Arbitrary snack credit value?

We went with a large group last fall, in a 3bd suite, so we had a massive pile of credits to share. Let me just say that when we are together we drink A LOT of diet coke. On a previous trip (that I was not present for), they used all their snack credits (mostly on diet coke and churros) in the first couple of days. Based on that experience, we decided in advance to be conservative with the snack credits, and often paid cash for snacks/sodas during the day. The afternoon before we left we had 50 snack credits remaining!!! Holy smokes!!! It was during F&W, so a helpful CM at EP recommended we just try a whole bunch of foods from the carts. There were 11 of us, so in theory if everyone just tried 3-4 dishes, and got a couple of drinks…

So…when we go back with the same group this fall, I think we’ll do a rough estimate of how many snack credits total we should be using per day, and maybe take a quick look each night or morning to see if we are on track. I would really love for the kids to be able to just grab the cotton candy or mickey bar or whatever, and not have to worry about grabbing an adult to pay for it. I would definitely prefer to pay cash for the less expensive ones, but I have a stronger preference to just USE the credits we’ve paid for!

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Wow! Great story. I’m also thinking to be more stringent the first day or 2 and then of a decent amount left go with whatever. I have a feeling we’ll burn through them quickly.

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I thought we’d have no problem using our snack credits, DS is always hungry and I had a massive list. So when we were buying water, I kept reminding everyone not to use credits. Same thing - we brought home bags and bags of sweets. And we had loads of meal credits left too because DH was ill and missed lots of meals.

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These days Epcot seems to always have a festival going. In February I planned three meals at the Festival of the Arts food booths. It was fun to try anything I wanted. In the past I would load a gift card with $100-200 for a festival.

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This is what we always do, so you have immediately used 1 of everyone’s snack credits that day. It makes breakfast fast and we are quickly in and out of the line and eating. Then, getting a cupcake or ice cream during the day uses the second snack credit for that day. For our family, we have never had a problem using up our snack credits.

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This is true for us. Every time we’ve worked the numbers, the dining plan (in any level) just costs more than we’d ever naturally spend. As a result, we’d find ourselves eating things we otherwise wouldn’t have (nor wanted to).

Depending on the trip/scenario, I’ve found that we would save hundreds of dollars by NOT using the dining plan. Even when I’m being generous with our eating choices, the best I can do is make the dining plan ALMOST break even for us. (Not quite, though.)

If I want to feel the “freedom” to eat, well…I have a pre-budgeted amount of money to spend for each day. We spend it as we want. If we have any leftover, it rolls over to the next day. For the last few trips, by doing this, we would come to the end of our trip with enough leftover food money to splurge on something we hadn’t intended or something.

Having said all that, there can be TIMES when people make the dining plan work.

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Curious, how much do you budget per person?

Well, that depends on where we plan to eat. We budget based on our actual plans to eat, taking into account most likely choices, and adding in enough for snacks, drinks. But some days that will be quite low, and other days higher, depending on where we plan to eat on any given day.

So, for example, if we had a day planned at, say, Epcot, and we planned to eat lunch at the Electric Umbrella and pizza in Italy, we’d budget that day accordingly, throwing in money for a snack during the day, drinks, and breakfast, etc. This would mean looking up pricing of menu items ahead of our trip, etc.

Now, we’ve done this for a few trips because we’ve toyed with the idea of staying on property and wanted to price things out. For the trip where we ARE staying on property (my wife and I) we actually decided to “spend big” with our eating, doing far more table-service places, etc. We then priced out what we would spend paying out of pocket versus using the DDP…and the DDP was always more expensive.

You also don’t drink alcohol?

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That’s correct.

Yeah- I am relying on my TiW card for my next trip. My son and his girlfriend like to drink.

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Do you mean if you are doing daily single-credit character meals or buffets with alcohol? That sounds right.

Not everyone does lots of character meals or buffets, though, or even any. That’s just a subset of the people vacationing and dining at WDW. So I wouldn’t say any. If you only do one or two and do less expensive TS meals the rest of the time, it probably isn’t a value.

I would have completely agreed with you a couple of years ago but Disney table service meals are crazy expensive these days. I could spend time planning cheaper meals, for example the Plaza but traveling with people that always get the $15 alcoholic drink makes a big difference in all non MK meals.

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I wonder if that’s why our viewpoints differ - we rarely drink so I’ve never included much alcohol in my calculations.

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There are some yummy ones for sure!

Whoops. Sorry @Flutegarden! I just saw this. I think I derailed the thread. I’ll stop threadjacking now.

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No worries. It was a good, civil debate. :grinning:

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A huge benefit from DDP can be had if you have two rooms and a bunch of kids. Put all the kids in one room (with 1 adult) and buy Deluxe Dining Plan for that room. 3x TS credit for $43 for each kid. They can be used by adults. That is ridiculous savings.

I do enjoy the sunk cost “Sure, get a mickey bar.” thing myself, but I think an alternative that works for me is to just set a snack/whimsy budget before hand. If I say, “I’ll spend $100 on impulse snacks” I can both save money and avoid agonizing over every purchase.

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This is what we have done for our Thanksgiving trip…1 adult and 2 kids in one room, 2 adults and 2 year old in the other room.

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It’s definitely more worth while if you are a drinker. I do drink some, but I don’t really like to have a drink with my meal.

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