To dine, or not to dine (on the Disney Dining Plan, that is)

[Blonde Bunny 3]

Should we get the dining plan? What has been your experience? Do most campers forgo the plan? We will definitely eat breakfast at the camper, and most likely some lunches/dinners, especially on non-park days (ie, pool days). We also plan to travel a bit outside of Disney (ie Legoland). I know you have to take the plan for each night you are there. We do want to eat at some of the great restaurants we've been hearing about. I just can't see us eating 2 counter meals each day we are there. Oh, and no character meals; my son isn't interested in that. So, is the plan a good value, even if we don't use all the meals? Could we do better winging it?

[doodlebug....Cherie 461]

I have only done the dining plan when it was free. Not that it is ever really free. I wouldn't do it again. We did eat at a lot of places we wouldn't have payed oop, but I hated being a slave to ADR's. I also felt like I spent my whole vacation eating.

[AuburnJen 777]

The dining plan is a lot of food that you pay for. I have never done it because I could never eat that munch food if I tried. Plus you end up planning your whole vacation around food. I would rather have a vaca tion with Fiends and cook my own food.

[Gots2pitt.. Jeff 64]

If you are camping I recommend packing atleast one meal to take in with you (you can take soft sided coolers in). The times that we have camped we ate meals about 4pm or 5pm back at the camper. That and take a stroller. My parents (60+) were just there a few weeks ago with out any kids and took a stroller just to push their stuff around (coats, cooler with drinks and food, backpack with stuff you don't leave, etc.). Food is rather expensive at Disney (compared to normal restaurants). There is some great info here with menu pictures that give you an idea of what you can get and how much it costs. The answer is different for everyone but if you are like us and semi cheap packing food can save a lot of money (which can easily be spent on other things if you want).

[mouseketab.....Carol 1,261]

I only get the dining plan when I'm staying at a resort for their "free dining" promotion. NEVER have gotten it with the campsite. We do eat out a lot, but have never felt that paying for the dining plan was a good value.

[CCIntrigue...aka Gwen 547]

We've never had the dining plan, don't see a need for it, and feel that it would be a terrible waste of money. I don't want to spend half of my vacation sitting in restaurants and being a slave to ADRs. We eat out several meals while we're there, but we still never spend over $300 per week for food. I cook and freeze most of our dinners before leaving home. Just put in the fridge the day before and pop in the microwave for a few minutes. Takes a little planning, but it sure beats the cost of the dining plan.

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

Here is a thread with some more input that may help

http://www.fortfiend...__fromsearch__1

Personally, we used to use the DDP back when the appetizer and gratuity were included. We came out WAY ahead in terms of $ at that time, and ate some amazing meals at places we couldn't have afforded back then out of pocket.

That said, the last time we did we found ourselves with WAY too much food and scheduling our entire trip around ADRs. 2 negatives in my book. Then they dropped the app and gratuity and we decided it was no longer for us.

These days I tell people to crunch the numbers and see if make sense financially. It's easy to do as most of the WDW restaurant menus/prices are online (many on this site). Just come up with a list of what/how you would normally eat over a few days and price it out. Be sure to add in the tip so you're comparing apples to apples.

Also be sure to make your list as you would NORMALLY eat. In other words, if you don't usually eat dessert, don't include that. If you normally do eat an appetizer, add that in too. Remember, if you aren't a dessert person, it's not a big perk to you that it's included in the dining plan and you'll still be paying a gratuity on it.

Now here's the kicker - pretend you're on the dining plan and do the exact same exercise, remembering to add the gratuity on top of what the plan will cost you. If you'd be doing anything but the quick serve DDP, also factor in where you'd eat and how much time it's going to take out of your day to dine there, including transportation. Keep in mind that most table service meals on property will run you anywhere from 1-2 hours.

If you'd dine TS anyway, that time isn't so much of a consideration, but the fact that if you want to get your money's worth, you'll need to eat TS every day AND spend time making ADRs ahead of time may be.

Ultimately we want to be flexible on vacation. Sometimes we do focus a lot on dining, but some days we don't. The numbers also don't add up for us when it comes to how we like to eat. So for us, DDP is no longer something we want to do.

[CKCK 45]

No.

We try to use Disney rewards points from our visa for in park dining and drinks. We use our visa for nearly everything now a days, so we earn a good amount of points.

When we do get a meal in the park we usually split one anyway to save money, then eat more back at the campsite if we're still hungry.

Plus, my wife is a great cook at the campsite!

[.....Gary 85]

Have to agree w/ Monique, without the appetizer and gratuity, it's not worth it. We sometimes have four adults and three children, my accountant (DW) says we still spend less w/o the plan.

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

We actually priced it out again last year the way I suggested - did up a sample of how we'd typically eat over a few days and compared costs apples to apples.

Even paying for a few pretty expensive TS meals out of pocket, we came out ahead without the dining plan.

But that's us. For some people, depending on how you eat and in the case of campers, how many meals you plan to eat at your site, it might still be worth it. That's why I suggest actually breaking it down to see.

On and BTW... if Disney offered an "all snack" dining plan for a decent price during Food & Wine we would SO buy this!

[FtWildernessFamily...Holly 25]

We tried DDP for the first time in Sept when we stayed at Pop Century. We'd been saying since our first trip, we would like to do it. We found it to be worth the experience but I don't know that we'll do it again. It was challenging to be a slave to a dining reservation every day when you're not used to doing it. We did go to several places we wouldn't normally go to paying OOP - Chef Mickey's, Crystal Palace, etc - so that was nice. (and not that we wouldn't pay OOP for those places, as we normally have at least one TS reservation during each trip, but it was nice to try those for 'free' to determine if it was something we'd want to do in the future.

Our fave TS are Whispering Canyon and, believe it or not, Cinderella's Royal Table.