msce2
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2008
So, was the DDP worth it and would we do it again???
Well, I don't know and I don't know!
I always come back from WDW and say - I know we can eat way cheaper than the $700 we spent on the DDP. But then a few weeks later, like now, I start thinking about all the WDW restaurants we want to go back to and all the ones that we want to try and think that the DDP is worth it.
We paid around $700 for the DDP for our 7 night/8 day trip. Nearest I can tell from totalling all the receipts and guessing on a few things, it looks like everything we ate totalled $964. So when you look at it that way then yes it was totally worth it! But if you look at it another way it is not. If we weren't on the DDP we would not have gone to all those places, therefore we would not have felt tied to ADR's all week, we would not have gotten dessert with every meal, and we certainly would not have bought all those snacks to bring home. So I guess it's all in how you look at it and it's a toss up!
I'm sure we could go and eat for less than $700. But we would lose most of our TS meals by doing so. We would probably only do about 2-3 TS meals for the week if we did not get the DDP. So, is that a bad thing? I don't know. We really always feel rushed trying to make it to all the ADR's. Honestly I would be happy with a TS dinner every other day.
It was definitely worth it for all the character meals we have done over the past 3 trips. I think we've been to nearly everyone of them! But now that we have done them and the kids are starting to get over that, that's another thing to take into consideration.
So those are just my thoughts. Not sure if we will do the DDP next time or not!
First off, thank you for your reviews!
I wanted to say that i came to this same conclusion. I think when you are planning you have to look at what you would do WITHOUT the dining plan. Then decide if it's worthwhile. If you find that you would save money then you can plan to make the DDP worthwhile. I was not considering doing the DDP but a few days ago sat down and added everything up and realized that we would in fact save money by doing the DDP. (We were doing a TS meal every day and all of them were at least 10.99 per child) So it would be like getting a CS and Snack for the kids for free every day.
The hard part is now that I know we are doing the DDP I want to change a few of our ADR's from breakfasts to dinners, and I can't get reasonable ADR's.
Assuming we have the option of FD this trip, I was thinking about how to work the meals kwim? Last time, we did not have any dining plan, so everything was OOP - and it wasn't cheap, let me tell you 
I printed the menus of some of the ones I thought we'd all enjoy and that made the choosing even harder! 
