Meal Plan or No Meal Plan?

That depends on a lot of variables. Are you looking to save money? Convenience? Prepaying for your food? Do you have young children? Do you plan to do a lot of character meals? Do you drink alcohol? eat desserts regularly? snack between meals? Are you eligible for any dining discounts (Disney Visa? DVC? AP holder?)

Everyone is different. What works for one person won't work for another. No one can give you a definitive answer, especially without more details.
Thanks, everyone. We have 4 adults and 4 kids in the party and are looking to have several character dining meals. My thought, from watching the videos associated with this website, is that the extra money we're paying is basically for the privilege of meeting the characters inside without waiting in line. I don't mind planning a bunch of stuff in advance, but even 110+ days out there appears to be a lot of people preparing more than I.

I appreciate all the input. Thank you.
 
We used to do the dining plan but won’t do it now unless it is free. My sister and I often share an entree or get kids meals. I usually only book one or two TS meals per trip anyway.
 
I like it. I feel like I am not spending money that way and don't get that depressing bill at the end. We typically use a snack credit for a breakfast item. The other snack usually mid day for something yummy. Then our 2 meals a day. I just like being able to tap my wrist band and not see the charges add up! Maybe I spend more/less - I honestly have never taken the time to add it up!
 
I'm going for 7 nights in October with DD15 and DD13. I earn Disney gift cards through rewards programs so they are "free" and use them to pay for our dining. We have the following meals planned..

HDDR (Cat 1), Jiko dinner, Yachtsman Dinner, Sanaa lunch, 50's PTC lunch, Splitsville (DVC Member night dinner), and Boma breakfast. The total cost for those meals (including gratuity and my TIW discount) is about $875. I have another $350 budgeted ($50/day) for counter-service meals and snacks since we eat very light around our "main" meals and we will have breakfast each day in our room. That brings our total dining cost to about $1225. I plan to bring about $1250 in gift cards so our dining will be "pre-paid".

Now, compare that to the dining plan. We wouldn't be able to do the Splitsville member night, but we could still eat dinner at Splitsville (1 credit). In order to eat the same meals, we would have to do the DxDDP since we have 10 TS credits worth of meals. For 7 nights, the DxDDP would cost me $2441.25...and that does not include the tips! So I would have to pay TWICE as much money to get the dining plan and I would not get anything more than what I already need. Yes, I would get a LOT more food...but I don't NEED any more food. I see no reason to spend an extra $1500 just to run around trying to get my money's worth on extra ADR's or eating myself silly on food that I might not want.

I would suggest looking at the TS meals that you would like to eat. Look at the menus and choose what you would realistically order. Put together the budget and then see if a dining plan would include those meals. Then compare the prices. If you can come out ahead by purchasing the dining plan (not likely unless you have children under 9 and your doing buffets), then do it. More than likely, you will find that you will come out ahead by buying Disney gift cards and using those to buy your meals a la carte. (Check out the Disney Gift Cards thread here for ideas on how to get cheap/free gift cards) If someone gets sick or just isn't hungry, you don't waste credits. When we have money left over, we let the kids splurge on an extra souvenir or treat before we go home. If there's a lot left (on my last trip, I had over $100 left!), I just keep it until the next trip.
 


What everyone else said! If you haven't already done the math yourself, then you are probably not making out very good on the plan and are at best breaking even.
 
Thanks, everyone. We have 4 adults and 4 kids in the party and are looking to have several character dining meals. My thought, from watching the videos associated with this website, is that the extra money we're paying is basically for the privilege of meeting the characters inside without waiting in line. I don't mind planning a bunch of stuff in advance, but even 110+ days out there appears to be a lot of people preparing more than I.

I appreciate all the input. Thank you.
If your kids (and adults!) want to meet characters, than character dining is the way to do it. You have to eat anyways and this way, you get dedicated character interaction without having to wait in line and you get to eat a nice meal in the process. On our first trip, the kids were 2 and 4. We had a late afternoon arrival and decided not to do a park that day. I didn't know any better and booked a dinner ADR for Chef Mickey's for our arrival night (no cancellation fees back then so I guess it wasn't that bad of a plan). The girls got to meet the Fab 5 before we ever set foot in a park and it was perfect! The next day, we went to Animal Kingdom and when we asked DD4 if she wanted to see Mickey (at Camp Minnie Mickey), she said, "Nah....I saw him at dinner last night!":rotfl2: DD2 decided to go see him again because she wasn't tall enough for some of the rides. Anyways, the character dining was a great way to keep the kids from wanting to stand in line to meet the characters in the parks.
 
WE love the dining plan - makes it 10000000000000000 times easier

Not sure how it's easier. I just tap my MB to pay either way.

Personally, I did a spreadsheet of where me and my DH would eat daily, picking things we would eat whether we had the meal plan or not using the menus posted on the disney website for each restaurant and quickservice. For us, we are eating at mostly signature restaurants and would have to do the deluxe plan and it would not work out. It was actually an extra $600 to get the dining plan + the additional tip we would be paying on more expensive meals. I do have an AP and plan on getting the TIW card so that definitely factors in. Also, the amount of food we would get with a deluxe dining plan actually makes me sick to think about lol

But my main point is, put together a spreadsheet and just see what your total amount spent (on stuff you would actually eat) comes out to versus the dining plan (whatever one works best for you) and then you will know if it is worth it or not. It's pretty easy to guesstimate what family members will eat and if you don't know pick an average price and go with that. I don't think the "convenience" of the dining plan outweighs cost savings since you can basically "pretend" to have a dining plan by just charging everything to your magic band.

No need to reinvent the wheel. Use an online dining plan calculator. https://www.distripplanner.com/ No need to do a spreadsheet.
 


Thanks, everyone. We have 4 adults and 4 kids in the party and are looking to have several character dining meals. My thought, from watching the videos associated with this website, is that the extra money we're paying is basically for the privilege of meeting the characters inside without waiting in line. I don't mind planning a bunch of stuff in advance, but even 110+ days out there appears to be a lot of people preparing more than I.

I appreciate all the input. Thank you.

Should you do the dining plan depends on a LOT of variables. It doesn't make sense for my family with our eating habits and the way we like to vacation. If you plan to be at the park all day, are big eaters, and/or don't want to have to think about meal expenses while on vacation it might be a better idea for your family. The only way to know is to do the math and figure out what you are likely to eat and the cost, then compare it with the meal plan cost. There are lots of worksheets out there... some linked in other threads asking about the meal plan here or that you can find with a google search.

I will say that if you are ~110 days out you might want to move on making dining reservations, especially for character meals, especially for large parties. Some restaurants are difficult to get reservations at 180 days out when the window opens. If you don't see what you want keep trying as reservations are constantly changing and opening up.
 
We have found the we can certainly eat for less by paying OOP. This scenario though includes eating mostly QS and one or two TS meals. We don't order deserts and get free ice water to drink. For our trip next month though we are doing things a little differently. We have 7 TS meals planned. We opted to get the DDP. My thinking was that with the DDP I would not have to worry about the cost of our meal while ordering. If I really want the $34 steak I can have it instead of getting the $24 chicken dish. If our daughter wants several snacks during the day, fine, get them, they're already paid for. I certainly don't think the DDP will save us any money but it will save me the headache of worrying about how much each meal is costing. It will allow me to relax that much more during our vacation.
 
I've only done the dining plan once (the quick-service one) and it stressed me out. I didn't like having to be mindful of making sure we were "getting our money's worth" while also keeping track of credits. I travel with my parents who are older and don't have big appetites. I thought the QS plan would be less confining, but in the end, we wound up with some credits left over and I wish we hadn't done it.

In December we went back without the dining plan and it was much better.

Here's what I do. Rather than buy the dining plan, I calculated approximately how much it would cost us to eat and shop while down there. I bought discounted Disney gift cards from Sam's Club and combined them on the Disney gift card site. While at WDW, we used our Magic Bands to charge everything to our room and I paid it off with the gift card every night.

This worked best for us. I never had to worry about not getting my money's worth or keeping up with credits. I always knew how much money I had left on the card, and it gave me that nice feeling of having everything "prepaid". And I wound up with a little left over which is going towards an upcoming trip.

Best of both worlds in my opinion.
 
We’ve stayed both ways. We’ve never paid outright but had it during their Play, Stay and Dine promo, which worked out well for our two teenagers. DH and I didn’t care if if they ordered the most expensive item every meal.

If I had to pay outright, though, I’d probably do the math. Really does depend upon size/age of party. Have also stayed where we rented DVC points and had Garden Grocer delivery - which was also great. This worked out well, too, as we didn’t need to worry about managing so many reservations. And we came out ahead dollar wise.
 
I've never used it. I contemplated it back when it was dirt cheap but once they got people accustomed to using it and raised the prices, I realized it's not a deal.

I do see why some prefer it. I'll compare it to my son's meal plan at school. It's mandatory for freshmen living on campus to have a minimum plan. That plan is unlimited meals in the dining hall plus $300 to use at the fast food places like subway on campus. The minimum plan is for 5 days, M-F. We opted for that plan since we knew some weekends he would be coming home and others he might go off campus for whatever reason. He could still use the $300 on the weekends on campus. That plan cost $1800 a semester. The $300 rolled over to spring but not beyond that.

After this first year we were glad he had an unlimited plan so he didn't have to worry about anything. He's a guy so he ate in the dining hall a lot but we have no way of knowing how many times so that we could figure out what it came to per meal. After the fall semester however, he had only spent $100 of his $300 allowance. I was constantly asking him in the spring how much money he had left. He ended the year with about $50 left on his card. He said lots of people were trying to use up their money.

So next year we will try a plan with 80 meals plus $300 per semester. It's half the price of the other plan at about $900. The meals come to a little under $8 each and it costs over $8 if paying cash for the dining room meals. It also comes to about 1 meal per day if eating M-F. He can use the $300 for other meals and always has the option for paying cash when all that runs out. I really don't want him or I to have to keep track of all the transactions on his debit card so I think this will be the best option. His friend's debit card got hacked so I'd rather he not use it that frequently.

So I can see where a meal plan would be convenient in many ways. But it would make me crazy to leave credits behind. And if the numbers don't add up to a break even proposition, I can't get on board with it.
 
Thanks, everyone. We have 4 adults and 4 kids in the party and are looking to have several character dining meals. My thought, from watching the videos associated with this website, is that the extra money we're paying is basically for the privilege of meeting the characters inside without waiting in line. I don't mind planning a bunch of stuff in advance, but even 110+ days out there appears to be a lot of people preparing more than I.

I appreciate all the input. Thank you.

AFAIK--please correct me if I'm wrong!--when you go to a character dining meal, you have exactly the same interaction with the characters whether or not you have the dining plan. I ate at Tusker House in May and we had great character interaction. No one asked if we had the dining plan. We paid OOP.

I'm mentioning this because I think it's possible the OP believes in order to have these character dining experiences, you need the dining plan. But it's also possible that I misunderstood the above-quoted post!
 
AFAIK--please correct me if I'm wrong!--when you go to a character dining meal, you have exactly the same interaction with the characters whether or not you have the dining plan. I ate at Tusker House in May and we had great character interaction. No one asked if we had the dining plan. We paid OOP.

I'm mentioning this because I think it's possible the OP believes in order to have these character dining experiences, you need the dining plan. But it's also possible that I misunderstood the above-quoted post!
You're not wrong. It just that when you have a lot of character meals planned and have a number of "under the age of 10" guests, the dining plans can be a better value than paying OOP. That's because the kids' plans are relatively cheap but character meals are kind of pricey for the amount and quality of the food you get.
 
You're not wrong. It just that when you have a lot of character meals planned and have a number of "under the age of 10" guests, the dining plans can be a better value than paying OOP. That's because the kids' plans are relatively cheap but character meals are kind of pricey for the amount and quality of the food you get.

Marionnette, That's very true about the kids' plan. I wanted to make sure the OP understood that the dining plan isn't necessary in order to book character dining, since the OP's post led me to believe they may have thought this was the case.

The easiest way to figure out if the dining plan is worth it is to look at the menus and add up what it'd cost OOP and compare that to the dining plan. It takes a bit of time, but it's worth doing if you think the dining plan might save you some money. I get that some people like the ease of it, but, to me, there's nothing easy about it. I'd rather pay OOP and not have to see how many credits I have, wonder if I can use them on food X in place X, etc., etc. Much easier to just have a budget for food and not exceed it. To me. I realize there are many DISboarders who don't feel this way!
 
I have done the analysis after each trip of ours and not doing the dining plan has saved us 100s of dollars. One time we went for 2 weeks and saved about $1,000 not to do it. We are a family of 6 and it just doesn't save us money and we eat character meals and Ohana each time and it still doesn't save us money. I would not do it.
 
So we went without the meal plan our last trip and honestly worrying about money kind of took the joy out of things. That aspect of it alone prompted us to go with the meal plan. We tend to eat on the high end of menus and love getting a specialty drink and desert. We also like the idea of snacking more than we did last time.
 
So we went without the meal plan our last trip and honestly worrying about money kind of took the joy out of things. That aspect of it alone prompted us to go with the meal plan. We tend to eat on the high end of menus and love getting a specialty drink and desert. We also like the idea of snacking more than we did last time.

We eat totally differently when we are not on the meal plan. We doon’t do character meals because paying $300+ OOP for my 8 year old to eat a roll seems excessive. That being said, we haven’t done the meal plan in years except when we got free dining because it has gotten so expensive. We now have 5 Disney adults so it would cost us a fortune. We have no upcoming trips planned but on our next trip we’ll be eating b-fast in the room, maybe a sit down for lunch and pizza or a QS for dinner. It definitely has taken some of the joy out of the world for us not to do the dining plan. We also find that we say no a lot more and that can lead to some meltdowns.
 
We never bought in until we got it free several years ago. We loved the ease of that trip so much that we paid for it on our next trip. Now that alcohol is included, we would for sure purchase it. We typically would do one TS and one QS a day anyway. We use the snack credits for our "eat around the world" EpCot days. We've never had any left. I'm sure that we don't save, it's just convenient.
 
The one time we did it, I found the maximizer in me trying to constantly order the most expensive thing, etc...we ended up with several counter service meals left that we did not use. We were unable to get a clear answer if those could be converted to snack credits--so no, it didn't save us money and it felt a bit stressful to navigate. Also, I wouldn't normally order a huge meal and then order a desert, but because it was on the plan, I always did--we just felt stuffed. It was delicious and nice pre-payment of meals...but for budget/money saving and weight savings, I don't recommend it!
 

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