Hey all!
I am contemplating getting the standard Dining Plan for our trip in May. I am currently making a “food” spreadsheet to see whether the menu items we would choose works out better or worse with the dining plan. I have watched some videos that indicate that some of the snacks previously on the dining plan are no longer on the plan. If you have gone to the park recently and got DDP snacks that you thought were great value, I’d love to know what they are. Also, if anyone knows if “Marshall’s Favourite Stuffed Pancake” at Pongu Pongu is a snack or part of a quick service credit, I’d love to know that too! Thanks everyone!
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Disney is not doing a good job to say what items qualify for what kind of credit. So, yeah, that would have to be done on-site, and Disney is known to qualify items and disqualify other items seemingly at random.
There is one thing, though, about Pongu Pongu:
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I heard reports that although the menu says Disney Plans Not Accepted, when in person, some locations are taking the DDP. It would be awesome if those onsite could report what they are finding.
Wow, the inconsistency in the information is rather frustrating!
Yes, I agree! This is what makes me unsure about using the plan. For example, we could save our snack credits for the Flower and Garden Festival Booths but what if we save up our credits only to find they don’t have very many snack credit options or that you have to use a QS credit instead of a snack credit. I just wish they could clearly post what is on the DDP and what credit will be used.
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From what I am understanding - they no longer have the DDP logo next to the menu items? To answer the OP question, I always felt the EPCOT food booth items were of good value. Other than that, we always ended up using most of our snack credits on the last day in the gift shops. But that was because the old dining plan was so robust with three meals per day, and included appetizer and an entree.
They’ve really scaled it back, without bringing down the price - of course.
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Are you aware of AllEars?
Their website lists menus for the WDW food venues. I don’t usually plan a trip to Disney without checking the menus several times.
I can’t speak to accuracy of snacks in the dining plan info. Or menus. I figure things are always changing, anyway. But I do get in the ballpark ideas that help inform choices.
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Yes, I watch their youtube videos. I should look up the menus, which I haven’t done recently. I wonder if they have the DDP items listed. I think they are all still trying to figure it out.
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I looked very briefly yesterday and saw some DDP indicators.
I didn’t check the date of the menu.
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And, of course, All Ears says that Pongu Pongu has stuff on the DDP… 
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The menu says it is $8.99, which puts it outside of snack credit territory. I believe there was a post Len made on the forums or something that indicated, in general, items priced less a certain amount (I have $7.19 or something like that in my head) tend to count as a snack credit…IF they take the DDP. If it is more than that, it generally will not be a snack credit.
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Agreed.
In the previous plan an egg roll from Yak & Yeti was ok for a snack credit. The current menu at AllEars shows a single egg roll, $5.49, as a snack credit but 2 egg rolls, $8.99, is not indicated. The chicken fried rice is somewhat confusing, tho. It doesn’t give a size, but one is listed under sides and is marked a snack
I just saw this too! It shows the snacks separate from the breakfast option which is helpful.
I think the Funnel Cakes at Epic Eats in HS might still be snacks. They are 8.49 not 100% sure though.
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The funnel cakes show up as DDP on allears. Even over $8.
The blurb at Disney dot com makes a point of saying single serve is a snack.
It’s been awhile since we got a funnel cake at WDW but it was more than a single serving to me. 
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I find it frustrating that they moved to only 1 snack a day on the new plan. That’s what makes it a “nope” for us when before it was a “maybe”. So, saving snack credits for Epcot, I would think you’d have to be pretty judicious about your choices, at least compared to the olden times with double the credits to burn.
I also believe that they have advertised that meal credits are specific per person where before you could “pool” them or spend them on whoever was eating. I wonder if that hurts the way snacks are used? Like does the other person have to be there at the booth when you pay if you are using one of their snack credits?
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This might be a deal breaker if I were entertaining the idea of the dining plan
Since I tend to not eat entrees much and do like a table service restaurant, I’ve moved away from the dining plan.
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Same!!
I’m not sure they can enforce this.
We didn’t always find value in the dining plan unless we had character dining with the littles. DH and I often split a QS meal and QS big breakfast so it worked the few times we used it. If we didn’t split meals I couldn’t see the value at all. Having a snack and a 20 oz covered each day was nice. But with only 1 snack credit, I’m coming too much OOP for “other” food items on top of the dining plan. If course when the kids aged out, the dining plans made zero sense. DD often ordered off of kids meals.
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Here is one of my charts for comparison using the DDP vs No DDP at AK. I figured out what I would prefer to do without the Dining Plan in comparison to what I would do with the Dining Plan. After crunching the numbers, I realized we will miss out on what we really want to do if we use the DDP. We would like to try different lounges such as Nomads, Geyser Point, etc. We would also like to enjoy things like Hamburger Spring Rolls, Gideon’s Cookies, Chef Art Smiths, etc. In the end, I think the DDP is too rigid for us and would pressure me to book the most expensive restaurants (worth 1 Credit) and food options even if that’s not what we really want just to get value from the plan.
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This is the same reason I’ve never used the DDP. I like my Signatures too much to really get decent value out of the prepaid service. And it’s way too much food for everyone. We tend to skip apps and desserts for the most part, and we’re not alcohol drinkers, so a lot of the value just gets wasted.
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