OOP or Dining Plan for extended family trip

newarknut

A kid at heart!
Joined
Nov 14, 2001
My wife and I are planning a 30th wedding anniversary trip to WDW Sept 2019. Since Disney trips have played such a big part in our family's past, we'll be taking our son and daughter (28 & 35) with us. We had decided to do the table service dining plan to help us budget for the trip. I'm having second thoughts about it and would appreciate some wisdom from the crowd. My wife and I will get AP's (since we're headed down in May for our Illuminations farewell). We've used TIW many times and that might be a good option. We want to have some table service meals while we're there. My wife and I will certainly have some table service meals during our trip in May 2019. At $150, the TIW takes a little more to make economic sense.

Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts on the pros and cons of the dining plan vs TIW.
 
The DDP will not save you money unless you are willing to do some very exact calculations and eat at the most expensive restaurants and choose the most expensive entrees. Then, if you want an appetizer or choose to deviate in any way from the plan you will pay extra. Others may argue for the plan but the lack of flexibility in it and the desire to be free to order what we want when we want, coupled with it always proving to be less expensive OOP has us never purchasing the plan anymore. APs and TIW will save you much more money in my opinion.
 
Are all 4 of you going to be in the same room, or will you have at least 2 rooms? If at least 2 rooms, you could do the deluxe for one of the rooms and share all of the credits.
 
It’s so much food and nothing like the way I enjoy eating. I think that part is what people really get lost on...do you care to eat the way the plan works?
 


I keep looking at the DP, but can’t seem to make it work financially.

Planning a trip in Jan. 6 “adults”. 2 in one room, 4 in another. 2 of the “adults” are under 12. The Deluxe plan for the 2 person room would give us one table serve meal for 6 each day. Works out to $216 per meal. So it works if we do a lot of buffets, but there is no way we would be spending that much at a one credit TS ordering off the menu. Most of the group won’t eat app or dessert
 
My wife and I are planning a 30th wedding anniversary trip to WDW Sept 2019. Since Disney trips have played such a big part in our family's past, we'll be taking our son and daughter (28 & 35) with us. We had decided to do the table service dining plan to help us budget for the trip. I'm having second thoughts about it and would appreciate some wisdom from the crowd. My wife and I will get AP's (since we're headed down in May for our Illuminations farewell). We've used TIW many times and that might be a good option. We want to have some table service meals while we're there. My wife and I will certainly have some table service meals during our trip in May 2019. At $150, the TIW takes a little more to make economic sense.

Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts on the pros and cons of the dining plan vs TIW.

I think you have some variables that need consideration. First, though, we need to know if it's just the four of you or are there spouses and grandkids in the mix too?

Will all of you be eating every meal together so your TIW will cover them as well or will you be splitting up for some meals? If "extended family" does mean spouses and grandkids, how many are you? The TIW is only good for up to 10 people. Are you going to eat a TS every day or just have "some table service meals" over the time period?

Do you drink alcohol with your meals? The DDP now covers that and definitely makes it easier to save money with the plan if you do.
 


Use a dining plan calculator to see if eating at the places you want to go to are better to pay OOP or with the DDP. They don't build in AP or TiW discounts, but its pretty easy to just subtract 10 or 20% from the OOP total to see the breakdown.
Odds are very low that the DDP will save you money. After doing this for my past 6 trips, I am finally going to go on one where it will save me money, and that's only because I'm going buck wild with the most expensive one credit meals I can find.
 
I just did the math for our group—we have five people split into two rooms, so I was considering getting the meal plan for a room of three and using the credits to feed five people. We are going during SPD so the meal plan would be discounted—but then we’d be paying rack rate for our room and full price for our tickets (we live in Canada, the current ticket offer is a significant discount for us).

Although I was easily able to plan out enough meals to use the credits we would have, and included several character meals and nicer restaurants, the math still didn’t make sense. It was still several hundred more than e would spend OOP and we would lose some flexibility.

I’d suggest looking at menus and running some numbers for yourself, though. If you routinely have an alcoholic beverage and dessert and also order the most expensive entrees, it might make more sense than it did for us.
 
se a dining plan calculator to see if eating at the places you want to go to are better to pay OOP or with the DDP. They don't build in AP or TiW discounts, but its pretty easy to just subtract 10 or 20% from the OOP total to see the breakdown.

These calculators have yet to be updated to include the alcohol and specialty drinks, and that's been a benefit since January. I'm sure they aren't updated with all the new prices out there.
 
These calculators have yet to be updated to include the alcohol and specialty drinks, and that's been a benefit since January. I'm sure they aren't updated with all the new prices out there.

Good point. They also just give ballpark figures for how much you would spend on a meal. It's a good starting place, though. If the difference shown is $300, then I would trust it, but I wouldn't jump and buy, or not buy, the dining plan if it shows a savings of $6.18.
 
It's just the 4 of us, no spouses at this point. We'll all be in a 2 BR. We haven't done the DP in years. The main reason is I want flexibility. Even with the DP, there are still many little OOP expenses to consider. I'm leaning towards getting the TIW and using the DP cost as a budget guideline for our family. I appreciate all the feedback! Now, if you can help me decide whether to bite the bullet and add a few days at Disney to a 4-day cruise at the end of the month! It will stretch the budget but I'm having a hard time being in Florida and not spending a couple days at our 2nd home!
 
The main reason I might get the plan would be so your adult children feel free to truly order what they want. I know if I were in a trip like this with my parents, I would feel guilty having them pay for everything and would order inexpensive things to keep the bill down.
 
We (DH, Adult DS, DS Significant other, and I) have decided that TiW is now better for us. We did DDP for years, but last trip we didn’t. What I did was in the months leading up to our trip I bought Disney GiftCards. The cost was spread over many months. The total of the gift cards equaled the DDP cost. So in essence our meals were “all included “. I agree I wanted DS and his friend to feel like they could order whatever they liked. Wecharged all meals to our room and used the Gift Card to pay That amount b
 
I think we'll go with the TIW. I'll budget a little more than what the DDP would cost. We've given them gift cards for extras (drinks, addition F&W, etc...). I think it'll work best by giving us the flexibility we like. That's my biggest con against the DDP.
 
At first we were going to do OOP for our January trip. But after the price hike, I recalculated the costs, and found that it would actually save us over $200 if we do the dining plan, and that's with 3 QS credits unused for the five of us. We'll probably exchange them for snack credits for gifts, as we don't want to over eat.
 
It truly is a math exercise

The recent price hike was a big increase.

Set up a spreadsheet and do the homework. Where you plan to eat and what you plan to order. Where do you get the most savings.
 

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