Buffet / character meal costs and other dining questions

I envisioned french fries with hummus on top. NOPE. planks of fried hummus. Crunchy outside, creamy inside, and the sauce was way spicier than i thought. I would never share an order with anyone. If they wanted to try it, i’d get 2 orders, and if they didn’t like it, i’d just eat theirs too!

2 Likes

If you are cool with taking 27 snack credits of candy home, more power to you! :yum:

I don’t think any restaurants have desert available for swapping! But it’s unlikely they will switch dessert to appetizer. But it never hurts to ask.

I’ve always look longingly at the DP but they do not work for us. We don’t eat enough, we don’t drink, we find no value in bringing home overpriced packaged snacks with our leftover snack credits; and DP limits flexibility and bites into park touring time, which can equate to money.

You are so close to breaking even, it may be a wonderful experience to do once.

1 Like

Just wanted to report back on this. After careful consideration, we decided to go with the DDP. And I am so glad we did!

We had 2 adults and one child in the group. My estimated savings came somewhere between $0 and $120 with various scenarios, but in reality it saved us nearly $400.

TS meals made the biggest difference. When estimating the costs, we did not account for taxes, which are included with the plan.

The average we spent on adult TS meal, including tax, was $57, QS - $22.35, snacks - $4.50. So the cost of food per day per person was $83.85.

Savings even higher with kids meals. Average TS - $26.00, QS - $12.00. And over 11 night stay it really added up, even with recent changes to kids QS meals.

I was warned that DDP was too much food. It really wasn’t for us. We shared one QS meal for breakfast and one adult / one kids meal for lunch. With two or three snacks added to each meal it was just enough to keep us full.

Thank you again for your advice and useful links!

4 Likes

I am so glad you enjoyed it and it worked well for you. We have loved the DDP in the past and found it saved us a ton and made us feel free to order what we wanted and try things we wouldn’t normally. Our kids are now Disney adults so I suspect that will change for awhile. But we found the same thing you did. My DH told me for our last two trips that even if my advanced calculations showed it might be break even or we could even lose a little, he still wanted us to do it. For one week every year or two we don’t even think about menu pricing or deciding if we really want it enough to be worth the cost. We just order the meal or snack we want. That is worth it to him. We always save and pay cash for the trip well in advance but he is convinced (and I have to agree) that even if we saved up the same amount of money and set it aside for food, if we hadn’t already purchased the plan, we would think about and weigh the dining and menu options differently. We have thoroughly enjoyed it on past trips and always came out way ahead. If only 10 wasn’t adult pricing we would continue to get it on future trips.

2 Likes

Being Disney adult has the up side of ordering from adult menu. On our first trip 3 years ago there was no way our 9 year old son would order from kids menu. We didn’t purchase DDP on first trip for this reason.

2 Likes

Yes. Just goes to show that whether or not it makes sense is totally dependent on your family. Our 10 year old sons won’t even finish the kid-sized portions and would definitely prefer the type of foods offered in the kids meals. We hope they will eat like your son some day :slight_smile:

2 Likes