Dining Plan or no dining plan?

[TandT]

hi, my 2 friends and I are going to Disney World and staying at my DVC home resort from 3/8-3/11. I’ve been having problems convincing one of my friends that it’s better NOT to do the dining plan for 3 nights . Any insight as to what’s more cost effective! She believes it will be more cost effective to get the meal plan - counter service plus dinner . TIA!!

 

[kenthanson]

Cost effectiveness isn't the reason we've used dining plan in the past, for us it's more convient and we know what we've spent on food already so that's a solid budget line item.

 

[dminnie]

Look up the menus/prices for the restaurants you want to go to and make a spreadsheet. Show the cost difference side by side for the items you are likely to order. Be sure to add tips on to the Dining Plan side, and tax and tips on the out-of-pocket side. in our case, since we aren't really big eaters, we always come out ahead OOP. That's ordering whatever we really want.

If they are looking for the convenience of it being paid for in advance, maybe see if they are willing to buy some gift cards.

 

[uccats97]

I had the same problem with the people I’m traveling with for Princess half marathon weekend. The Disney Dining Plan is $70/night or $210 per person for your trip (and mine). It took some convincing with menu prices to back it up, but we are not using the dining plan.

 

[Mark Cameron]

This last trip I tried to keep up with how much the receipts actually were versus the total we paid for the dining plan. I wasn't able to do that because sometimes there was not a total on the receipts but I have a feeling the dining plan was more expensive and not a great value, however, it was totally worth it for us just for piece of mind. Kind of like buying trip insurance! It's nice not having to worry about prices and also it's nice to be able to get alcoholic beverages now as well!

 

[sharonabe]

hi, my 2 friends and I are going to Disney World and staying at my DVC home resort from 3/8-3/11. I’ve been having problems convincing one of my friends that it’s better NOT to do the dining plan for 3 nights . Any insight as to what’s more cost effective! She believes it will be more cost effective to get the meal plan - counter service plus dinner . TIA!!

You definitely need to look at the menus and DO THE MATH. It might be better to do the dining plan, it might not, but you are the only one who can answer that.
Look at the menus with no thought to cost, just what do you WANT to eat. Do you all want your own dessert at TS? Are you going to order alcoholic drinks with both TS and QS? Would you prefer to drink water? Can you use the 2 snacks for your third meal or do you just want 2 snacks to enjoy?

Make a date with your friends to do this and have some fun planning together. The math should make the decision for you.

 

[loves to dive]

You definitely need to look at the menus and DO THE MATH. It might be better to do the dining plan, it might not, but you are the only one who can answer that.
Look at the menus with no thought to cost, just what do you WANT to eat. Do you all want your own dessert at TS? Are you going to order alcoholic drinks with both TS and QS? Would you prefer to drink water? Can you use the 2 snacks for your third meal or do you just want 2 snacks to enjoy?

Make a date with your friends to do this and have some fun planning together. The math should make the decision for you.

This is the best advice, do the math, be honest and ask yourself is this how you eat? Remember you are still going to have to pay for one meal on that plan so factor that in on both sides. Remember there might be days you just don't want a big TS meal. A lot of people just don't eat as much food that is included in the plan and so it's not really saving money. We don't use it any more and haven't in over 20 years, we just don't eat that way. There are days we just snack all day long. There are days even when we eat TS we just eat a salad and an appetizer.

 

[GenGen22]

I agree with the others on doing the math. If you like to do character meals and some of the other more expensive TS restaurants it may be a better deal but you have to calculate it out to see. Allears.net has menus that you can look at.

 

[Colleen27]

It might be, it might not. One thing I would point out, since this sounds like an adults-only/friends trip, is that the lounges and some of the most interesting choices at Disney Springs aren't on any dining plan. So if you want to have dinner at Trader Sam's or Jock Lindsay's or The Edison, the plan isn't any help.

Personally I like having the plan when I'm traveling with my family but skip it when I'm solo specifically for that reason - if I'm traveling solo or with other adults creative drink menus are often a bigger draw than the entree selections, so I like having the flexibility to eat at places that don't take the dining plans.

 

[Mark Cameron]

We did 3 character meals and that nearly covered the whole dining plan it seemed! Those characters come at a high price lol

 

[mickeyschickie]

I am looking forward to NOT doing the dining plan next year, we did it last trip because we were going with first timers and felt they needed a lot of character experience, this time, I'm stashing the cash that we would have needed for the dining plan, booking a couple of adr's (3 sit-down meals for 5-6 days) and then eating intuitively the rest of the time, there may be days when I want a mickey pretzel or churro for a meal and then I won't be forced to eat meals that we wouldn't really want to just because I have the credits. looking forward to bringing home some extra cash to go towards a future trip to Aulani

 

[NYCgrrl]

Agreeing that the worth of the plan is really about doing your math homework as well as knowing how you like to eat on vacation.

Last year we made two trips to WDW: one during the summer w/o the dining plan and the last in the winter with a dining plan (deluxe).

I found it an interesting learning experience. For both trips we concentrated on signature dinners (with appetizers as well), rarely ate at QS or had a hot breakfast. The only difference was instead of roaming around for desserts after dinner we generally opted for the sweet offerings at the end of our dining plan meals.

Eating fruit, yogurt, cereal and the occasional pastry/bread for breakfast was a great way to maximize our snack credit usage thus saving table credits for lunch and dinner. The free hot beverage refill cups (coffee, tea, cocoa) made it that much easier even though we occasionally treated the adults to a Kona press coffee. A Continental style breakfast is basically what we eat at home so no change there.

2 hours after breakfast we'd use snack credits for more fruit, maybe some nuts at different locales depending on the park. Liberty Plaza @ MK has an appealing fruit and salad stand; AK has Harambe's Fruit Market.

We tended to eat lunch around 2:00 PM and I rarely made any ADRs for that.... just go with the flow.

Dinner is our main meal of the day and that's when we'd sit down to wherever we'd interest and I could get an ADR

So, eating habits were the same for both trips and we pretty much broke even using the dining plan. Had a few table credits left due to illness but that's life and you can't plan for that. If we'd thought on it (but of course I was the one who was sick) would have ordered more room service to use up the remaining table credits.

 

[jbhodj]

My last 3 trips we used a dining plan and we were able to budget it early into our vacations plans cost. Did it save us money? Doing the math No we didn’t save. It was a break even point our last trip. Convenience of the plan was also a bonus.

The only downside I see now is that your going to be tied to dining and making sure you use and don’t lose any of your credits. We were always going someplace to eat and had to make our reservations we scheduled because you had to. Does this make sense?

We are not doing dining plan this time because we don’t want to be saddled with HAVING to eat just because we have to. I felt not having the dining plan gives us a little more day to day flexibility and we plan our ADR right we will enjoy our trip more and not be so worried about spending and tracking credits.

 

[revdisney33]

After getting free dining (which is great and you don't care if you have left over credits) many times and paying for plan, I have decided not to buy again. This last trip for just QS it would have been $760 or so for the 2 of us. I paid out of pocket instead and did 2 TS meals along with souvenirs and my bill at the end of the trip was just over $700. I also found I didn't stuff myself. Ate what I wanted not just the most expensive meal to maximize. Drank more water than soda at meals.....not to save but better on the hot days, but when I bought the plan felt I had to have soda...once again to maximize. We ate when and where we wanted....snacks whenever we wanted. Other times I was buying tons of candy while waiting for the Magical Express (or as we call it when we leave, the Tragic Depressed) to use up credits....again not meeting up with the plan $. These experiences are again as we are more familiar with all Disney....the first trip or 2 it was nice with the free to do more TS