an amazing and inspiring week of dining. I didn’t think $3370 worth of food in 8 days was possible. I’m curious - What percentage of your days are devoted to dining? And how much time do you get to spend in the parks?

We only have one full service meal a day, and we generally eat that at 8:30 or so, so we are in the parks for the rest of the time. Whether you are genuinely impressed or being facetious (I honestly can't tell, but if feels like the latter), makes no difference to me. We are only devoting an hour and a half each evening to dining, with the rest being snacks and QS on the go. We are not a family of leisurely vacationers; we Disney hard.
 
It's not that bad. His breakfasts seem simple and on the go. QS is just like you would expect, all in the park. The dinners seemed mostly in park, on the monorail or at Disney Springs. I assume he spent the majority of the time in the parks, if not all of it.

You are quite correct. We are park junkies and don't like to sashay, mosey, saunter, or lollygag to anything. We hit them hard and our evening meal is our respite from the hustle.
 
We only have one full service meal a day, and we generally eat that at 8:30 or so, so we are in the parks for the rest of the time. Whether you are genuinely impressed or being facetious (I honestly can't tell, but if feels like the latter), makes no difference to me. We are only devoting an hour and a half each evening to dining, with the rest being snacks and QS on the go. We are not a family of leisurely vacationers; we Disney hard.

You are quite correct. We are park junkies and don't like to sashay, mosey, saunter, or lollygag to anything. We hit them hard and our evening meal is our respite from the hustle.


We're very similar in our approach. Main difference being we eat dinner earlier (around 5pm as opposed to your 8:30). That's a function of early PPO breakfasts - so no park time is lost on breakfast.
 
You are quite correct. We are park junkies and don't like to sashay, mosey, saunter, or lollygag to anything. We hit them hard and our evening meal is our respite from the hustle.

So we're the same. At least in spirit since we can't hit the parks hard with a 5 yo, 3 yo and a 8 month old! (yet).
 


Slightly older comments but I still wanted to comment:

Got to say I'm surprised with the tipping aspect, I would have thought that Disney of all places would have joined the rest of the real world, abandon the archaic tipping system and pay their servers a real wage.
How can they call it free dining or say that your meal costs are paid upfront when the customer has to pay the servers wages on top?

Just pay your staff a decent wage and let a tip be an actual reflection of gratitude for good service.

As a foreigner the the expectation of tips just so the server can have a decent income is alien. It's not a tip, it's paying the servers wages on top of the meal cost.

Including a set "tip" amount in the cost of the DDP would be a step in the right direction. It's not a tip, it subsidising the employers wage costs.
If it's included in the cost of the package then it would truly mean that you won't need to think about a food budget.
Then if you do receive service that you think is worthy of extra appreciation then you can leave a tip that you'll know is a proper tip for great service and not a necessity for the server to be able to survive.

Respectfully you need to understand that tipping is ingrained in our culture and has been for a while. I realize it's not what you're used to nor what you want (and tipping is not loved by all here in the U.S. either) but it's the way here. You don't have to tip insofar that it's not mandated (unless you have the X number of people where tip gets added automatically) but it is customary. If I were to visit Scotland (which is where your profile info says you're from) I would expect to try to follow customs as much as feasibly possible. I just got back from Jamaica where I was a foreigner. The culture was to tip as well such as your waiter, your cab driver, the person who brought luggage 15ft to your room lol, etc it's just that the rate was more 10% as a norm rather than the 15-20% that it is here in the States.
 

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