2019 Dining Plan costs

[DisAl]

I’d love to do some more of the signature restaurants. Is there one or two in partythat you enjoyed?

Two, just me and my wife. This was an 8 day trip with JUST THE TWO OF US for our 45th anniversary. We left the rest of the family (four generations from 4 to 89) at home for this one. It is a totally different trip with just the 2 of us, and the fine dining was a big part of this trip.
It was a split stay; 6 days at the Contemporary (been on our bucket list for years) on the dining plan and 2 days at Pop Century to ease ourselves back into reality. I don't think we could have enjoyed another 2 days of deluxe dining plan. It was fun, but almost too much of a good thing.
Don't feel too bad for the rest of the family; we took them for a week last June.

I JUST RE-READ YOUR POST, and realized that you probably meant PARTICULAR, and were not asking how many in the party......
Yes, all were good but it is really hard to pick a top one this time. However, three were excellent: California Grill, Narcoossee's, and Flying Fish. By about 1 percentage point Narcoossee's was probably the best meal. The best server we had was Ine from Norway at the Flying Fish. I would put Le Cellier at the bottom of the list due to slow service and the very crowed dining room. We thought the steak was actually better at The Wave (Contemporary) than at Le Cellier. Now that we have tried it, if we are in the Epcot area Flying Fish has much better food and service than Le Cellier.

I have posted several photos in the Food Photos section.

 

[aliceismad]

Two, just me and my wife. This was an 8 day trip with JUST THE TWO OF US for our 45th anniversary. We left the rest of the family (four generations from 4 to 89) at home for this one. It is a totally different trip with just the 2 of us, and the fine dining was a big part of this trip.
It was a split stay; 6 days at the Contemporary (been on our bucket list for years) on the dining plan and 2 days at Pop Century to ease ourselves back into reality. I don't think we could have enjoyed another 2 days of deluxe dining plan. It was fun, but almost too much of a good thing.
Don't feel too bad for the rest of the family; we took them for a week last June.

I JUST RE-READ YOUR POST, and realized that you probably meant PARTICULAR, and were not asking how many in the party......
Yes, all were good but it is really hard to pick a top one this time. However, three were excellent: California Grill, Narcoossee's, and Flying Fish. By about 1 percentage point Narcoossee's was probably the best meal. The best server we had was Ine from Norway at the Flying Fish. I would put Le Cellier at the bottom of the list due to slow service and the very crowed dining room. We thought the steak was actually better at The Wave (Contemporary) than at Le Cellier. Now that we have tried it, if we are in the Epcot area Flying Fish has much better food and service than Le Cellier.

I have posted several photos in the Food Photos section.

I did indeed mean particular. It was late and apparently typing is hard.

Thank you for the recommendations! It’s much appareciated.

 

[JArdoin1982]

I agree with you. After some meals I felt like Jabba the Hutt.
The only time we do the deluxe plan is when it is just the wife and me on one of our every five years anniversary trips and we are planning for a signature restaurant every day. And yes, it is too much food but we figure once every five years we can handle it.
We would never do the deluxe plan when we take the whole family including two grandchildren. We would never be able to extract the value from the plan.
The only reason we do even the regular dining plan with the whole family trips is because we always do a number of character meals and those tend to be rather expensive too.

My wife and I will be on the DDP as well for our 10 year anniversary. I do have a question --- can you use your credits for other people not in your party or is that a case-by-case, venue-by-venue decision?

 

[Hcalvert]

My wife and I will be on the DDP as well for our 10 year anniversary. I do have a question --- can you use your credits for other people not in your party or is that a case-by-case, venue-by-venue decision?

You can use them for people not on the dining plan. Just let your server know.

 

[slappy magoo]

There have been many questions as to whether the dining plan is worth the cost.
We just got back from WDW and were on the Deluxe Dining Plan for 6 nights. The cost of the plan is $116.25 per adult per day. Our average "spend" was $162.39 per day (not including out of pocket tips) per adult, so we "saved" quite a bit. FYI the tips were about what we normally pay for a 10 oz. strip steak and 6 shrimp dinner here at home! The $162.39 does not include the two snacks per day, I just didn't keep up with that but you could add an average of $10 per day for snacks.
We did a signature and one regular seated meal per day. We ordered whatever we wanted, not always the most expensive items. The catch is that we would never order an appetizer, entre, AND desert if we were paying out of pocket. SO, you could spend less than the cost of the plan but not get what we got for the price.
Bottom line is if you really like the dining aspect of a WDW trip and really want to splurge you can "save" some money with the dining plan but you really have to plan ahead and get some good restaurants to do so.
What I am most pleased with though is that with an average of 8.2 miles per day walking I didn't gain any weight that week!

I've written this elsewhere but until this last trip we had gotten used to the Deluxe Dining Plan too. It made sense for us because we had two little ones, it was not uncommon to do a character meal a day (usually breakfast or brunch) and a sitdown meal for dinner. For little kids the prix fixe prices at buffets and character meals are pretty high, compared to ala carte prices which are often below 15 bucks and include their drink and dessert. So the Deluxe plans were definitely "worth it" from that perspective. Some of the character meals like Akershus or Chef Mickey, plus a snack, often seemed to equal the cost of the Deluxe Plan that particular day.
But now that my oldest is 10, forget it. She doesn't have an adult appetite* so paying over $100 a day is just nonsense. Tables in Wonderland makes more sense now.

*In fact our last trip we were unaware of it at the time but my older daughter had become a Type 1 diabetic. Most mornings she felt sick and irritable and not hungry, but because we didn't know, we just thought it was nerves for going on rides. We felt awful after she was diagnosed and 2020 hindsight made it clear what was going on. One morning she just assumed she was sick and she and my wife left Epcot without even eating breakfast and meeting princesses. My wife insisted I stay behind with our younger kid but it wasn't much fun, and my oldest was miserable that she missed princesses and Test Track and Frozen Ever After and Soarin'. She felt better later on that day and we all came back for dinner, and some CMs made a little magic by getting us dinner reservations back at Akershus, canceling our Rose and Crown reservations without penalty and getting us back on Soarin.'

 

[aliceismad]

She felt better later on that day and we all came back for dinner, and some CMs made a little magic by getting us dinner reservations back at Akershus, canceling our Rose and Crown reservations without penalty and getting us back on Soarin.'

Your poor kiddo. Glad you were able to get some of the special day back for her. And that you were able to get her diagnosed.

You bring up a good point, though. For kiddos (and me) sometimes those indoor sit-downs are a nice respite.

 

[bigrigross]

We actually looked at TIW for our 9 person trip this May. Due to us doing mostly Pre-fixe/character meals, TIW did not save us any money and whatever meals we are paying cash for, will be covered by our DVC discount. So the DDP plan worked better for our trip this year. None of us are big alcohol drinkers. It would be reversed if we were doing normal dinners and such as TiW would have have saved us more money.