2011 Dining Plan Changes?

[WDWmazprty]

I totally agree. When DDP first started, with appet. and tip included, we ate like KINGS!! I also remember the servers giving us an attitude if we didn't include an 'extra' tip!! (Remember that??) But before the mainstream DDP, I always rented a car and went offsite for dinner. There are SO many wonderful restaurants in the area, and I feel much better paying $40 for a 16 oz. lobster tail at Charlie's restaurant on International Drive than on dry pasta at Coral Reef! A family of four can have a great meal offsite for $70 or less, including tip, and without waiting an hour after the 'priority seating' time. One other thing I won't miss is the ADR's!! Talk about stressful!! Get up 6:30 am with 2 phones dialing in until someone answered, then spilling out "cinderellasroyaltablefor breakfastmay1firstavailableplease!!!!!!!!!" Then feeling like you won the lottery if you got it! It's sad that it has come to less and less 'value', and I agree that cobwebs will start swinging at some Disney restaurants, leaving them to layoff staff and have more consolidations. When I was little, we NEVER went to sit-down restaurants, so I though it was only for rich people! I'm glad that I was able to experience it with my children to take away the mystery of what was behind the restauratn doors!

:veryconfu

Im guessing you dont like the DDP?

 

[ryguy]

If you don't have a car and are stuck at Disney I can see where the plan would have some value. Truth of the matter is as soon as they took the gratuity and app. off it became a scam. Anyone who used the plan when it did include those benefits would have a hard time using the plan without them. If the food plan does go away I think we will look back at that moment and say that is when Disney "Jumped the Shark".

 

[sueuk]

I agree this change is silly.

Keep in mind that these details are from the UK side, and nothing has officially been announced for 2011 packages by Disney and won't be till they arrive in August most likely.

Also keep in mind that the UK deals are sometimes different that the US ones, and that package is describing their free dining in 2011 offer, which may be different from the standard plan. Wouldn't be the first time.

I'm taking the wait and see approach.

We've had the DDP on our last 3 trips (through Virgin) and although we buy our tickets differently, the food allowances / benefits have been exactly the same as the US plan.

 

[DisneyHeather]

The DDP has worked very well for my family in the 3 times we have used it. It suits the way we eat (we tend to eat desserts over apps), it suits the way we plan (I prefer having all my plans laid out for me, no debating over where we are going each day!). If you are savvy about menus and prices, you can save money - we have saved in excess of $100 with the DDP.

In the end, different strokes for different folks!

 

[WDWmazprty]

The DDP has worked very well for my family in the 3 times we have used it. It suits the way we eat (we tend to eat desserts over apps), it suits the way we plan (I prefer having all my plans laid out for me, no debating over where we are going each day!). If you are savvy about menus and prices, you can save money - we have saved in excess of $100 with the DDP.

In the end, different strokes for different folks!

Ditto! We always go during free dining as well.

 

[sueuk]

Just checked on WDW site for DDP 2011, and they still say that dessert is included for next year. Virgin have always given us exactly the same plan - so I think (hope) that the omission of the dessert on their site is a mistake. Even without dessert, we're still getting it 'free' so although it would be a shame, we'd still be pleased to get it and would still save a lot of money.

 

[Prince-1]

My family have been using the dining plan for our last 4 trips and we've loved it every time. Our only complaint (which is not Disney's fault) is that it's hard to be spontaneous and change our park plans because of where we are planning to eat. Otherwise it's been good for us.

One side note, we are going to DW for Thansgiving and called dining reservations to see what was available. We have Tony's Town Square but wanted to change it. By chance I asked if Le Cellier was available and to my surprise the person helping me said it just popped up so now we will be dining on filets for Thanskgiving!!!

 

[firekymmie]

When i went down in Aug of 1986 with my grandmother and we had a plan it was called the Gold Key plan( the card was green with a gold key on it, I still have it). It included 3 sit down meals a day. I am sure snacks and the use of all the boats and tours i believe. We would get up in the moring and have our ressies made for that day on where we wanted to eat. I remember eating at Cindy's for breakfast and the corral reef when it first opened. Not sure where else I was 14 my mind is gone.

I didnt get back till 2007 and we used the DDP with apps and gratuities. We have also used it 2 other times. But in April this yr we did not use it and I had a hard time parting with money on the sitdown meals. The other time we didnt use it was when we had a cabin and brought all our food in. But my hubby has decided eatting out at nice resturants is not our norm at home so he wants the DDP so we can have this as a special treat since it is not something we do with the kids all the time plus everything is paid for and we just need tip and spend money when we go to leave.

So what i guess what I am trying to say is the DDP plan works for us. We save some decent money when we eat at the expensive places but we would not eat there if we didnt have the plan. I think the QS is not worth the money and we dont eat enough to get the Deluxe plan so the DDP is perfect for us.

 

[AJScooch]

I would actually disagree with anyone that says that you can't get value out of the DDP. Yes, it stinks that they took out the appetizers and tip but you can still save a great deal of money with it. We went for 12 nights in August with the free DDP and upgraded to the Deluxe Plan. It cost us $840 more to upgrade. Before we upgraded we did a cost analysis of what we were already planning to do with our meals (i.e character breakfasts) and what we would probably eat at a meal (i.e purchasing one appetizer, tax) and found that at the very least, we would break even with the upgraded price. I saved all of the receipts from all the meals and snacks and added everything up when we got home and found that we actually ate over $500 more food than we paid for. Additionally, even if we paid full price for the Deluxe Plan, we would have still come out ahead. My wife and I are planners and have been making ADR's every year we go. We have certain restaurants that we love to eat at every year (i.e. Le Cellier, Narcoossee's, Coral Reef) and love to try out new ones (this year was The Wave, San Angel Inn, Via Napoli, to name a few). This year was the first time we actually did ADR's for lunch as well. The experience was so worthwhile. Especially considering we had our 16 month old DD with us for her first trip to the World. The ability that the Deluxe Plan gave us to be able to sit down for a meal in the middle of the day and not have to "stalk out" a seat every day at Pecos Bill's or Cosmic Rays was a beautiful thing. We never had to wait more than 10-15 minutes for any of our ADR's, with the exception of 1900 Park Fare for breakfast one day. It was also great to have the Deluxe Plan because of the character breakfasts. Considering that the prices range from $20 - $30 per person, the plan really made sense for us.

 

[Gregger]

I didn't read the whole thread but if you look at the 2011 DDP PDF it still looks the same to me as it has the past few yrs.....If they changed something wouldn't it be noted in the PDF? :shrug:
http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/me...alog/WaltDisneyWorld/en_us/PDF/2011Dining.pdf

 

[dreamfinder]

I didn't read the whole thread but if you look at the 2011 DDP PDF it still looks the same to me as it has the past few yrs.....If they changed something wouldn't it be noted in the PDF? :shrug:
http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/me...alog/WaltDisneyWorld/en_us/PDF/2011Dining.pdf

Not if they took something away. Why would Disney ever blatantly say "New this year NO DESSERT!!". They don't. They would tout the new restaurants on the plan and thats about it. The same way when they took away Lights Of Winter, they didn't say in the press release "Same old, same old, without LoW" They said "Welcome our new gospel group!" But I think people seem to be indicating that it still appears to be the same despite initial concerns.

 

[Monty]

Family size will make a difference.

In my case, I travel with my son. I've done the math for us and with "free" dining, upgraded to regular from QS, we are barely breaking even when we stay at a value resort. At a moderate or deluxe we're losing money by using the "free" dining plan.

I use the following factors to calculate the relative costs:

- Free dining with a room at rack rate, add the cost of upgrading to regular DDP if applicable and subtract the actual cost of what we eat as a savings. I don't include the extra cost of tickets we don't need since we have APs - that cost goes into future APs]

- Room with AP discount, cost of what we would eat on our preferred schedule [more TS, almost no QS] discounted with the TiW card and cost of the TiW card split over a few trips.

If we're at a value and work at maximizing our food costs by ordering the most expensive items on menus instead of actually just ordering what appeals to us, we can generally break even when the DDP is offered for free. We lose if we have to pay for regular DDP in full.

At either a moderate or deluxe we lose significantly if we get the free DDP.

In one trip, we stayed 8 nights at Beach Club with the AP discount and the savings for the discount covered the full cost of my AP, Morgan's 9-day Hopper, the TiW card and all our food costs [including liquour for me] for our entire trip.

 

[Korfar]

Family size will make a difference.

In my case, I travel with my son. I've done the math for us and with "free" dining, upgraded to regular from QS, we are barely breaking even when we stay at a value resort. At a moderate or deluxe we're losing money by using the "free" dining plan.

I use the following factors to calculate the relative costs:

- Free dining with a room at rack rate, add the cost of upgrading to regular DDP if applicable and subtract the actual cost of what we eat as a savings. I don't include the extra cost of tickets we don't need since we have APs - that cost goes into future APs]

- Room with AP discount, cost of what we would eat on our preferred schedule [more TS, almost no QS] discounted with the TiW card and cost of the TiW card split over a few trips.

If we're at a value and work at maximizing our food costs by ordering the most expensive items on menus instead of actually just ordering what appeals to us, we can generally break even when the DDP is offered for free. We lose if we have to pay for regular DDP in full.

At either a moderate or deluxe we lose significantly if we get the free DDP.

In one trip, we stayed 8 nights at Beach Club with the AP discount and the savings for the discount covered the full cost of my AP, Morgan's 9-day Hopper, the TiW card and all our food costs [including liquour for me] for our entire trip.

In your case I can see how a room discount is better. For 2 people I don't think you get the bang for the buck so to speak from free dining. For a family of 4 it is the way to go. We chose a moderate this last time instead of a value and an upgrade in the dining plan. Figure if we are paying for the upgrade might as well upgrade the resort instead. It was pretty even in the even. The extra cost of the hotel vs the upgrade to the dining plan. I like the dinning plan when it is offered free. I have never paid for it. I don't see enough value in it when buying it.

 

[Gregger]

Not if they took something away. Why would Disney ever blatantly say "New this year NO DESSERT!!". They don't. They would tout the new restaurants on the plan and thats about it. The same way when they took away Lights Of Winter, they didn't say in the press release "Same old, same old, without LoW" They said "Welcome our new gospel group!" But I think people seem to be indicating that it still appears to be the same despite initial concerns.

Yes I understand what you are saying but look at the PDF....they still say dessert is included with table service....plus under items "not included" they don't state dessert....If they change I hope they would ammend the PDF....

 

[RunnerEd]

We use DDP every time we go for the simple reason that it allows us to have a fixed budget for food and we know exactly how much it will be before we get there. We have always thought it was a pretty good deal. With that said, it wouldn't bother me a bit if they excluded desert from the "Free Dining" type plans. If someone is paying for it, maybe you should reward them with a litte bit more value.

 

[PhilharMagician]

I have done a complete breakdown of the DDP cost wise in a few past posts. It is extemely hard to be able to save money with the DDP. In most cases it costs people money to use the DDP. The cost of the plan is $41.99 (or $46.99 holidays). Over the past 7 years the DDP has reduced it's value by nearly 1/2. Once being $37.99 including appetizer and gratuity to now covering just entree, drink and desert for $4.00 more. The loss of the gratuity is an 18% increase alone. That is an absurd increase in cost and loss of value. Then when you use DDP for Signature dining then Disney is sitting back laughing and collecting the money. The DDP also at one point allowed a guest to vacation with fixed costs and not have to carry cash or cards beyond their room cards. Now that the DDP requires you to pay for tips, you cannot have that fixed cost and you have to carry a method of payment.
Also like Monty had mentioned free dining is not all of what is promoted to be. The best way is to purchase an AP and use AP room discounts along with TIW card for dining discounts.
Another issue with the DDP is if you have a child that is 10 Y/O you have to pay the adult DDP rate. That kid won't eat enought to make that worth while. Now go the Hoop De Doo Revue and use 2 credits for the 10 Y/O
who cannot have a beer or a glass of wine which is part of the wrapped in cost of the show or the 2 dining credits.
The TIW card is currently a better way to curb your dining costs. You can deduct 20% from your bill and nearly every sit down restaurant in WDW including alcoholic beverages. This will at least cover your tips plus a little extra and is good for a year.

I would love to see some details on how people save money with the DDP. Maybe I am doing something wrong.

 

[DisneyJoe]

you have to carry a method of payment.

....

Another issue with the DDP is if you have a child that is 10 Y/O you have to pay the adult DDP rate. That kid won't eat enought to make that worth while.

If you put a credit card on your room card, you don't need to carry anything extra.


My 10yo boy could eat more than enough to make it worthwhile - it really depends on the eating habits of both the adults and the children.

 

[PhilharMagician]

If you put a credit card on your room card, you don't need to carry anything extra.

That is true, but it still has been a complaint in other threads. I personally do that, but many people still like using cash to control spending.

My 10yo boy could eat more than enough to make it worthwhile - it really depends on the eating habits of both the adults and the children.

My 12 Y/O cannot and still prefers to eat off of the kids menu most of the time because the portions are to large.

 

[DisneyMusician2]

That is true, but it still has been a complaint in other threads. I personally do that, but many people still like using cash to control spending.

In the age of the ATM, does cash really control spending anymore?

My 12 Y/O cannot and still prefers to eat off of the kids menu most of the time because the portions are to large.

I could see how that might be a problem. It could definitely screw with the numbers on taking the DDP. That's why you should always be an intelligent consumer!

 

[Buried20KLeague]

I have done a complete breakdown of the DDP cost wise in a few past posts. It is extemely hard to be able to save money with the DDP. In most cases it costs people money to use the DDP. The cost of the plan is $41.99 (or $46.99 holidays). Over the past 7 years the DDP has reduced it's value by nearly 1/2. Once being $37.99 including appetizer and gratuity to now covering just entree, drink and desert for $4.00 more. The loss of the gratuity is an 18% increase alone. That is an absurd increase in cost and loss of value. Then when you use DDP for Signature dining then Disney is sitting back laughing and collecting the money. The DDP also at one point allowed a guest to vacation with fixed costs and not have to carry cash or cards beyond their room cards. Now that the DDP requires you to pay for tips, you cannot have that fixed cost and you have to carry a method of payment.
Also like Monty had mentioned free dining is not all of what is promoted to be. The best way is to purchase an AP and use AP room discounts along with TIW card for dining discounts.
Another issue with the DDP is if you have a child that is 10 Y/O you have to pay the adult DDP rate. That kid won't eat enought to make that worth while. Now go the Hoop De Doo Revue and use 2 credits for the 10 Y/O
who cannot have a beer or a glass of wine which is part of the wrapped in cost of the show or the 2 dining credits.
The TIW card is currently a better way to curb your dining costs. You can deduct 20% from your bill and nearly every sit down restaurant in WDW including alcoholic beverages. This will at least cover your tips plus a little extra and is good for a year.

I would love to see some details on how people save money with the DDP. Maybe I am doing something wrong.

^^ This.