You’ve done your homework.
But I understand if the answer is disheartening - because it’s easier to use “dining credits” and not have to think about how much your meal (and trip) cost rather than having to face an unpleasantly large bill that you certainly wouldn’t see most places outside of WDW… EVERY. SINGLE. MEAL. And that is reason alone for many, many people to choose the dining plan.
For sure if I go with some of our relatives I’ll tell them they have to get the dining plan to save me from listening to them gripe and grouse about everything we eat (totally worth $200 to me over the course of a week…).
In summary, OOP has always cost us less, BUT the intangible by which the DDP lets you pretend you’re on a sort-of “all inclusive” type trip has value, too.
Good luck. 
HAHAHAHA!! Yeah, fortunately, the family we are going with won’t gripe. If anything, I will be the one to get nauseous every time I run my credit card. But I’d almost rather have control of it, rather than forcing ourselves to eat at certain places and a certain amount of times.
The thing is, you already figured out what to expect. So you shouldn’t feel too bad when you get each check.
Also, if you’re using a credit card that gives you any sort of rewards, remember you’ll be getting those too!
Yeah, I’ve been trying to find options for discounted dining with my Disney Visa.
I hope you are also factoring in the SIZE of the meal portions.
Flame tree bbq full slab meal will probably EASILY feed two hungry adults. My wife and I split one, (I am a total pig) and we had 1/4 slab left over, and threw away about half of the sides we could not finish - our kid ate a few ribs too! We also split a fajita meal at Pecos Bill’s which probably would have left us VERY full if we wanted to finish it all - but it was horrifically bad. I’ve read from others that most qs full meals can easily feed two adults - aside from the standard burger / hot dog option. Things like the half chicken meal, fajita platter, ribs at fairfax or flame tree, etc. The Dining PLan can be worth it for some, but if it’s not worth it to you, don’t do it. You also should factor in what special meals you can use your credits for, like BOG PPO, where the brakfast foods are insane if you are paying out of pocket, or Chef Mickey’s is like that as well, I think. We actually paid oop for both of those, and the Mama M Fantasmic pkg and came out way ahead.
I spent all day yesterday making a detailed spreadsheet and also had to conclude the QS dining plan won’t save any money, especially when you drink water. I wanted the spreadsheet to tell me we could at least break even because I like the idea of the “feeling”, but the math doesn’t lie. Paying OOP also means we have the freedom to eat at non-DDP places (Sleepy Hollow!) without feeling like we’ve “wasted” credits.
That said, DH and I made a pact that we will absolutely not get grouchy over food prices. So we promised to call each other on it if we start griping about it or trying to cheap out. Last thing I want is to ruin a vacation this expensive by stressing over a $6 snack.
Oh, it’s quite possible to save money using the dining plans, but it requires a pretty tight set of circumstances:
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The plan has to match the way you want to eat - if you’re going to let any of the entitlements go unused, you’re going to have a hard time justifying value. (Or even using them just to use them rather than because you want to just so you feel like you aren’t losing value).
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For the two lower-tier plans, you have more children (age 3-9) than adults on the reservation. Fact is, QSDP and DDP prices for adults are ridiculous - virtually impossible to make your money back on that without planning your entire trip around “maximizing value”. Yuck. But kids can actually be a good value on either plan.
As for the Deluxe DDP, that’s actually pretty good on the value front, but hearken back to #1 - it has to fit the way YOU want to behave on your vacation. For some people, they really do want a couple of big, sit-down meals a day (I highly recommend one signature meal a day on DxDP rather than three TS meals) to serve as down-time and to experience a wide variety of restaurants. For that group, it works great. Others, not so much.
I just did the same thing. And I feel the same way. I wanted to have the convenience, but now that I KNOW I won’t really save money, it will make me feel worse about using it. — I just need to NOT look at my credit card or the receipts until we get home.
We actually have tweens (12 and 13), so that’s my issue…we’re paying adult prices and those kids aren’t going to eat huge portions.
Is the table service Dining plan an option? You will more than likely save money if you have lots of character dining.
We are only planning on going to Chef Mickey’s and while we COULD do table dining, we really don’t want to kill time on dining. At least not be “forced” to.
My feet thank me for scheduling a sit down dinner every night. Otherwise, you feel like you need to hurry to eat and get up. Sit down allows you a solid 60 min or more to relax. How long will you be at Disney?
Nope, only cindarellas royal table, which is why we pay cash for that one 
We are coming in on a Friday around noon and leaving the following Friday early morning. So, 6.5 days in the parks.
Awesome! 6.5 days is a decent amount of time.
Yeah, I wish we could go longer, but for a first time, I’ll live with 6.5 days 
Heaps of people are for it, and just as many if not more are against. I’ve been doing the. Al ulatio s for my 11 day trip with the TS plan. My family really like sitting down for dinner together and we like food so TS is a good option. We know we want CRT, the candlelight processional at akershush, fantasmic at H and V, and narcoosees. We’re doing a lunch BOG. Once I put in those, plus all the places the kids wanted to go and worked out where we would be for lunch qs etc. I looked at menus. If we order the absolute cheapest from EVERY menu (water drinkers also) we lose about 70 with the dining plan. If we order the most expensive, we save a minor amount. For us, we’d pay that extra 70 we’re losing just for the convenience. My husband gets depressed and/or panicked actually seeing large amounts of money spent, so it would be beneficial busy knowing he won’t flip it over dinner bills each day. Also, he’d look at the menu at some of those places and decide not to eat there because of the cost, and most definately want to skip the packages. Seeing these as ‘credits’ rather than a bill is extremely helpful for him.
You should have seen the colour of grey he turned when I bought my car…
Edit- btw I found the dining plan calculator a little off, which is why I did my own.
After our trip I compared what we had spent with the DP to what we would have paid OOP for the same items and we “saved” $170 with the DP.
What I liked about the DP:
-I like to prepay for my trip, and being out of the country it was the easiest way for me to pay for my dining in advance instead of having to charge it/bring cash/figure out another method such as a gift card
-I tend to be frugal and having prepaid it was nice to have the freedom to get the more expensive items/experiences like character meal as it was maximizing the value of what we had already spent.
What I didn’t like:
-We would have ordered less food OOP
-I left the last few credits to the last few minutes on resort so I was scrambling to buy candy before Magic Express arrived. The timing was my fault, not the plan’s. But it felt wrong to leave without zeroing out the credits.
On a future trip, whether I would buy the plan would depend on our ADR choices, but the prepayment aspect is still appealing to me.
From someone who did just used the Deluxe Dining Plan, for us, it was worth it, we haven’t run the final numbers yet, however since we did get the QS included and paid the difference, which was about $1400 for 2 people for 10 nights, 8 of our meals used 2 TS credits each, (One 2 credit at CRT, and one 2 credit for the CLP package). We were able to enjoy anything on the menu, and didn’t just look at what was most expensive. With this all being said, I don’t know until I finish running number, if we had to pay the full price for the dining plan would it have been worth it. In the past, have used the QS and the Deluxe and came out ahead on each one.
This being said, I honestly believe that the Dining plans are right for some and not right for others, look at menus, get idea on what you might want to eat and the prices - but remember the menus do change which we saw this trip, get a good idea on the cost of your meals and go from there. No one can tell another that it is a good or bad value for anyone else, they can only talk about from their personal experiences and let people know their thoughts but never tell another that they were wrong for the choice they made, it is their money and how they decide to spend it.
We just returned from a week long visit to WDW ending on Christmas day. The parks were crowd level 10 every day. We had booked the Deluxe Dining Plan by upgrading the free dining offer. As a party of 14 (don’t EVER go with this many people!) we had gratuities added at 18% for every meal.
The cost of the upgrade to Deluxe plus the money we paid for tips and a shared bottle of wine with dinner ($40 to $55 at the bottom prices on the wine list) and an occasional glass of beer for lunch came out to $104 per person per day. This was considerably less than we could have accomplished without the plan BUT we do things differently because we were all adults of drinking age and foodies to boot.
We use snacks and the coffee mug (which I wish they would change to a coffee card) for breakfast since none of us really wanted to spend the time, nor did we have the appetite, for a real breakfast. Just a bowl of oatmeal or cereal or a bagel or muffin was fine. We ended the trip with 11 snacks still left for the 4 of us, which we used while waiting for the Magical Express back to the airport to buy food for the plane trip.
We used one point for a sit-down lunch each day at a signature restaurant in the parks. This takes 90 minutes to 2 hours to accomplish with just 5 people. We do not go back to the resort for a swim or a nap in the middle of the day. We are relaxed and refreshed and ready to ride until dinner after the long lunch break, and we haven’t wasted time getting out of the park and back and forth to our resort.
We used two points for dinner at signature restaurants. After the 3 course lunch we weren’t ready for dinner until at least 7:30. Dinner ended at 9:30, and we either took in the fireworks or just went home to bed so we could get up for the morning extra magic hour at the next park (begins at 7am near Christmas).