So how much leftovers did we end up with? On our final day, we ended up carrying
10-12 takeout boxes by the end of the night!!! Thankfully, our hotels over the next 2 nights had fridges. Since we had no more dining plan and were back to paying OOP, this wasn't too bad at all.
This was the haul. There was enough for:
1 lunch for 3 people
2 breakfasts
Lots of snacking!
Day 4 Breakfast: DS and DD ate leftover desserts - the
chocolate cake from The Dining Room and
cheesecake from Turf Club. They were GREAT right out of the fridge! I popped the
Bread Pudding from
Turf Club into the microwave. DH ate some snacks he had.
Day 4 lunch: I made DS and DD lunch from the leftover
Crispy Free-Range Chicken Breast from Turf Club (DS had left a lot of it the night before). I had cut it up into thin strips at the restaurant before packing it. Heated up and stuffed into the
leftover buns from the Turf Club, the kids enjoyed their lunch. DH had leftovers from his
veggie plate from Turf Club and along with his nuts that he brought from home, had enough for lunch. I walked over (ended up being under 10 mins) to Disney Springs to get my favourite
Holiday Sandwich from the
Earl of Sandwich. It is SOOOOO good!!!! The rest of the family were happy lazing around the hotel room and were grateful for a quiet morning. Since I like to go, go, go, this worked out great for me to get in a nice morning walk.
After this, we packed up the rest of our leftovers and moved on to our next hotel - the gorgeous Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress! (we stayed in 6 hotels over the 8 nights we were in Orlando! Yes, I know that's crazy - but it sure saved $$ since I was doing a mix of OOP and free hotel points stays. It ended up being easy transitions and all of us found the multiple moves easy to manage). Thankfully we still had a fridge at the next place since we brought along:
- Cheesecake from Bongos Cuban Cafe
- Strawberry Shortcake from Turf Club
- Tres Leche (Three Milk Cake) from Bongos Cuban Cafe
- Churros from Bongos Cuban Cafe
- Chips from Pop Century Food Court
My DD ate the cheesecake and I had the strawberry shortcake for breakfast the next morning. I had the Tres Leche and some churros for snacks over the next day. Our friends did help with half the churros when they visited us since none of us are massive churros fans. They were fine, but a bit stale by then.
So would we do it again??
All in all, it was VERY expensive and I highly doubt it saved us $$. I think it used to be more worth it - but at $115.08 per person per night for all 4 Disney adults, its hard to save money on it. Normally, I only like doing things that save us money. But for this particular trip, DH and I decided we really wanted to indulge and honestly, we have a hard time ordering what we really want when we stare at menu prices. I know its not entirely rational but we are so used to being frugal that it is hard. The Deluxe plan cost us $920.64 + tips for just 2 nights (3 days) for 4 Disney adults. It was a nutty amount of money. To be fair, it was also supposed to pay for Ohana dinner for our dear friends - which was about $200. That was mostly negated when "Dad" insisted on paying for us the next night *sigh*.
I had crunched the numbers. And when I say crunched, I have multiple spreadsheets detailing every conceivable scenario. Including paying for
DDP for just 2 people, 3 people, staying onsite only one night, or doing regular DDP. In the end, even though this wasn't rational and I KNEW we would pay a little bit more than if we went OOP, we chose to go deluxe. We had a lot of stuff going on at home with DH's health issues and we wanted to be ridiculously over-the-top this trip. And honestly? We really enjoyed ourselves. It was a lot of fun playing around with 16 snack credits. And ordering apps AND entrees AND desserts was awesome.
I was COMPLETELY happy with our food choices on Day 1 and 2 and would do it again even OOP. It would have been more reasonable with less waste if our friends had not paid for us the next night - but there you have it. We were only supposed to have 5 deluxe credits left for our 3rd day, a completely reasonable amount of food for the 4 of us. If I had anticipated this, we would not have gone with the deluxe dining plan as we did waste a lot on our last day.
All in all, I don't regret our choice. Our entire 8 nights' worth of eating out (including Universal, our offsite stays, and airport food) totaled $1642.35, which is within our typical $200/day indulgent vacation food budget. Next time though, we may be brave enough to try completely OOP.
I would LOVE to bring my brother, his wife, and my toddler niece to Disney along with my mom for a lengthy 2 week trip. I've been crunching numbers and Disney's prices have gone up so much that a 2 week vacation is a lot more now than it used to be, even if we did get free dining. More than likely, we will end up at an offsite villa, cooking the bulk of our food and only having a few onsite TS meals.