Thanks all for some clarification...You are right the Princess 1/2 is the 26th - we are arriving Thursday 2/23 - leaving late on Tuesday 2/28 - so the present "codes" would not work for us. As for the dinning plan - how would you figure out if it is worth it - we are two adult women only - (not bringing husbands or children!!) We know we want to have a minimum of two "nice" dinners out - We made a ressie for the YC Steak house for the 26th pm. Also we made our POP ressie through AAA - so what # would I call to add the dining pkg if it is good for us - and where do I find the cost info on that? Thanks for your help! I am sooo excited about this trip and the "possibility" of crossing the finish line - we are planning on walking (hopefully quickly) the entire race.
First, congrats on choosing the Princess. It was my first race and I LOVED it. I'm sure you will, too!
If you want, you can try the math the way I did it
here to see if it works for you. We (just me and my DBF) had the option of free dining or room only so I took the full price of the room we would book and figured out (before taxes) what the room only discount value was (400.20).
I know for 6 nights we'd get 6 table service credits per person so I found the 6 places we were planning to eat. I looked at their menus on the Dis database and figured out what we'd choose roughly to get a total of 364.26 spent at table services. That leaves a 35$ difference between the room only and dining before I factor in the 6 counter service meals we'd get and 6 snacks. It would be easy to spend the additional 35 on those things so free dining was better for us.
The dining plan for 2012 is 51.54/person/night for value season and 53.54/person/night for peak season. Free dining with Pop Century if the quick service plan only which is less money and costs 16.55/person/night to upgrade to the full dining plan (includes table service). You would just pay the 16.55 x people x nights difference, not the whole thing, if you have free dining with pop.
I believe if you booked through AAA, you'd have to call them to have it added since the reservation is in their name, not yours? I'm not 100% sure on that since we don't have AAA here and I prefer to book my own trips so I can deal directly with Disney when I need to.
There is a Dining Plan forum in the Trip Planning area on here that has a lot of helpful posts about the various costs of the plans.
I think if you only want 1-2 table services, the dining plan might not be the best choice. If you want to have one a day, the reg plan is good for you to look into as an option. Keep in mind you can use them however you want within your stay so you can have three table services one day (if you have three nights of credits) and not have any other days.
The e-mail has been out for about 10-15 minutes and there are already about a hundred threads about it started. You can check out one of those, but basically it will be:
Thanks for posting it
