Dining plan...is it ever worth it?

I think that this boils down to two groups of people:

  • People for whom the dining plan does not make financial sense. IMO this is probably the vast majority of people, but many of these people still get a dining plan and Mickey runs to the bank. :smiley:
  • People for whom the dining plan makes sense. Based on their party size/composition, eating preferences, and choice of restaurants (often plenty of Character Meals) the numbers work out, but this is a relatively small group.

Thinking about this a little more, there may be a third group - people for whom the dining plan would normally not work out, but because they bought it they work the system to make sure it works out. :wink:

ETA: I’m not making fun of this third group - if for some reason I had a dining plan I would be planning like mad to make sure I squeezed every last cent out of it. There would be spreadsheets that would eclipse anything @profmatt has come up with! :rofl:

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Can you pay cash for the kids meal and use credits for the adults meal on the same reservation? If so, I would see this as a great way to maximize your diner credits for the signature restaurants.

Yes you can.

Except at BOG where you can’t split the check.

You can do that at CS restaurants, as the system does not differentiate between adult and child credits there. But I do not think you can do that at TS restaurants.

You can on the deluxe plan. That is why sharing one plan between two rooms can save so much money.

I thought that they had clamped down on that. Not that it matters as I would never need two rooms in the first place.

I too will never use it this way but deluxe credits are still like QS credits. They all go into one “pool”.

40 snack credits on candy?
Is that what you wanted, or were you just trying to use up 40 credits before you lost them?

I have no dog in the fight here - it either makes financial sense or it does not, OR, it might make sense to lose money and have peace of mind, I get it. I don’t agree with that last one, but I get it. I’d rather save money - you’re paying for it either way, now or later, but it’s the same money. More now, or less later. I still get it, I just don’t agree. I can invest that money (theoretically,) and make money from it.

I’ve heard many times that ppl don’t really understand how much food they are getting into with a ddp if they don’t plan it carefully, and wind up buying overpriced snacks on their last day, or treating other ppl with meals before they leave wasted credits on Walt’s books. With some hemming and hawing, I could probably get the DDP to work for my fam, but I guarantee we’d wind up wasting a lot of food, and we don’t drink soda or that “coffee” so the mugs would be wasted on us. It’s just way too much food. You pay for what you throw away. I also read once that someone said using leftover snack credits on beef jerky was “brilliant.” You know, the same beef jerky brand that costs 2 dollars less per package at any store outside of DW?

Even with free dining as “awesome” as it sounds, comes at a rack rate room price. You might be able to do better. It’s all pretty simple math, unless you are romanced by paying up front for meals, and I get it if you are. Don’t let ppl tell you you are wrong for liking it being paid up front, but understand that some ppl just can’t grip that thought. Again, that way of thinking doesn’t make “sense” to me, but I “get it.”

We probably won’t get the ddp next time, and we’ll eat exactly what we want, when we want, and do at least one character meal, and hoop de doo, and probably eat at Kimonos for sushi twice. We’ll (tee hee - SHE’LL) overinduldge on Starbucks frou frou drinks, Dole Whips (all me,) and sushi and Ample Hills, and come home 5 lbs heavier, and spend less than the DDP, paying oop, but that’s us. We probably won’t throw much, if anything away - (unless we hit Pecos Bill’s again - YUCK!)

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How might they have clamped down on that–do you mean using one plan for two rooms or using child TS for adult TS on the deluxe DDP? We usually get two rooms but I just recently heard the idea of sharing a DDP so I was wondering what you knew.

I meant not allowing you to use child TS credits for an adult, as the system differentiates between the two credits (unlike QS, which are all in the same credit pool). For some reason I thought that they had closed the TS loophole.

I don’t know what works for your family and how you prefer to have your meals. My point was that we prefer sit down meals and we also enjoy the character breakfasts. I wasn’t sure at first, but keeping all the receipts and doing the math when I came home proved to me beyond a doubt that for our group of 6 we saved quite a bit of money. I choose to use the snack credits to bring home candy (Micky marshmallow treats, pops fudge,etc.) as little gifts I would have bought anyway and paid out hard cash for. (incidentally, they were very much welcomed as opposed to the T shirts, mugs,etc) I really think it depends on how and what you and your family like to eat. I also like the fact that it is all taken care of except for the gratuity before we even start the vacation. Now, I acknowledge that this last point is not one that necessarily makes good financial sense, but my receipts for what we would have spent and what I paid for the dining plan do. I have come out ahead every time.

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“Worth” is entirely subjective. The standard plan does not match the way I would normally eat (I eat primarily TS, eat lots of apps, and very few deserts), and the Deluxe plan has more food on it than even I could eat (and I eat a lot). I have “run the numbers” many times, and there is no way I have ever made it come out to be cheaper than OOP. If money was no issue it might be fun to get the DxDP knowing that you’d be leaving “money on the table” - but money matters to me.

There are many people for whom the DDP mirrors their “normal” eating habits, and as long as they use every meal and snack credit (wisely), they might come out ahead. I’m not one of those so foe me it is NOT “worth” it.

I even priced it out numerous times with eating MOSTLY signature restaurants for just two people, and OOP is still considerably less money spent.

On our last “foodie” trip we had 14 TSs , 7 of them signature (“regular” TSs for most lunches, signatures for dinner). I worked out the math and if each of us had both an app and a dessert, for every TS meal, then the DxDP would probably have been cheaper than OOP. But “normally” if we have an app at lunch we share, and never have dessert; that’s 7-14 apps and 14 desserts that we wouldn’t ordinarily order. When not on vacation, we typically share an app for dinner, and again never order dessert, so that was another 7 apps and 14 desserts that we wouldn’t normally eat (although on vacation, there might be some dinner desserts). And then there are 4 snacks per day between us (which would probably be breakfasts; neither of us like big breakfasts). And of course, even with the DDP, you still have to pay for alcoholic beverages and and pay the tip based on menu price (for a signature dinner for 2, that could easily be $30). OOP, with TiW, came in over $400 cheaper than the DxDP would have cost us.

Of course, we also ate at the V&A Chef’s Table one night - but that is a “special event” that has to be budgeted outside of any “normal” food budget…

A lot of passion around this topic, and a lot of great answers here already. I don’t expect that I’ll add a lot to the convo, but I will say this:

We make our ADR’s before deciding to add the plan or not. I then go through item by item (using current menus) and calculate our expected dining costs. Only then do we make a decision for adding the DDP or not.

The DDP ended up being less expensive for our family this year because of a few factors:

  1. We booked multiple 2 credit dining experiences and character meals like HDDR and CTR.
  2. For a couple of our meals, we plan to use snack credits to pay for items from the Outdoor Kitchens at Flower and Garden.
  3. Our youngest is 2, so he eats from our plates for free.

Now - technically would we buy the refillable mugs if we weren’t on the DDP? No, probably not. But I like the mugs, and I’m happy to have them as souvenirs.

We’ve never saved much using the DDP - like $200 - but that’s enough, along with the intangible benefit of having it all pre-payed, to sway me into the “for” column.

My two cents.

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"brklinck
You can do that at CS restaurants, as the system does not differentiate between adult and child credits there. But I do not think you can do that at TS restaurants

PrincipalTinker
You can on the deluxe plan. That is why sharing one plan between two rooms can save so much money.

I think we’re at cross purposes here.

@Aviatrisse_611213 asked if they can pay OOP for a child and use dining credits for adults at a meal. Which is what I answered.

You can do that. You can pay with cash and credits at any restaurant except BOG.

You’re both talking about using child credits for adult meals, I think!

Yes, that was my point on the deluxe Plan.

This is us. We just don’t eat the way the Dining Plan is set up, so it will never make financial sense for us (although DH still makes me crunch the numbers before every trip). A lot of people also seem to forget that tips are not included in the Plan, so you need to add that cost on top.

As far as budgeting the food ahead of time…we do this on our vacations anyhow. We actually bring all our food/spending money in cash in envelopes for each day. It helps us control what we spend. Most of the time, we over plan and have money left over at the end of the day, which rolls over into the next day’s envelope. As the vacation progresses, we can either use that extra money for more souvenirs, or going to a nicer place to eat, or just pocketing/saving the money.

One year, we actually bought Disney gift cards throughout the year so that on our trip we had the gift cards instead of cash to spend. But it turned out to be more a hassle than just having the cash…plus, since we were under-spending what we had budgeted, we ended up at the end of the vacation with more money on the gifts cards than we had spent. So, we ended up going to Disney Springs to spend it rather that save it. So, we’ve kind of abandoned the Disney Gift Card idea as a result. (Having said that, the kids did like the fact that we gave each of them a gift card to spend as they like…kind of like having their own credit card.)

This makes me wonder about the possibility of putting money on the Magic Bands themselves…but then, that makes it harder to keep track of how much money you have spent. Perhaps that’s a question for a different thread, though…how do you keep track of what’s on your Magic Band? (We’ve never had Magic Bands, so I’m clueless there.)

You can see all the charges to your account in the My Disney Experience app. If you’re on the Dining Plan you can also use this to track your credits. :slight_smile: