To Dining Plan or Not to dining plan.. that is the question..

[amyshell]

Hey everyone!!

We are just starting to plan our 2nd trip to Disney.. Last time we had the Free Dining discount and that was HUGE for us.. so this wasn't a question..

we are going Wed to Wed over Easter this time and now have to decide..

We do enjoy the character meals and buffets, and doing a few are a must for me. but we are 1 TS per day people and i'd be ok with skipping it even once or twice..

but we have 5 Disney adults this trip and the plan is pricey.. $2600.. yikes!!

i'm just wondering.. if you go with 5 "adult" eaters.. my kids are teens so they do eat. . Then is that an amount to plan on spending??

 

[Shanti]

Hey everyone!!

We are just starting to plan our 2nd trip to Disney.. Last time we had the Free Dining discount and that was HUGE for us.. so this wasn't a question..

we are going Wed to Wed over Easter this time and now have to decide..

We do enjoy the character meals and buffets, and doing a few are a must for me. but we are 1 TS per day people and i'd be ok with skipping it even once or twice..

but we have 5 Disney adults this trip and the plan is pricey.. $2600.. yikes!!

i'm just wondering.. if you go with 5 "adult" eaters.. my kids are teens so they do eat. . Then is that an amount to plan on spending??

If you want to save money, my vote would be "not".

 

[peg2001]

If the goal is to save money and you have only adults, skip the dining plans.

 

[Lilly0704]

We will never go without the dining plan. We are actually spending a little more than we would paying out of pocket for the dining plan because we like the all-inclusive feel. It just makes things so much easier when you don't have to worry about prices, and because you pay ahead of time for it there is no painful room charges after your vacation is over. The way we do things, we would not otherwise buy snacks, desserts, or apps. And we would probably not go to the restaraunts we do. But that is just how we do things.

If your goal is to save money, rarely does the dining plan actually SAVE money. But if you know you'll be at a table service every night, and a quick service every lunch you can look up a few minutes and come up with a basic idea of how much you would spend.

 

[miamimama]

I would really recommend doing some research before getting the dining plan There are great calculators out there. I personally think it's rare that the dining plan makes sense economically but I understand some folks like to have everything wrapped up ahead of time. I think it ends up costing you a lot more and gives you a lot less flexibility.

 

[POTCfan]

The dining plan is rarely worth it. It takes planning to make it worth it. Though I will get the deluxe dining plan for one day prior to my long reservation. It gives me two days of meals where we can order a lot of food and get mugs that are good for the entire length of our stay.

 

[ColoradoMom12]

I find that when the adults in our party outnumber the kids, the dining plan does not make sense. I do the math. I give myself a few nights as we're getting ready to book a Disney vacation to sit down, study the menus, think about what we would eat paying OOP (for example, usually one dessert is enough for at least two of us to share, but we all get one when we do the DDP because it's included) and crunch the numbers. Often we do end up saving around $40 - $50 (sometimes more, sometimes less) on the DDP. However, when our whole family travels together and the adults outnumber the kids, the DDP is no longer a good idea for us. It's never a substantial savings, but it does save us at least some of what we end up paying in tips.

 

[southjerseymom]

The dining plan is rarely worth it. It takes planning to make it worth it. Though I will get the deluxe dining plan for one day prior to my long reservation. It gives me two days of meals where we can order a lot of food and get mugs that are good for the entire length of our stay.

can you tell me how that works!!

 

[ColoradoMom12]

can you tell me how that works!!

The only way I've been able to do this in the past is staying overnight at Pop Century. We stay there often anyway, but we sometimes stay there the first night of a longer trip at a deluxe resort. After nearly a full day traveling, we just need a place to sleep and can save a fair amount of money doing an overnight at the Pop before moving to the CR the next day. Adding the deluxe dining plan when doing an overnight at a value resort can be a good idea.

 

[robl45]

I think its worth it, did the calculation in another thread, but I don't know how that will work with the new plans that include alcohol I think? It basically comes down to we paid like 1228 for 2 kids and 2 adults for 7 nights this past trip a couple weeks ago.

So lunch typically is 40 dollars or so maybe slightly higher. Thats 280. Dinner is at least a 100 and definitely more if doing character dining so thats 700 or more. 2 snacks a day per person is 56 snacks over 7 nights at 5 dollars or so a snack is 280 for a grand total of 1260 and that is not including the mugs.

 

[sharonabe]

We do enjoy the character meals and buffets, and doing a few are a must for me. but we are 1 TS per day people and i'd be ok with skipping it even once or twice..

but we have 5 Disney adults this trip and the plan is pricey.. $2600.. yikes!!

i'm just wondering.. if you go with 5 "adult" eaters.. my kids are teens so they do eat. . Then is that an amount to plan on spending??

As you can see, you will get opinions all over the place on this one.

The ONLY way for you to know if $2600 is what you need to budget is for you to decide where you WANT to eat and do the math. Decide how many character meals and where those will be. Decide if you WANT any other TS meals. Then find the prices and do the math. I highly recommend doing the math yourself instead of using the dining calculators. There is a sticky at the top of this forum with EVERY buffet or fixed price meal on it and has the prices with the tax already figured in.

2018 plan includes an alcoholic drink with both QS and TS, so if that is something that appeals to you, be sure to add that into your calculations.

 

[quandrea]

can you tell me how that works!!

I did this in August. We never get the plan, but on this trip we had a split stay (meaning we were at two resorts). I purchased the Deluxe Dining plan for the beginning two nights of my stay. The plan was good from check in until midnight of my second night. The deluxe plan gives you three credits per day and two snacks. There is no distinction between table service and quick service. We did all table service. Also we shared credits and thus shared a few meals to stretch the plan over three days. We ate brunch at California Grill. So long as you spend $30 per credit you will save money on the deluxe plan. We used snack credits and brought home desserts for breakfast. Our trip was three days and didn't spend one penny OOP, but I only paid for two nights of the plan. The mug is good for the whole stay.

If you did this for a longer stay, you'd eat heartily the first couple of days of your trip, then check out and check back in without the plan. I think this is a great idea especially because there is no way I could eat the amount of food on the dining plan for more than a couple of days.

We saved about three hundred dollars on the deluxe plan. Note this only works for the deluxe plan, not the basic plan. Much harder to save on that plan. With the deluxe plan, even if you assign no value to the snacks or mugs you can easily come out ahead.

 

[Cold71]

We've been to Disney 5 times in 6 years. This year will make our 6th trip. We did Dining every year and this will be our first trip without it. On our last night of the 2016 trip we went to pick up some candy to take back home from Goofy's candy store and realized we had something like 3 quick service and 5 snacks left. I believe each quick service worked out to be like 3 snacks but I still don't think I got my moneys worth at the end of it all. I sat down for this year and worked out mock meal plans. Did the math and re-did the math a bunch. I was kind of worried about having to keep track of our food budget but now I feel good about it. We're not the type of family to worry if Disney got us for $20-$30 bucks in meals but it looks like at least with us we'll save a couple hundred bucks. It's nice not to have to sit down either a force feed yourself in worries that you'll end up throwing too much money away.

 

[robl45]

I don't know who the genius was that decided to add alcohol to the dining plans. Its almost impossible to make the dining plan worthwhile as some restaurants don't serve alcohol and then many people don't drink especially at a theme park with kids.

As you can see, you will get opinions all over the place on this one.

The ONLY way for you to know if $2600 is what you need to budget is for you to decide where you WANT to eat and do the math. Decide how many character meals and where those will be. Decide if you WANT any other TS meals. Then find the prices and do the math. I highly recommend doing the math yourself instead of using the dining calculators. There is a sticky at the top of this forum with EVERY buffet or fixed price meal on it and has the prices with the tax already figured in.

2018 plan includes an alcoholic drink with both QS and TS, so if that is something that appeals to you, be sure to add that into your calculations.

 

[GeorgiaHoo]

I just did the math for 4 adults, and the way we will eat we just about break even, probably spending about $100 more for the dining plan. Only buffet meals are Cali Grill brunch (which is $80 a person/2 credits) and 'Ohana. My family prefers the plan -- if it were me, I'd save the $100 and just pay out of pocket.

If you are eating a lot of buffets/character meals for dinner (not breakfast) then you'll probably just about break even or save a bit of money. The 2017 DP is about $69 a person, and a buffet/character meal will cost you probably close to $50 over Easter. And you certainly will "spend" another $20 on most counter service meals and snacks.

 

[DisneyFansInNYC]

I have done the calculations each trip and for our family of Disney adults it was never worth it. We eat at Ohana and some character meals and it still is not worth it. We did the Dining plan once and will never do it again. Even after we get back I have calculated what it would have been if we had bought the dining plan and it never would have saved us money - not even a little. Besides the cost of the plan you also have to add the tip on top of that to compare. Do the math for a couple of days and you will see.

 

[marcyleecorgan]

It's a great way to check most of the Character Meals off your to-do list, but yeah, it's definitely more of a convenience "in the bubble" factor than an actual money-saving proposition. However! With the new update to MDE, there's a part where you can keep track of your running total of credits so you don't end up as likely to be piling snacks in your bags at the end!

 

[danandjackie]

Theres an entire web page/site somewhere dedicated to the mathematics of the dining plan - basically its worth it if its free it might be worth it if its not it really does depend on how you eat.. Just worked it out for our next trip and its a no (especially once you start adding bottles of wine and tips on to the equation) and we dont even have kids

One slight problem with the DP is it seems to have a rebound effect on the real menu prices - which seem to get inflated just to make the DP seem good value

 

[GeorgiaHoo]

I think people sometimes fail to calculate tips and alcohol/entrees. A TS meal for 4 adults can easily cost over $150 just for the food, and if you get apps or alcohol that you have to pay for out of pocket you might be looking at a $200 meal that you paid $50 for out of pocket plus a $40 tip. We'll spend $2600 or so for the DP for our trip this fall, but I imagine we'll also spend another $400 or so in tips, plus maybe $100 at Food & Wine, plus who knows how much on alcohol - $500?

 

[Rich M]

I will always do the Dining Plan for one reason and that is having everything paid off prior to getting there. I like to go to a restaurant and order anything I feel like it and not worry about price. As others have said you can go through all the planning and calculating and find many ways it can save you and many ways you lose money on it. Its a huge headache. I prefer to just be paid off prior to going. Someone will say just put that money on gift cards and pay that way but then I would still think about what I spend when I order. it just works well for me to have the plan.