Heads up for plan fudgers in 2007

[Good Ol Gal]

We love the dining plan! We've used it three times (once when it was still the wishes, twice as DDP).

I think it would be nice if they had some sort of junior price for say the 10-13 yr old group.

My 9yo loves to eat off the kids menu at TS restaurants, but those puny little chicken nuggets just don't do it at CS.

I'd be willing to pay a bit more a night for the ability to be able to eat adult CS meals and child TS meals.

I just can't see shelling out $38 to eat off the kids TS menu.

 

[karibritt01]

My problem is this... last year my family (DH, me, DS 8, and DD 3) did the dining plan. For a couple of our CS, we ate 3 adult meals and 1 child meal. At other times, we ate 3 child meals, and DH ordered the adult meal. I can perfectly understand why Disney wants to separate adult and child meals. However, one of their main selling points is that the credits are yours to use as you see fit during your stay. It sounds as though the way we ate our meals will no longer be allowed, even though by the end of the week, we had used 12 adult and 12 child CS meals. If they want to differentiate between adult and child meals... FINE! Why do they care if I allow my kid to have pizza at pizzafari, if I am willing to eat corn dog nuggets at Cosmic Rays another day? Tracking adult and kid credits separately should handle most of the abuse of the plan, while still allowing us to choose which meals we eat and when. BTW, I don't mind paying OOP for him to eat a few meals if necessary - DDP is still a great deal. I just don't see why I should have to if I am willing to sacrifice later and eat the nasty kid lunch!

 

[bicker]

I think it would be nice if they had some sort of junior price for say the 10-13 yr old group.

Hmmm... I'm not so sure it would go over well. I suspect if Disney repriced the Dining Plan to support a junior category, pricing would be $40.99/$34.99/$10.99. How would that go over for you?

 

[Good Ol Gal]

I'd be willing to pay a bit more a night for the ability to be able to eat adult CS meals and child TS meals.

Hmmm... I'm not so sure it would go over well. I suspect if Disney repriced the Dining Plan to support a junior category, pricing would be $40.99/$34.99/$10.99. How would that go over for you?

Well since I said that I'd be willing to pay a "bit" more, 34.99 would not go over well at all!

 

[bicker]

Uh, I'm confused. You'd be paying $38.99 for them now, so $34.99 is less, not more. What I was referring to, when I said I wasn't sure it would go over well, was that you'd be paying $2 more per adult. Indeed, for families with two adults and two juniors, they'd be saving $4 per day. (For couples, like my wife and I, we'd be paying $4 more per day, so it would even out.)

 

[Jack's Mom]

This really sucks for our upcoming trip, any advice would be great.

This may not be morally right, however it was our creative way to make our vacation work with old tickets & piggy-back it on my buisness trip.

I am traveling for a trade-show end of January. My MIL & DS are traveling the same week and spending a few days at Disney without me & I will be joining them three days into the 7 day vacation. I have park tickets from a trip many years ago that was cut short due to bad weather. MY MIL & DS are on the Disney Package & DDP. So that we could both enjoy the entire experience with my son, we were saiving the TS credits for the days I was with them and pay OOP for what ever other food I would need during my days there.

I'm guess by reading those threads that isn't going to work..... She booked her trip through AAA does anyone know if the DDP can be taken off the plan after it has been booked. There is no way she could ever eat 7 days worth of TS meals by herself so the plan woudln't be worth it for her.

 

[OurDogCisco]

When we checked in on Tuesday they did not talk about this stuff. The guy said that we could eat all TS service one day or all QS one day. They did not say we had to eat X amount per day. I can understand separating out the credits so that there isn't abuse between child credits and adult credits. However, I'm not really finding the children's QS very friendly or healthy. I don't find Uncrustables very healthy. My kids don't like them because the amount of peanut butter and jelly that is included. Just too much. I know they can't please everyone and I'm not complaining. I still find the plan a deal even if your kids don't eat the counter service and you ate one table service per day. We are only into day 3 of our trip and we are stuffed. So I do feel it is too much food. Thinking back to our pass trips we usually ate one TS per day but probably only added a few QS here and there depending on the day. Or we'd skip the TS and eat two QS that day. We still eat a very light breakfast in the room. Well, most of the time I would skip but my kids would eat cereal or something like that.

 

[heartsy77]

OK I know this may have nothing to do with the info, but does this still mean that I can pay cash for DD on the kids menu, even though because she is 10 and we paid for adult credits and use these for our adult meals for CRT and SPRT?

 

[JimMIA]

This really sucks for our upcoming trip, any advice would be great.

This may not be morally right, however it was our creative way to make our vacation work with old tickets & piggy-back it on my buisness trip.

I'm guess by reading those threads that isn't going to work..... She booked her trip through AAA does anyone know if the DDP can be taken off the plan after it has been booked. There is no way she could ever eat 7 days worth of TS meals by herself so the plan woudln't be worth it for her.

She's going to have to check with AAA. Nobody here is going to be able to give you any accurate guidance.

I doubt if you will be able to use the plan as you hoped.

 

[JimMIA]

When we checked in on Tuesday they did not talk about this stuff. The guy said that we could eat all TS service one day or all QS one day. They did not say we had to eat X amount per day. I can understand separating out the credits so that there isn't abuse between child credits and adult credits. However, I'm not really finding the children's QS very friendly or healthy. I don't find Uncrustables very healthy. My kids don't like them because the amount of peanut butter and jelly that is included. Just too much. I know they can't please everyone and I'm not complaining. I still find the plan a deal even if your kids don't eat the counter service and you ate one table service per day. We are only into day 3 of our trip and we are stuffed. So I do feel it is too much food. Thinking back to our pass trips we usually ate one TS per day but probably only added a few QS here and there depending on the day. Or we'd skip the TS and eat two QS that day. We still eat a very light breakfast in the room. Well, most of the time I would skip but my kids would eat cereal or something like that.

I think if you go back and read the OP, you will see that she is talking about a change that will take effect January 1. It's not in effect yet.

 

[calypso*a*go-go]

As mentioned a few posts ago, I would love to see "Junior" pricing that was somewhere between the Adult/Child price. I know that would be difficult as there aren't necessarily "junior" sized portions, be it could be do-able if appetizers were only available with the "adult" meal. Honestly, our family of four could never finish the meal when we all ordered apps. and dessert.

As for the system differentiating between adult and child credits, I'm sorry for those that based their vacation expenses on being able to take advantage of the quirk...but I'm glad it has been (or will be) eliminated as continued abuse just drives up the prices of everything else.

 

[NMW]

next march I will be using DDP for just 2 adults. the first nite a friend will be joining us for dinner.

He will pay OOP but quite honestly why can't I use a TS for him.. what difference does it make. It only means that by the end of the trip I will just pay OOP for one TS meal.

With the adult coupons I do not see how this matters if I treat the whole table next to me for dinner or I use all my TS and CS in one day

I paid up front for it and if I use all my credits what does it matter who I use them on as long as it is used by the end of my trip

I thought, and I believe posted over a year ago that THIS is the thing Disney wants to stop. It states in the brochure that the plan is non-transferrable. And yes, I know for some reason lots of people didn't think that actually meant that the plan was "non-transferrable" and that they could treat Aunt Edna and Uncle Woody visiting from Tampa to Le Celliar. The bottom line is that it's Disney's plan and they have the right to enforce it whatever way they want.

 

[Good Ol Gal]

I thought, and I believe posted over a year ago that THIS is the thing Disney wants to stop. It states in the brochure that the plan is non-transferrable. And yes, I know for some reason lots of people didn't think that actually meant that the plan was "non-transferrable" and that they could treat Aunt Edna and Uncle Woody visiting from Tampa to Le Celliar. The bottom line is that it's Disney's plan and they have the right to enforce it whatever way they want.

Disney just needs to inform their CMs on how they want the plan to work.

When we made our first DDP reservations the CM on the phone encouraged us to "treat" MIL/FIL to dinner with OUR credits.

She said they're our credits and if we wanted to use them all at one dinner and treat friends/family then we could. We would just have to pay OOP for the remainder of our trip.

They did that exact thing at one meal on that trip. We had 11 people on our reservation and had to sit at two tables. We told them who was on the plan and who wasn't, but when it came time to pay they just took all of the credits off of our plan. That trip the DDP consisted of 4a 4c, so they took 2 additional adult credits out (the other person was 2).

We were willing to pay OOP for them, but they said "we got it!" Whatever. We had so many credits to go through that trip, 56TS 56CS and 56S!

 

[JimMIA]

Disney just needs to inform their CMs on how they want the plan to work.

I think that's been a big part of the problem since the start. I'm sure many servers figured out they could make better tips loading bills up with appetizers and desserts, plus the tip benefit of telling guests how to work the system. (You show a guest how to get double what they paid for, and you're likely to get a nice tip.)

I think Disney intended DDP to be a pretty loose, temporary promotion. But then when they saw the success of the DDP they wanted to keep it, and when they saw what they then considered "abuse," they started tightening up. But they still had no computer system to prevent abuse.

Now they do, and starting January 1, a lot of the things that have been tolerated will no longer be possible...and treating people not on the DDP is probably Numero Uno on Disney's hit list.

 

[NMW]

Disney just needs to inform their CMs on how they want the plan to work.

When we made our first DDP reservations the CM on the phone encouraged us to "treat" MIL/FIL to dinner with OUR credits.

She said they're our credits and if we wanted to use them all at one dinner and treat friends/family then we could. We would just have to pay OOP for the remainder of our trip.

They did that exact thing at one meal on that trip. We had 11 people on our reservation and had to sit at two tables. We told them who was on the plan and who wasn't, but when it came time to pay they just took all of the credits off of our plan. That trip the DDP consisted of 4a 4c, so they took 2 additional adult credits out (the other person was 2).

We were willing to pay OOP for them, but they said "we got it!" Whatever. We had so many credits to go through that trip, 56TS 56CS and 56S!

I completely understand. Why wouldn't you, or anyone for that matter, do exactly what a CM suggested? I admit in Oct I ordered some adult CS meals for my 2 younger kids (oldest was a 10 yr old adult ) I was willing to pay oop for the meals but the CM's said it was fine. It wasn't like I was going to stand there and insist on paying cash, I just said "thank you."


It does seem like that when the plan was first introduced CM's as well as websites like Mousesavers were encouraging people to treat others, pay cash for kids meals to use them for adults, etc. However, a lot of that seemed to change last year. Many people reported asking CM's if they could treat others and being told "no." I remember one post where a family tried to treat another adult at Yachtsman and the manager flat our accused them of trying to use child credits to pay for an adult not on the plan. For 2007, it seems it's really clear. I just hope people don't give CM's a hard time when they enforce the rules of the plan.

 

[bicker]

BuffaloGal: Could you try to confirm something about this? Is this restriction going to be applied "per meal", "for the full total of credits" or both?

 

[NMW]

This really sucks for our upcoming trip, any advice would be great.

This may not be morally right, however it was our creative way to make our vacation work with old tickets & piggy-back it on my buisness trip.

I am traveling for a trade-show end of January. My MIL & DS are traveling the same week and spending a few days at Disney without me & I will be joining them three days into the 7 day vacation. I have park tickets from a trip many years ago that was cut short due to bad weather. MY MIL & DS are on the Disney Package & DDP. So that we could both enjoy the entire experience with my son, we were saiving the TS credits for the days I was with them and pay OOP for what ever other food I would need during my days there.

I'm guess by reading those threads that isn't going to work..... She booked her trip through AAA does anyone know if the DDP can be taken off the plan after it has been booked. There is no way she could ever eat 7 days worth of TS meals by herself so the plan woudln't be worth it for her.

Even before these Jan changes, I think you would have had a very hard time with that. When we were there in Oct every CM at our TS restaurants looked at the back of our card which states the # of adults/children on the plan. A couple CM's asked us if we were on the plan, when we answered "yes", they told us that we all needed to use the plan. That may have been to crack down on the paying cash for kids thing, I'm not sure.

Would your MIL and son be able to eat the food on the plan if she can't get a refund? They could use the TS for breakfasts or lunches as well as dinners. Where are they staying? You could still eat dinner with them and just pay cash for your food. Good luck.

 

[kaytieeldr]

However, one of their main selling points is that the credits are yours to use as you see fit during your stay.

That means the Guest (staying three nights for example purposes) can:
= order three table service meals one day, three counter service meals the next day, and three snacks the following day;
or
= order two table service meals one day, one counter service and one table service meal the next day, and two counter service meals the third day;
or
= order a counter service meal the first day, a Signature meal and a snack the second day, and two counter service & one table service meal the third day;
or
any similar combination.

It does not, and never did, mean that Guests can pay $10.99 per night for a child Dining Plan and proceed to use those credits for an adult Signature, Table, or Counter service meal. The only difference now is that Disney, the owner and administrator of the Disney Dining Plan and in response to abuses they have experienced, will now be ENFORCING the RULES of the DDP, as printed.

When we checked in on Tuesday they did not talk about this stuff. The guy said that we could eat all TS service one day or all QS one day

Thank you for posting this. THIS is what Disney means (and always has) when they say "the credits are yours to use as you see fit"

Disney just needs to inform their CMs on how they want the plan to work.

They did, do, and will. The difference effective Monday is that now the system programming will be able to track the usage and prevent abuse.

 

[LizinSTL]

They did, do, and will. The difference effective Monday is that now the system programming will be able to track the usage and prevent abuse.

If and when adult/child credits are separated, there is no reason that a party of 2A/2C couldn't order 2 C cs breakfasts and then 2 A cs lunches to share among the party. Right?? That's using "my" credits as I see fit- that scenario works for my travel party. What about if I chose to use 3 adult CS credits at a time?? As long as I don't go over my travel's alloted adult CS credits, it shouldn't be a problem, right?

 

[bicker]

It does not, and never did, mean that Guests can pay $10.99 per night for a child Dining Plan and proceed to use those credits for an adult Signature, Table, or Counter service meal.

This is really a key point that always gets lost in these discussions. If you pay for child meals, then you should indeed get child meals.