I’m hoping to try and sneak in a quick solo trip in early May before it expires just so I feel a little better about it lol. So far I’ve only gone for 4 days.
I think it’s great you are making the right choices for your family. You did the math, and if it’s better for FD, go for it. Honestly, if my family were Character Meal fans, or I had girls into princesses, I’d geek out too on all the uber expensive character meals that make the dining plan/free dining plan a real win.
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Thanks! Yes, we are doing allll character meals. 
You should definitely hang on to the hopper ticket you were required to buy to get free dining and then use it at some later date, either for another trip when you don’t have an AP or if you decide to renew your AP down the road as a bridge ticket.
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We only went once this year, but I got good value out of my AP in terms of the room discount.
Tables in Wonderland was a wash, though, when compared to the AP discount. Even when we eat out, we don’t eat/drink that much so I basically broke even after paying for 30 individual TS meals. That’s the only thing I wouldn’t do again.
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I would have done room only and taken that discount.
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That’s not possible anymore. Tickets are date based. The ticket will only be good during (and slightly past) the package dates.
I always check the Disney Dining Plan calculator and even without the AP/TiW discounts, it has always cost our family more money than we normally spend. And we eat Table Service once a day, do three meals, and snack. Two of our party enjoy adult beverages.
When I compare costs of AP/TiW dining discounts vs Dining Plan, the price difference is over 20% in favor of skipping the dining plan.
I would definitely check to see if there are any room only discounts for your stays. I never use a travel agent and always book direct so that it’s easy for me to change things when discounts come out.
Not entirely true. If you have date based tickets but don’t go in those dates, Disney will allow you to use them on other dates, but you will have to pay the ticket price difference for new dates (perhaps with an extra fee…that part isn’t clear to me).
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Regarding the AP. Is the free dining even worth it? Probably not. We have always found the Dining Plan costs is more than buying the food ourselves. And with the AP discount, even more so.
However, with the new AP price, I am not sure it would have saved me anything. Fortunately, I bought the AP at the old price.
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Oh there is that but also a restriction on how long.
I did forget that. Thank you for the input.
Room only discounts are very often the better deal.
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Yeah. I think Disney makes the option nebulous because they prefer you stick the the dates!
No regrets getting APs for our family of 3. The renewal price each year (even with increases) is a big incentive. We use TiW for the dining discounts.
If your plan is to visit at least 2 weeks per year, I can’t see not having it. Just to be able to avoid the nonsense of the date-specific tickets is enough for me.
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We’ve definitely never regretted it, but we go for 4-6 weeks a year so we’d be crazy not to get them, especially considering we get a DVC discount…! 
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I’m so jealous of those of you that can go for 2+ weeks a year!!!
My dh is flat out adamant that we get the DDP. I will run the numbers for all of our ADR’s, QS and snack plans and figure out if it really is worth it.
So I looked up pricing at every single QS and TS as well as snacks, and buying ala carte would be $100 less total, mainly because we wouldn’t necessarily need a beverage at most meals and could have water to drink at a lot of meals. I didn’t figure in appetizers or desserts into the price we would pay, so the value is actually much better for the DDP considering those things. However, park hoppers for 4 people and the 30% AP holder discount on top of this is still just over $500 more than the free dining package for 5 people.
So for us, free dining really is a better deal than using the 30% AP holder discount, even if I waste the price of Hoppers. If I can use the tickets later the value will be better. Fingers crossed that I might be able to do that.
When you factored the cost, did you account for your AP discount and did you see if Tables in Wonderland would be worth the cost for you?
We don’t park hop so we save a lot of money that way. I used to but found we didn’t need it.
For some people, the value of the DDP is the convenience and if that’s what works for y’all, then definitely keep it!
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Also, DDP doesn’t cover appetizers anymore and I’m only mentioning it because you mentioned that the appetizers made the DDP more valuable for your family.
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I did account for my AP discount but I didn’t look at Tables in Wonderland! Thanks for suggesting it. I’ll check it out!
Oh, bummer on the appetizers! Thanks for letting me know! I’m glad I didn’t mention it to my teenager yet, haha. I didn’t include them when I added up what we would pay out of pocket so it would have been just an extra perk.
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