DFB Guides

Has anyone used the DFB dining guides? Thinking about purchasing the 2020 guide as well as the snack guides, but wondering if it will be worth the cost. I would order when there is a % off offer, which is most of the time.

I got one years ago. I felt that the information and photos was the same posted on their website.

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They put out so much free content on YouTube that the guide is redundant.

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I got them all last year and used them as I was planning our trip, but I don’t think I’ll purchase updated versions. Like mentioned above, most (if not all) of the info is available for free on the DFB website.
It was nice to have so much info (and pics) in one place, but there were more links to articles/reviews on the DFB site than I would’ve expected or preferred since my main reason for buying the books was to avoid webpage hopping for information.

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I bought them discounted and was disappointed. A lot of information seemed to require a click-through to their website. Some was out of date, e.g. referring to the view of Wishes from CRT.

Love the videos. Hate the click-bait social media presence. Don’t recommend the guides.

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@alainafraser_675184, that was my reason for considering the purchase. I know several places to look for information, I wanted to be able to just look in one place in some type of sequential order. But, who am I kidding, I enjoy the research.

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Thank you, @sanstitre_has_left_the_building, that is very helpful.

I have seen their festival guides recommended. I’m considering getting the flower and garden one.

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@cjandres, I would love to hear your experience with the festival guide. My primary reason to possibly getting any of the guides was for Festival of the Holidays. Also, I wanted to be able to use the snack guides to see what was covered by the DDP snack credits.

FWIW, we found the touring plan menus to be largely accurate in what qualified as snack credits. (It’s the purple boxy icon to the right of the prices.) In a couple places where it was unclear, Yelp had recent pictures of menu boards.

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I ordered the Christmas one last year and while there was a ton of information, I found the layout hard to navigate and it wasn’t easily accessible on my preferred devices. It was too many pages to print, which I would have preferred to do so I could mark things and flip back and forth. The pdf format just didn’t work for me.

I enjoy putting their videos on when I’m doing housework and I got most of the same information that way (or from elsewhere on the internet). Probably would not repurchase, even with a discount.

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I agree, TP menus do show the snacks. I will convince myself not to order the DFB guides and then I will see another discount offer, and I start thinking about it, again. Beyond the Kingdoms identifies what qualifies as DDP snacks when he reviews snacks,the DFB videos usually do as well.

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Good to know. I will save my money. On the holiday blogs, DFB goes item by item, booth by booth. I guess that I will stick with that. Plus, many of the bloggers zoom in on the menu boards, showing what qualifies as a snack credit.

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Yes, I’m sure with just a little bit of looking around, you could find the booth menus pretty easily (for free)! And there are so many helpful people on the forums here, you could always try asking for someone in the parks to take a photo of a menu board if you can’t find one :+1:t2:

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I will just add this.

Although I was disappointed with the guide, I didn’t resent spending the money. The regular videos are really great and have given me very many hours of pleasure. Their people need to make a living and I was happy to make a contribution to that. I would be very sad to see them go.

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Chances are - if you have heard of DFB, you have seen enough videos that the guide isn’t going to tell you anything new and if you haven’t heard of DFB… you don’t want a 1,000 page PDF haha

I find the videos way more entertaining. I would much rather watch “EPCOT restaurants ranked!” for 15 minutes than read the ~23 pages of info.

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My daughter and I look forward to every DFB video. My 3 year old DGD refers to them as research. I would be very sad if they went away. So, buying their guides is a way to support their channel.

I would probably buy the guide again because “research” is fun… but don’t forget they make a decent amount of money just by people clicking on the ads during the YouTube videos.

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I bought the snacks and dinning bundle at a discount simply to support their work. There’s nothing new in the guides that you can’t find from watching their youtube channel or on the DFB website. However I will say the information is clearly laid out with great pictures and descriptions. It was great to share with my family who is not as thorough “crazy?” as me when it comes to researching/ planning things. Especially my parents who would prefer to read something than watch youtube videos.

If you know WDW well, it’s prob not worth getting but to people who are new it’s a great resource.

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Thanks for asking this question! DH and I were just watching a video last night and she plugged the guide. DH mentioned we should get it, I thought they were expensive. I was considering it because I thought it would be a good resource for our upcoming large family trip.

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