Anyone else NOT make ADRs ?

[lustergirl]

oh a kind of off topic thing...I noticed some of you mentioned you did ADRs with free dining? how wonderful that would be to get that! When is Disney likely to offer free dining? ( if at all anymore from what Ive heard)

Rumor has it that a free dining promo will run the end of August through September. For confirmation go to the discount threads under the resorts tab. There is lots of information flying around there.

To answer your original question about ADR's when my sons were younger we used to have a dinner ressie every night. it was a great time to sit down as a family and eat dinner, doesn't happen much at home anymore. No that I go solo or just with the hubby we may make 2 ressies for all trip. Too much for and we like to be able to eat when we want and not be confined by that schedule.

 

[china mom]

oh a kind of off topic thing...I noticed some of you mentioned you did ADRs with free dining? how wonderful that would be to get that! When is Disney likely to offer free dining? ( if at all anymore from what Ive heard)

Every so often, Disney offers free dining - at non peak times when they are trying to fill the hotels - usually in the fall.

The free dining promotion cannot be combined with any other room discounts so it is not always the best deal. You have to do the math to see what works best for your family.

 

[leebee]

If I was doing a budget trip, I'd skip the QSDP completely. $42 a day for an adult is a LOT to pay for two counter service meals and a snack. Let's say you spend $5 for your snack (which is a lot for a snack…)- you'd have to spend about $18 per meal to break even. PLUS you still need to deal with breakfast. I didn't deduct for the mug, but even still that's only a couple of dollars a day. SO… per day if it's $3 for the mug and $5 for the snack, you'd have to spend $17 per counter service meal, per person. Not such a savings, especially if you aren't going to eat dessert with both of your meals, or if you have your own water bottle to drink from!

 

[pepe of ohio]

We were never interested in the dining plan, free or otherwise...we do not want to run our vacation on a time schedule ....

We eat when and where we want and TS meals never interested us at all..

We also prefer the room only discounts... It's a better savings in the long run...

 

[pdarrah]

We usually only book a couple of TS meals per trip. It's mostly that it is just too much food and takes too much time! We enjoy our couple "special" meals, but the 1 time we tried the dining plan we felt like we were constantly eating and by the end of the trip (only 6 days) we were totally sick of eating so much food. We are a family of 3 (Myself, DH & DS14)

We rarely eat 3 full meals. Usually we end up snacking for one of them. ie, Breakfast: muffin + fruit and then CS for Lunch & Dinner. or full Breakfast at food court, snack in the middle of the day and early Dinner. Sometimes, if we don't feel that hungry, DH & I will split a meal (I used to split w/DS but now that he's a teen, he eats EVERYTHING!) as many of the WDW counter service meals are huge.

You would think the CSDP would be ideal for us, but I've done the math repeatedly (comparing to actual receipts from trips) and it would NEVER save us money. We almost never have deserts. (In general, WDW deserts tend to be blah & not worth the money or calories)

 

[powellrj]

The last time we ate a table service meal at WDW was when we had free dining and it was the old free dining where the appetizers and tips were included. Its been a few years!!

We will do counter service meals, but it annoys me to pay that much for so-so food. A few years back we spent the day at Epcot and had 2 different counter service meals and all I kept thinking was how much we spent to eat a meal on a curb. We couldn't even get a table for our fish and chips because all of the tables were full of people NOT EATING and just VISITING grrrrr.

Now we will have a nice breakfast before we get there, have lunch in the parks and then get a nice dinner off-site in the evening. Its a win-win for us, but I do know that most people don't feel that way.

 

[Bullseye]

We do 4 ADR's over a 11 day trip. Each family member gets to pick one although I usually sway them towards the buffet choices. I couldn't do WDW without some ADR's, the eating is probably the thing I look forward to most on vacation.

That being said we always have a full kitchen (DVC), so we load up on groceries when we arrive and plan several yummy meals for the room.

 

[artemis4]

I don't mean this to be misunderstood, but if my budget was that tight I would be SO freaking nervous the whole trip. I'd wait another 6 months to save so I wouldn't worry, but I ADORE a number of qs options (hello Tangerine Cafe and Yorkshire Fish Shop!) so just eating qs wouldn't bother me at all Having to worry about it would bother me a great deal though.

I do understand what you are saying. I'm replying only because you may not be completely understanding the perspective of some of us who say that the they don't do TS at Disney due to cost.

For us, it is a cost/benefit analysis. For a meal out to be worth over $100 to our family, the food had better be perfectly prepared and something that we cannot eat locally in our kitchen or a friend's kitchen on a regular basis. Our kids ages means that kids menu choices are only open to one child, and he'd rather share my shawarma or get a tuna roll than eat a chicken nugget.

Honestly, last time we were in Orlando in '12, we stopped at a Bravo grocery to get some soda that we cannot get anywhere near our home. While there, we picked up a massive quantity of Cuban food from the hot service food counter there. My older kids still talk about the arroz amarillo, potaje and piccadillo we ate from there because it was so good. Total cost to feed 7 people that meal was $30.

For our family to eat a single TS meal consisting of only entrees and tip at Disney prices on the adult menu, we are looking at a cost of over $150 unless we share entrees.

For our family, the benefit of what we receive in return for the cost of Disney TS is not justified. We consciously choose other options, but it is not due to any budget stress. I set a generous food budget for all of our trips, and we yet to even spend that budget on any trip we have done.

 

[jm106]

I don't mean this to be misunderstood, but if my budget was that tight I would be SO freaking nervous the whole trip. I'd wait another 6 months to save so I wouldn't worry, but I ADORE a number of qs options (hello Tangerine Cafe and Yorkshire Fish Shop!) so just eating qs wouldn't bother me at all Having to worry about it would bother me a great deal though.

I think its important to remember, its not necessarily that ppl cannot afford to budget for more money but how they choose to budget on vacation. We like to vacation 2X per year so this trip will be the second and longer trip then our summer trip.
I can allocate more money but this is what we feel comfortable spending if we can reduce some this year. We added MNSSHP this trip as well so more $ for that. I am not worried about but I do wish our money was limitless.
I just find that for some vacations/vacationers, this is an easy place to reduce cost and still get to have a great WDW vacation. I admit to falling into the trap of reading too much about ADRs and the fun families have eating at certain TS but then I remind myself, WDW is so much more.
Heck, friends we are traveling with find it SO worrisome to have to make ADRs and plan meals. They go e/o year and have never done an adr(but I did talk her into Akershus for DD princesses.)

 

[pktbMouse]

I think its important to remember, its not necessarily that ppl cannot afford to budget for more money but how they choose to budget on vacation.

Yes! this exactly...its not that we dont have more money to do the ADRs for our week in May at Disney..but if we did do them we would be sacrificing our week at Panama City beach in August. We would never go on vacation with the budget so tight as not to have some kind of emergency money in case anything happened. Its just how we choose to vacation to let us do another vacation in the summer, thus we have to have a budget. ( and pray to the Disney gods we stick to it LOL) Having said that...like some other posters have said..we just cant find $150 a night on our budget to to TS so QS does us just fine

 

[DisneyFan2013]

I feel like the odd person out here...everyone seems to make their plans and include ADRs for about every day of their trip. I was wondering if anyone else is like our family and simply cannot afford table service meals every night of their vacation? We always go to Disney on such a tight budget its only ever fast food places for us. Dont get me wrong I would love to do an ADR..just once but they way our finances always are we barely make it to Disney on a tight shoestring. It does not affect us in any way negative..the kids have their fav places..Pecos Bills, Pizzafari, Star Traders and we always have a great time...Im just blown away sometimes at the number of ADRs people have...sometimes 2 per day tell me we are not alone??

On my last two 4-night trips, I only did one ADR per trip (although I had made others but ended up not using them). I'm currently planning a 5-night trip and I'm thinking of making 3-4 ADRs. No more than one per day though. I'm going during the Food and Wine Festival, so that along with other counter service options should suffice.

 

[keys2kingdom]

We're trying a different approach this year and only scheduling 1 ADR for the whole 11 day trip. I'm getting sort of worn out on the whole WDW dining scene and quite frankly scheduling an ADR for each dinner was getting too stressful anyway. Day-of availability or CS is my plan for this trip.

We'll see how that goes....

 

[DisneyFan2013]

On my last two 4-night trips, I only did one ADR per trip (although I had made others but ended up not using them). I'm currently planning a 5-night trip and I'm thinking of making 3-4 ADRs. No more than one per day though. I'm going during the Food and Wine Festival, so that along with other counter service options should suffice.

On second thought, I'm not going to make any ADRs because the restaurants I like aren't that popular and I don't want to be locked in if my plans change. I just checked and I could've made last minute reservations for today if I wanted to, so that's encouraging. I think this new cancellation policy might be a good thing after all!