I don't know that I agree with you. This August is the first time that we will be staying on property and actually eligible for the dining plan, so I looked into it a LOT. We usually buy and cook some meals to keep costs down, but DH said he actually kind of liked the idea of just getting food wherever we were + ADRs etc. So I said we could try eating in that style. For me, although the cost was significantly more than we usually pay for food, one of the attractive features was being able to pay in advance, because I am the budget worrier so the idea of pre-paying and not having to track how much we were spending on food to make sure it wasn't getting out of hand was
really attractive. So attractive that I was willing to pay more for it; both way, way more than what we normally spend on food at WDW (by eating out more than we otherwise would) and a bit more than we would spend on food if we didn't have it pre-purchased, because we would probably end up ordering full meals each instead of sometimes sharing etc.
Here is the problem: we are a family of five and we do eat out once a day on vacation although previously it was a mix of on-site and off-site. When we eat out, we usually get 2-3 appetizers and share 1-2 desserts. My husband usually partakes of an alcoholic libation. When we eat QS, we tend to share 3 meals among us and make up the difference with extra park snacks. When I looked at the
DDP, it was not the cost of the plan that shooed me away, it was not the fact that the plan would cost more than the same food OOP, and it wasn't the idea that we would be leaving large numbers of desserts or QS credits uneaten. What shooed me away was that on a daily basis I would still be paying so much OOP for the extra snacks (that we used instead of QS credits) and the extra appetizers (that sometimes would have been a soup or salad) and the beverages that the entire carefree aspect of having it paid in advance would be lost.
I'll have to go back and look again, and I'm still not sure that we'll do it. But I'll tell you that it wasn't the cost that shooed me away from the DDP because I was totally willing to pay a premium over the cost of the food for the convenience of having it pre-paid. It was the lack of flexibility, much of which is addressed with these changes, that made us decide not to do it.
It's one of the things that irks me about the dining plan, especially QS credits when the kids are really young. It's just WAY too much dang food, especially deserts and drinks at counter service restaurants. I remember our first year with the dining plan (free dining) throwing away, almost full, big cups of pop and lots of food at QS locations because we EACH ordered a whole meal. Way too much. We have since learned to use only 3 or so QS credits for lunch for instance, and bank the others for breakfasts, or a late night meal at the resort. (like sharing a small pizza or something by the pool).
Luckily, I don't travel until Sept, so hopefully, this will all be much clearer by then.
