Deluxe Dining Plan 2017 - Less expensive??

[DISNEY1975]

Just read this on another site.

Is it a typo? Did it go down to $103.53 per night for adults?

2016 Cost
$115.08 per night ages 10 and up
$35.49 per night ages 3 to 9
This cost is added to the regular cost of a Magic Your Way Vacation Package.

2017 Cost
$103.57 per night ages 10 and up
$37.62 per night ages 3 to 9
This cost is added to the regular cost of a Magic Your Way Vacation Package.

 

[Dashzap]

I heard it was about $106/night/adult for the Deluxe plan in 2017.

 

[plutolovr]

Just read this on another site.

Is it a typo? Did it go down to $103.53 per night for adults?

2016 Cost
$115.08 per night ages 10 and up
$35.49 per night ages 3 to 9
This cost is added to the regular cost of a Magic Your Way Vacation Package.

2017 Cost
$103.57 per night ages 10 and up
$37.62 per night ages 3 to 9
This cost is added to the regular cost of a Magic Your Way Vacation Package.

This is correct...the Deluxe Dining went down in price for 2017.

 

[Faldred]

Yes it did go down, which makes it an even better deal if you're the type who wants to eat, say, a table service and a signature each day. Assuming a $4 snack credit value (and ignoring the mug entirely) the break-even point of a DxDP meal credit for 2016 is almost exactly $30 compared to pre-tax menu prices. Very, very easy to break even or better without even trying.

 

[GillianP1301]

Very interesting. This is making my decision this year to upgrade the DxDP or not a tough one. We have done deluxe for the past 3 trips and really enjoyed it, but after this last one, I was starting to feel like I was missing out on some of the QS and snack options in the parks. I booked the bounce back with free dining and haven't upgraded yet. I put together a meal plan of the places I think we'll go to next trip figuring in both QS and TS, looked at menus and figured out what we'd most likely order (some restaurants I will only want an appetizer and dessert & no entree, for example). When I totalled it all up (including adding in the mug & snacks), I was coming out just slightly ahead if I upgraded to DxDP and that would be with leaving 8 credits unused and not worrying about maxing out the value with 3 courses at every meal and with 25% of my used credits on QS. Now with the price decrease, I end up in the good by about $150 by upgrading.

 

[Faldred]

I break it down a bit more in another post, but the short version is that it's really easy to save money on DxDP compared to cash prices, assuming that's what you would order in both cases, even with not always getting an appetizer or dessert.

And since "break even" assumes averages, you could "waste" a credit on CS here and there as long as you were a bot more optimal elsewhere. It's much more forgiving that basic DDP or QSDP in terms of having to be careful to not lose "value".

 

[Mellie08]

Well, that is exciting! We just booked our trip for January and are doing the Deluxe Dining Plan again. We had a lot of success this past January with our routine of doing a breakfast (usually a character one) and then a Signature Restaurant for dinner. We're looking forward to trying Tiffins at Animal Kingdom this year!

 

[GillianP1301]

I break it down a bit more in another post, but the short version is that it's really easy to save money on DxDP compared to cash prices, assuming that's what you would order in both cases, even with not always getting an appetizer or dessert.

And since "break even" assumes averages, you could "waste" a credit on CS here and there as long as you were a bot more optimal elsewhere. It's much more forgiving that basic DDP or QSDP in terms of having to be careful to not lose "value".

ITA and I didn't actually realize that until I just did the calculations for my upcoming trip. I was assuming that I needed nearly all my credits to be TS and to use them all to get value, but that's not true at all. The plan I have on paper for my upcoming trip (1 adult/1 child) has me using 18 credits on buffet/family style meals, 12 credits on QS meals & 16 credits on TS meals (most of which either don't include either the appetizer or dessert) for a total of 46 used credits out of 54 available. I assume 2 snacks @ 4/day + the refillable mug (both of these I would spend whether OOP or on dining plan) and I still end up about $100 cheaper getting the deluxe plan. The biggest savings is having a 9 year old paying child prices, but ordering off of the adult menu for several of the TS meals. Once he hits 10 years old, I think it will be a lot harder to get the value out of the deluxe plan.

 

[sharonabe]

The biggest savings is having a 9 year old paying child prices, but ordering off of the adult menu for several of the TS meals. Once he hits 10 years old, I think it will be a lot harder to get the value out of the deluxe plan.

Just a heads up. There was a thread last week with one guest saying they were NOT allowed to get an adult meal for the kids even on the DxDDP. Granted that is only one report out of many, but it was on a trip within the last month. They asked at several places, but were told that kids had to order off the kid's menu. Hopefully, this was not the new normal. Please come back and let us know how it works with you.

 

[GillianP1301]

Just a heads up. There was a thread last week with one guest saying they were NOT allowed to get an adult meal for the kids even on the DxDDP. Granted that is only one report out of many, but it was on a trip within the last month. They asked at several places, but were told that kids had to order off the kid's menu. Hopefully, this was not the new normal. Please come back and let us know how it works with you.

I had no issues with the child ordering off of adult menu when we were there end August/early Sept, but I have heard that some restaurants will not do it and it seems to usually be non-Disney owned places. Definitely something I'll be keeping an eye on though and if they do stop doing that (more consistently) before our trip next August, then that would enough for me to not do the deluxe plan, which will be fine because that was my original plan anyway.

 

[frannn]

Thanks so much for pointing this out- we love to eat well on vacation but have DD14 who gets full quickly on chicken nuggets. For this reason, we stopped upgrading to Deluxe once she became a Disney adult. We've been stretching the DP credits each year by paying OOP for kid's meals and a few extra TS, plus a Walmart run for breakfast foods and extras. It would be an extra luxury for us to get apps and TS for all meals (since the food is a large draw on our trip). Still undecided cause we'll still be spending an additional $1000 over the OOP saved, plus about $350 extra in tips. We just bought APs for the 13 months promo (to go with our free dining BB), and the 20% food discount was an extra bonus. But...it would be awesome to do the CA grill brunch and other new things without having to worry about TS credits...but...we do want to be hungry enough to use our snacks for F&W this year... hence my dilemma. Thoughts?