been asked 1000x

[TygerHawks]

I am currently contemplating the Quick Service plan, only due to the room discount for traveling in early June. Going with the wife, a 14 year old son, and my daughter will be celebrating her 5th birthday in the park. Decided against the deluxe because I don't see us using that many table service meals, though we want to do at least one character dining on her birthday. Seems like most of the responses here touch on the deluxe dining plan, are the opinions similar for the quick service plan?

[LovesTimone]

For us it has always been worth it. We love paying up-front then we can relax and not worry about cost. Whether it is our whole family or just DH and I we prefer this. We are on vacation and DH does not want to worry about the bill, or the hassle.

We like DDXDP, as we really enjoy 2TS meals, and character meals, the mug is always an added plus for us. Then there are snack credits.... pastry or cupcakes, candy at Goofy's ,

We bring water, soda, and sports drinks with us, I can not use a snack credit for a bottle of water, when I can get fudge or a mickey ice cream

With all that said, I am heading to the WDW at the end of the month to take my mom for her birthday, and out 1st mother daughter trip, I ran the number and for my mom and I it would be a waste, she just doesn't eat that much and is not a adventurous eater. As a matter of fact I really had to research the menu's before making ADR's.

[XGrumpy1]

I have never done the plan. This next trip I am considering the plan because I will be treating my sister, niece, nephew and their 2 boys. If I do not have the plan, I can see it being "can we have 3 checks" or "I will get this one".

Using the plan will be a better choice for me in this situation.

[lovesdumbo]

Before my 3 kids turned 10 the DDP worked well for us. Now that they are all over 10 it isn't worth it. I prefer to pay out of pocket and order exactly what I want and not worry about wasting credits.

[Naughtilus]

Tried it on one trip.

Good: convenience, too much food makes for a tasty snack later
Not so good: too much food, reservations reduce spontaneity, most likely not a good value (depends on what you order

[pawprints1116]

I've done the fly by the seat of my pants type of eating, and the DDP in the past few years... and I enjoyed them both...

Now the fly by the seat of my pants, is more my personality. When it was for my graduation from college with just my mom and I, we did it this way. It was laid back and enjoyable.

Now, I tried the DP with my DBF last year and it was pretty awesome. I ate at places I normally would not of, and got a lot of food (we ate pb&j for breakfasts).

Now, we got the one last year for free. We're getting the one we're doing next month dramatically reduced (some sort of deal).
Was that worth it? Absolutely.

I'm honestly okay either way. If it were up to me, I'd still do the fly-by. But these things are important to DBF, and he enjoys the sit downs at Disney. And since I'm earning a masters, I just like that I could budget my price for vacation prior to going.

Just my 2 cents, of course!

[backpacktwang]

I haven't been yet (going in March), but I priced it out and it is going to be slightly less expensive for us to do the plan. But we like to eat and have expensive taste, lol. And it isn't saving much... less than $100 for sure.

[alc571]

From what I understand, it's worth it if its free but not if you have to pay for it. We didn't buy it on our last trip. We got a room discount instead. The amount we saved on the room, we used to buy our food. We aren't three-meal-a-day kind of family. We are snackers. And we like to have a meal or two offsite. So the plan doesn't really work for us.

[chartle]

Originally Posted by alc571

From what I understand, it's worth it if its free but not if you have to pay for it. We didn't buy it on our last trip. We got a room discount instead. The amount we saved on the room, we used to buy our food. We aren't three-meal-a-day kind of family. We are snackers. And we like to have a meal or two offsite. So the plan doesn't really work for us.

Even if its free it may not be the best deal. It depends on how many, the make up of the group, how they eat and at what level resort they stay at.

Two people staying deluxe would probably pay less if there was also a room discount offered.

You still have to do the math.

[DisNikki]

Check out this other DIS post: http://www.disboards.com/showthread....ng+spreadsheet

It has a link to a youtube video and an awesome spreadsheet where you can actually compare the dining plans to out of pocket. For us it was within a couple of dollars when putting in where we thought we would eat (but we are big on character meals). It has a bunch of settings like what percentage you generally tip, how often you plan to order drinks (juice, soda, etc) and if you generally order the most expensive/least expensive/average menu items. Then it shows which meals are best to use your credits on (based on per credit price) and lets you quickly choose other restaurants and see how that affects the bottom line. I found that in order to truly compare I had to put in two mock schedules - one where we ate all the character meals we wanted and the other where we ate more counter service. The character meal schedule was within a couple bucks and the more heavily counter service option was about $100 cheaper if we went out of pocket. We're choosing to dump the dining plan mainly so we don't have to worry about the details and we're doing a mix of TS/CS.

Hope that helps

P.S. It also has a tab of the spreadsheet to calculate whether free dining is a good option. I didn't check that tab out too much since it doesn't apply to us but I'm sure others will benefit