When guests order from a menu at a restaurant and then pay, the restaurant is incentivized to provide them with food that lives up to its billing, and leaves the guest as satisfied as possible so that they're likely to return. A traditional restaurant pricing and payment scheme uses a high quality of food/experience to convince the guest they got a good return on their investment, even if the price is high.
When guests have already paid, that motivation goes out the window, and it's all about providing the minimum amount of food, with the minimum amount of quality, while inflating menu prices to make it look as though the DDP is "saving" guests money. In other words, the DDP uses jacked-up menu prices and the illusion of the "convenience of prepayment" to convince the guest they got a good return on their investment, even though the food offered is objectively lesser in quality.
This has resulted in a gradual dumbing-down and simplification of Disney menus, as Disney focused on making sure DDP purchasers always overspent for what they got -- even for many years pre-COVID -- that is generally decried by those who remember when Disney restaurants offered truly unique and higher-quality experiences. My family has only been going to WDW regularly since 2012, and even between 2012 and 2020, we observed an obvious decline in food offerings (uniqueness, portion size, quality of meats and seafood, number of entrees) at every restaurant for which we were repeat visitors, while menu prices increased dramatically. 'Ohana is a prime example: first they came for the lettuce wraps, which were a lovely appetizer not available anywhere else at WDW (that I know of). Then they decided that the grilled chicken on skewers had to go. Then the "steak" was downgraded to a lesser quality. Now with the most recent menu iteration, instead of pork loin and grilled shrimp, guests are offered Polish sausage and a crumby "casserole" that, by all accounts, is a culinary abomination. All while the price went up by over a third!
FWIW (pardon me while I take a moment to mount my soapbox), my family has never used the DDP except when it was offered for "free" as part of a room package -- something that's rarely offered anymore. We still go to whatever restaurants we want and order whatever we want, and we average 1 TS and 1 CS per day plus snacks (which is technically more than the DDP offers, because some of our TS meals are at restaurants that would cost 2 DDP "credits," and we often get appetizers the plan wouldn't cover), and we still end up spending over a third LESS by paying out of pocket instead of purchasing the DDP. We also enjoy the "convenience of prepayment," as we pay for the bulk of those meals with pre-purchased Disney gift cards, bought with a stacked discount of about 8%. I know there are many who love the DDP, don't mind its impact on the overall quality of meals at Disney World, and would honestly rather overpay ahead of time than pay less during their vacation. There are entire threads devoted to the debate all over these boards. However, I am not among the DDP's fans.
