New to WDW and DD

[Cbowman]

I've been reading these threads now for a week and I'm embarrassed to say, I'm very confused. We are a Disneyland family and will be making our first trip to WDW soon. We are DVC members and saw the "purchase Disney Dining" link when we made our reservations. I have three questions.

1. If you are DVC member, do you see the value in a DD plan? I'm trying to figure out how many meals we'll be eating in our room. Also, how realistic is it to get back to your room for those meals?

2. Which dining plan worked best for you? We are a family of 5 and in the past have used all of our dining vouchers.

3. Years ago before we were DVC members we bought a DP for Disney through Costco. I loved it but it seams WDW is much more complicated. Do the meal plans come as vouchers booklets like Disneyland or do you really have to stick to the per day schedules?

Thank you so much everyone. I know these have probably been asked before but I'm feeling anxious about what to do.

Cam

[sharonabe]

Originally Posted by Cbowman

I've been reading these threads now for a week and I'm embarrassed to say, I'm very confused. We are a Disneyland family and will be making our first trip to WDW soon. We are DVC members and saw the "purchase Disney Dining" link when we made our reservations. I have three questions.

1. If you are DVC member, do you see the value in a DD plan? I'm trying to figure out how many meals we'll be eating in our room. Also, how realistic is it to get back to your room for those meals?

2. Which dining plan worked best for you? We are a family of 5 and in the past have used all of our dining vouchers.

3. Years ago before we were DVC members we bought a DP for Disney through Costco. I loved it but it seams WDW is much more complicated. Do the meal plans come as vouchers booklets like Disneyland or do you really have to stick to the per day schedules?

Thank you so much everyone. I know these have probably been asked before but I'm feeling anxious about what to do.

Cam

1. Getting back to your room depends on where you're staying and where you're playing for any given day, but it will still take up some of your time to go back and forth. If you're planning on returning in the afternoons anyway for a pool/nap break, then you could figure on eating a meal at that time.

WDW DDP is VERY different from the voucher plan at DL. For ease, let's just talk about the regular DDP. Each person gets 1 Table Service (TS), 1 Quick Service (QS), and 1 snack per night that you stay. You can use these meals in any combination you want. If you want to eat 2 TS meals in one day, you can. If you want to eat 5 QS meals in one day, you can. They are yours to use whenever you want up until midnight of the day you check out.

[Cbowman]

Thank you! I just printed out the 2013 restaurant guide. I think this might help in the planning.

As of right now, we have reservations at SSR Treehouse Villas. I'm not sure if that's where we'll end up. I've read it's difficult to get to and from since you have two transfers. That being said, we might have breakfast in but look to the dining plan for the rest.

[momto3pirates]

I have to say while having a full kitchen sounds great, we have never come back to the room for lunch. It just takes too long. Walking to the bus stop, waiting on the next bus, and travel time may be an hour. Totally different than at DL where you can just walk back to your room.
We do eat a good breakfast in the room and love it for snacks when we get back to the room. We have stopped using the DDP as the prices have gone up and benefits have gone down.

[TDC Nala]

There are no vouchers on the WDW plan, like those used at DL. All dining credits are coded onto your party's KTTW cards and redeemed at the restaurants when the card is swiped.

[6disneykids]

Since we are a family of 8 (we have 6 kids), we can only fit into a 2 bedroom villa, and we still do DDP even though there is a full size kitchen. We do have things for quick breakfasts in our villa, and use the fridge for water and left over deserts etc. Having the DDP is a vacation for me from figuring out meals, and a vacation for my husband only paying for food once. We are very cost conscious and would not enjoy or vacation as much, if at all if we were working out of a vacation envelope of cash or gift card that showed a decreasing $ amount.

[Cbowman]

The last few trips we've done, we've tried to use the kitchen as much as possible. Especially on our trip to Aulani. But this time around, I think we'll do the same. Just small stuff for breakfast and store anything along the way. Thanks for the reply!