Our last trip in September, we had the $1000 Disney Dining Gift Card promo. That was honestly our favourite way to pay for food. We could get what we wanted and on our 10 night trip, we went $200 over the gift card. This seemed like nothing compared to buying every meal. We just had 2 adults, DH and I. Our cousins had 3 Disney adults and 1 kid and they went about $500 over that gift card. We ate breakfast in our room every day, but bought lunch and snacks QS and dinner mostly TS. We never bought bottled water but got free ice water everywhere.
We’ve had about 30 trips to Disney that were 7-14 nights. Most are 10-12 nights. I’d say half of them were with the dining plan. We’ve never paid for it, but have gotten the free dining promo. It’s a treat to get dessert but we didn’t like that at some places (eg Via Napoli) we couldn’t get one large pizza to share but had to each get a personal pizza. Or sometimes we get one meal and an appy to share (eg 50s PT). So when we have the DDP, we pay out of pocket for those meals and use the extra credits for California Grill or Narcoossee’s.
The pre paid part of it is great. Next trip I’m getting gift cards and I’ll pay with that from my apple wallet or just use my credit card for mobile orders.
Lol, yeah pretty sure everyone here knows the economics! My question was just about perceived value of the plan since the menu prices went up but price of DDP has not…yet.
Becky Gandillon, one of the Touring Plans data gurus, has already analyzed the new prices on her Instagram page, and she says it still is not worth it in most cases. Only way it is worth it financially is eating at a few select restaurants and have a cocktail with every meal, and be able to get ADRs in those restaurants because so many other people are going to try to do the same thing. If you have kids ages 10-20 in your party who can’t drink but have to pay adult prices, then it is definitely not worth it.
The perceived value is there for anyone who does not study the menus or who had used the old DDP in the past and was able to save money. When the DDP was announced it was coming back, I had discussions with a lot of people who didn’t care that they lost money because they preferred to pay in advance and then not have to worry about the cost by paying per meal on their trip (I find this insane, but to each, their own).
Agreed. I think the DDP comes down to the 3 Cs - cocktails, characters, and child’s prices. You need to hit all 3 for it to be worth it. We loved it when our kids were little: they adored character meals and we enjoyed a nice adult bev at meals on vacation. In doing the math, we pretty much broke even or came out ahead (loaded up with snacks for the flight home).
But once our oldest turned 10, we unchecked the kids box and less interest in character meals - hard NO.
I was considering the DDP for a trip next year UNTIL I saw the places that would require 2 TS credits, including several of the character meals that we would consider. We would not even break even on the DDP.
And it’s crazy to do it for breakfast! 2 TS credits for a $45 meal, no thank you. Even at $75 thats a stretch. I also think taking the snack credit away was a mistake. Many people left those credits on the table. And they make a killing on snacks anyway.
I’m considering doing this each night. If the charges for the day go over $100, do they bump it to a $200 temp hold on the credit card just for the time being? I just don’t want to go over the $100 and it processes as an actual charge.
It shouldn’t process as an actual charge until it’s settled the night before you check out. I have seen my temp hold go up, I can’t recall the incriminates. But no actual charge throughout.
I don’t think so. I get an email from my credit card co whenever there’s a transaction greater than a penny and I don’t remember getting one partway through the trip.
I spent over $100 on our first day last year and then I couldn’t charge any more. The front desk said they would have tried to put on another $100 hold and my bank must have rejected it. Rather than go and pay it off at the front desk every time I spent anything, I used apple pay the rest of the trip.