Upgrading only 1 of 2 rooms to deluxe

I’m starting to do some early planning for my next trip around Dec 2020, and I was thinking about dining plan options. I have seen a few people mention getting 2 rooms and upgrading one room to deluxe then sharing the credits among both rooms, so here is the plan I am considering:

My family is Me, DW, DD10, DS8, DS4 (ages in Dec 2020). I would like to book 2 rooms at Pop Century for 7 nights (hopefully connecting rooms, obviously that is a risk vs. getting a Family Suite at AoA). I will assign myself and the two boys to one room and get the Deluxe Dining Plan and DW and DD to the other room with QS dining. This would give us 63 TS credits and 28 QS credits. The price would be around $2,158 based on 2019 prices. I compared this with just getting the standard DDP for all of us, which would give us 35 TS credits and 35 QS credits for a price of around $1,977. For an extra $181, we get 28 extra TS credits but lose 7 QS credits, plus, the TS credits are not specified for Adult or Child. This could be useful if DW and I want to go out for a date night or 2 without the kids.

If I go through with this plan, will I just need to make sure that I (or one of the boys) use our magic band to pay for any TS meals and DW or DD pay for any QS meals?

I know obviously the value of this all depends on us wanting to actually use that many credits, but I think we can probably do it. We usually like to do a few character meals (good use of TS credits), and there are a few places we would like to try. Plus if DW and I go out a couple times, that will use a few more. And we may be travelling with grandparents (aka babysitters for date nights), so if we know we can’t use all our credits we can just buy a couple meals for them if they don’t get dining plan.

Anyone see any glaring issues with this plan or reasons that it won’t work?

Thanks!

Depending on where you want to eat, it may be cheaper to get Deluxe for the one room and pay oop for any additional QS or kids meals beyond your credits. This is my plan for March (fingers crossed they don’t change the rules), but we typically eat breakfast in our room except for 1 or 2 days and then eat 2 restaurant meals per day. You could do the math and figure out.

I’ve been thinking about that also. I’m actually hoping to get Free Dining going the week right after Thanksgiving, which would make this work out really well.

Am I correct that the Deluxe Dining still includes appetizers with TS meals? If that is the case, those TS credits will really go far, I don’t see any possible reason why I would need 5 appetizers/entrees to feed my family of 5. I may have to figure out restaurant choices and I may only want to put one adult and one child in the room that I upgrade. That would give me 42 TS credits and 42 QS credits. That wouldn’t save much money since the cost to upgrade a child dining plan to Deluxe is only about $20/nt, but that plan would actually give me 7 more TS and 7 more QS credits only $40 more than upgrading everyone to the Std Dining Plan. Plus the appetizers. Plus no adult/child designation of TS credits.

If I don’t have grandparents along, I will probably go that way, since we are unlikely to want to use 63 TS credits, but if they come along, $140 to buy all of their TS meals is probably considered a decent deal :):grinning: