Dining Plan Hate it or Love it?

[shanny]

my soon to be hubby and i are going to wdw on our honeymoon in august. from the looks of it all, you all seem to maostly love it, and im assuming, believe it is worth the $600somechange to have ddp? thats between the two of us, so im assuming its roughly $300 per person, and for 9 days. we wont be eating at disney the whole time, so we figured we could eat at some higher end places, like the yachtsman steakhouse, jikos, maybe 1 more. :slurp: hoping for free dining, but if it doesnt work, we are wondering if we should go ahead and add ddp, or no. thanx! :wave:

 

[littleeep]

There seems to be a lot of people who feel that you only have to paln when to eat if using the DDP. But, we went without the DDP last year and had a miserable time trying to get in to eat anywhere. The point of the story...plan your day and make reservations REGARDLESS of whether you have the paln or not. It will save a lot of frustration.

 

[Dwarful]

It does take some planning. I hate to do too much before I know which days are the EMH's at each of the parks. The thing I have noticed lately is that the restaurants seem to be getting louder and louder. Now, mind you, when we go w/the whole family we have 6 kids, but they have to act like civilized humans even if we are at Disney. But being unable to hear someone right across from you is a beyond bad. If everyone would quiet down it would be much more enjoyable. On our last visit to Tony's I wanted to stand up and shout "EVERYONE...USE YOUR INDOOR VOICES PLEASE!" it was so terrible.

 

[MotoDisney]

The people who like the dinning plan seem to be keen for monetary reasons, and that the reduced cost has meant that they are having table service meals they wouldn't normally.
Those against it seem to be those who would normally dine at sit down restaurants, who now find that long term plans and reassure required, menus are limited and less adventurous and venues are crowded with harassed CMs.

Free dining bugs me because I feel it erodes the benefits of the DVC, is it a wise move by Disney to ______ of some of their most loyal customers

I have to agree. I'm not a DVC member but an annual passholder and in order to get it you still have to buy a one day ticket so it degrades the value of that as well. From what I've read here it appears though I could use that one day ticket value towards my annual pass renewel?

Also wouldn't get it since I was gifted a Marriott Vacation Club timeshare so my hotel is free at the Orlando World Center so for me it's a dislike it.


my 2 cents.

 

[wdwmomof3]

I like the dinning plan for many reasons, not just for saving money. I like it because it just seems to make the trip easier for us. We didn't have to keep up with extra cash for our meals. We didn't go out side of the Disney Resort for dinner. We ate at several different resorts, so we were able to see what they were like, should we want to stay there. I just feel that the good out way the bad.

Even when we were not on the dining plan I still made PS reservations for the places that we wanted to eat at. That didn't change, but the amount of them did increase by two or three per trip.

I also have not been lucky enough to get the plan for free. Maybe next time. Also, My children are always well behaved at dinner, or they would get it!

 

[Tinkrbel75]

Update on ADRs

We are traveling next month and I was able to make almost all of our ADRs for our first choice of date and time, and we are traveling with a large family of seven, so it can be done less then the 180 ay or 90 day mark!

Traveling with a brood of kiddos means no late dinners for us. Some of the table service only had later later times, so we switched out for another favorite. (only O'hana, and Coral reef were late times (after 9:00pm) of the 8 meals I requested. We opted for lunch at the coral reef instead.

This will be our first trip on the DDP.

Thanks
S

 

[cinderella craz]

I am a fan of the dining plan. It allows us to get food we normally wouldn't. However, we did end up losing our WL room this time because of it. But I'm not going to complain too much since it force us to go to the Poly. I can't wait to decide what I'm going to eat!