I wish the DP would come back. I don’t like seeing my brain produce burn-out smoke while trying to decide how much money to put into savings for eating. 2 parents, 2 adult kids, 2 younger kids…the idea of trying to figure out how they might choose their meals, or snacks…black smoke fills my brain as wheels turn.
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Can you just use the costs of the DDP as a general guideline? That’s $75 per day / adult and $30 per day / child (9 yrs & younger)
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Or, alternatively, you could plug the restaurants you plan to use into distripplanner.com with other info about your alcohol and snack preferences, and get an estimate.
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I do, and then I second guess myself. And have a new plan, in case someone decides they suddenly are willing to try steak instead of their usual chicken. Then, I’m back to “This is your meal limit…” thought process. Just too much over thinking and second guessing on my own part. I liked the DP, it was easy for our group.
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I guess it all depends on table service meals. But I typically would think $500/day for a family your size. That would include all meals and snacks. Just a rule of thumb kind of number.
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For my family, I budget $100 per person each day. This is typically a TS, a QS and 1 snack. This is how I budget as the DDP doesn’t save my family anything.
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We went last February and ate pay-as-you-go. I added up the receipts when I got home and we spent less than the DDP would have cost. Disney isn’t going to lose money on the plan, so I would expect using the cost of the plan as a guide would work.
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We spend less on our own too. DP just makes things easy but we over eat using it.
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The dining plan can work for compulsive planners that love the most expensive items on every menu and those fancy drinks (yup-me). Since I NEVER go out to eat at home, when my calculations tell me to get the dining plan, I do.
I too would miss it but at this time but I think I will rely on GrubHub or other delivery options and my balcony on my next trip. The combo of a new type of planning and a significant savings is exciting to me.
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Not liking math is not a thing.
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I like math when I’m baking! 
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Sadly it’s actually a thing in the USA 
It shouldn’t be. Math is the best until you get to the pure math and then count me out. But numbers, patterns and graphs, oh my. I cannot tell you how many spreadsheets I created during the election trying to figure out what was going on and what were the odds certain states would go which color. I should tell you I have a math degree with an actuarial science specialization and work in software engineering.
Both my kids say they are good in math and like it. My son had an algebra teacher who said they did a study and that when parents said they weren’t good at math kids repeated it. So parents even if you think you aren’t good at math, lie for your children’s sake! Believing is half the battle!
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I love that you could geek/nerd out on electoral math.
this is true and an up hill battle.
If everyone liked math, then there would be no lawyers.
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explain… 
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
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Math is fine, unless it is differential equations. That was the bane of my existence for some reason.
We’ve always used the dining plan and have typically saved money. I do hope they bring the plans back because the TS meals are our time to unwind for a little and rest. If we don’t have those because we can’t fit them in the budget then it is going to really throw us off our game. I just checked and we average per day per person was about $80ish for a TS, QS, and snacks. The snacks mess us up every time.
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Don’t underestimate the power/usefulness of these. (Not my favorite part of college math either though, tbh.)
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DP is such a personal thing. If we drank alcohol and do a number of character meals, DP has great value. We don’t drink alcohol and we don’t really need to do that many character meals because the food tends to be subpar to us.
I love the thought of a DP but never had one. Value and flexibility are important to me and there is no value for our family to have a DP. We would have to eat all the food and probably order the most expensive items to have value. Most of the time, we wouldn’t order all that food because we wouldn’t be able to eat it all. And having a DP locks us into eating, regardless if we feel hungry or not.
Excel makes the math really easy! I threw the following numbers into Excel to add up for our 2019 trip with 2 adults for 6 days and 4 adults for 10 days: $6/snack (2/day), $20 for QS, and $50 for TS; $82/day/person. Excel spitted out $4,264. DP would have cost us $3,926 in 2019. DP sounded like a great deal, even if we didn’t eat everything. But we still didn’t get the DP.
I never told my family we had a budget. Everyone ordered whatever and whenever they wanted. We spent $2,585 for food and that included a grocery order for water, soda, juice, lunch meat, and cheese (brown bagged 2 lunches for convenience and flexibility).
You know your family best. An easier math would be to budget $100/person/day for snacks, QS, and TS.
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