JimMIA
There's more to life than mice...
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2005
We are just back from WDW, having spent 5 days there on the dining plan.
We learned a couple of interesting things using the dining plan for the first time -- including what could be a potential pitfall for prospective users.
Basically, according to the Disney receipts we received -- some of which I forgot to keep, and others which are all $0.00 and would require extensive accounting work I choose not to do -- we "saved" approximately $4 Zillion over the five day period. However, that's $4 Zillion at Disney prices, assuming we would have purchased a whole bunch of stuff we definitely would NOT have paid for. So, I have tried to distill things down to what we REALLY would have done without the dining plan, with some accommodations just for fairness to the DDP, and have come up with an answer...for us.
For us...it worked well.
First of all, there were three of us -- 2 adults and one 4 y/o, which worked out to $434.85 for the five nights.
MY first test is: Did we save money -- not compared to our receipts, but compared to what we would actually have done, based on our two recent previous trips?
Our normal pattern is: we are not breakfast folks, and we often don't eat lunch either. But we usually make up for that with a "nice" dinner at Epcot each night. We also usually do at least one Character meal for DD4goingon24. We do some snacking, but that is usually limited to water and ice cream, so it's not a ton of money in our scheme.
So -- to compare -- I decided the fairest way would be to disregard breakfast entirely (we actually did zero breakfasts), and lunch, and snacks ... and focus on the two things I knew we would do. Nice dinners, and two character meals.
Character meals: We did two, both dinners -- Goofy's Liberate Your Appetite, and 1900 Park Fare. We would highly recommend both to anyone -- the food was good and the character interactions were excellent! Those cost us roughly $90 each, and their value is the same with the dining plan or without. So that's $180 either way.
Epcot: According to my receipts, we spent almost $500 at our three Epcot dinners, but I GUARANTEE you, we would not have spent that if homey had been paying the bill. We ate (in order) at Teppenyaki, Le Cellier, and Coral Reef. I've gone back over the menues, and if we'd dined there under normal circumstances, we would have spent a little over $300...probably about $325.
Net, net? If you add the $180 for character meals and $325 for dinners at Epcot, we would have spent $505. So, in this limited -- really ultra-conservative -- example, we saved roughly $70...not the $4 Zillion Disney claims we saved.
BUT...in addition to what we have listed above, we also used all 15 CS credits, bringing 3 Earl of Sandwich sandwiches home with us, and all 15 snack credits, consuming a bunch of ice cream and water, and still bringing home half a dozen cookies, brownies, etc. And, although eating CS is not normally our style, I can tell you we thoroughly enjoyed almost all of our CS selections (Columbia Harbour, Cosmic Ray's, and the Earl of Sandwich). [I also got fish and chips at England, and that was a truly mediocre use of one CS. Won't do that again -- if only they would accept one CS for a half-yard!]
The one potential snag I noted occurred when DW suddenly decided to be sick on our first full day. She actually stayed home in bed, leaving Girlie and I to demolish MK on our own. The second day, she still wasn't feeling much like eating (except for ice cream and water
), so we had two unused CSs from that day too (DD's only 4, but she's not stupid! If Mommy is eating only ice cream and water...).
We got sandwiches to bring home, but I wonder what Disney Dining would do if someone got sick, and stayed sick, to the point where they really couldn't use their DDP? For longer stays, I'm sure it would work out, but for someone on a short weekend trip, I wonder what they'd do?
We learned a couple of interesting things using the dining plan for the first time -- including what could be a potential pitfall for prospective users.
Basically, according to the Disney receipts we received -- some of which I forgot to keep, and others which are all $0.00 and would require extensive accounting work I choose not to do -- we "saved" approximately $4 Zillion over the five day period. However, that's $4 Zillion at Disney prices, assuming we would have purchased a whole bunch of stuff we definitely would NOT have paid for. So, I have tried to distill things down to what we REALLY would have done without the dining plan, with some accommodations just for fairness to the DDP, and have come up with an answer...for us.
For us...it worked well.
First of all, there were three of us -- 2 adults and one 4 y/o, which worked out to $434.85 for the five nights.
MY first test is: Did we save money -- not compared to our receipts, but compared to what we would actually have done, based on our two recent previous trips?
Our normal pattern is: we are not breakfast folks, and we often don't eat lunch either. But we usually make up for that with a "nice" dinner at Epcot each night. We also usually do at least one Character meal for DD4goingon24. We do some snacking, but that is usually limited to water and ice cream, so it's not a ton of money in our scheme.
So -- to compare -- I decided the fairest way would be to disregard breakfast entirely (we actually did zero breakfasts), and lunch, and snacks ... and focus on the two things I knew we would do. Nice dinners, and two character meals.
Character meals: We did two, both dinners -- Goofy's Liberate Your Appetite, and 1900 Park Fare. We would highly recommend both to anyone -- the food was good and the character interactions were excellent! Those cost us roughly $90 each, and their value is the same with the dining plan or without. So that's $180 either way.
Epcot: According to my receipts, we spent almost $500 at our three Epcot dinners, but I GUARANTEE you, we would not have spent that if homey had been paying the bill. We ate (in order) at Teppenyaki, Le Cellier, and Coral Reef. I've gone back over the menues, and if we'd dined there under normal circumstances, we would have spent a little over $300...probably about $325.
Net, net? If you add the $180 for character meals and $325 for dinners at Epcot, we would have spent $505. So, in this limited -- really ultra-conservative -- example, we saved roughly $70...not the $4 Zillion Disney claims we saved.
BUT...in addition to what we have listed above, we also used all 15 CS credits, bringing 3 Earl of Sandwich sandwiches home with us, and all 15 snack credits, consuming a bunch of ice cream and water, and still bringing home half a dozen cookies, brownies, etc. And, although eating CS is not normally our style, I can tell you we thoroughly enjoyed almost all of our CS selections (Columbia Harbour, Cosmic Ray's, and the Earl of Sandwich). [I also got fish and chips at England, and that was a truly mediocre use of one CS. Won't do that again -- if only they would accept one CS for a half-yard!]
The one potential snag I noted occurred when DW suddenly decided to be sick on our first full day. She actually stayed home in bed, leaving Girlie and I to demolish MK on our own. The second day, she still wasn't feeling much like eating (except for ice cream and water
), so we had two unused CSs from that day too (DD's only 4, but she's not stupid! If Mommy is eating only ice cream and water...). We got sandwiches to bring home, but I wonder what Disney Dining would do if someone got sick, and stayed sick, to the point where they really couldn't use their DDP? For longer stays, I'm sure it would work out, but for someone on a short weekend trip, I wonder what they'd do?
) and are doing it again in Sept. 
