Qs dining plan...how's it worth it?

[harryk]

Our family always purchases the delux dining plan and have always found it to be not only convenient but very satisfying. The $$ cost may be high - but then again - everything at a theme park is high $$. Nothing says that you have to eat everything at a meal, The idea is that you may order whatever you want at the time and not be concerned about the $$. The opportunity to purchase something that you may never try elsewhere is there. Being all adults, (no children anymore) has permitted us to always trying something new in the various dining facilities WDW has to offer. Concern about meal $$ should not enter into our vacation decisions. The $$ come into play when selecting a vacation and not once the decision has been made. Noting what Nottamus says: "AND it was just too much. Always had to eat a lot, finish it all...can't waste anything." should not be the issue. You are there to enjoy yourself - so enjoy yourself.

 

[ppet]

Our family always purchases the delux dining plan and have always found it to be not only convenient but very satisfying. The $$ cost may be high - but then again - everything at a theme park is high $$. Nothing says that you have to eat everything at a meal, The idea is that you may order whatever you want at the time and not be concerned about the $$. The opportunity to purchase something that you may never try elsewhere is there. Being all adults, (no children anymore) has permitted us to always trying something new in the various dining facilities WDW has to offer. Concern about meal $$ should not enter into our vacation decisions. The $$ come into play when selecting a vacation and not once the decision has been made. Noting what Nottamus says: "AND it was just too much. Always had to eat a lot, finish it all...can't waste anything." should not be the issue. You are there to enjoy yourself - so enjoy yourself.

I am in complete agreement with you. With that being said I would purchase the classic dining plan or the table service plan, but I see few reasons to purchase the QS plan. Maybe for budget control?

 

[DougK]

And remember even the "free" dining plan comes at a big cost due to you having to pay rack rate for your room. I understand how the average person may not know and they just think "oh wow the Disney Dining Plan saves us money" but I think anyone who hangs out on these boards should be knowledgeable enough to never pay rack rate for a room at Walt Disney World.

The best advice is to always do the math just in case the Dining Plan works for your family on a given trip. If not and you still want to prepay (which is not a great idea in my mind but I know many people prefer it that way) you can buy those Disney gift cards as many others have suggested here. Unlike the Dining Plan in which you have to give up any credits you don't use, any remaining gift card balance you have will be usable in the future at Disney and Disney Stores, etc.

 

[ELG13]

The quick sevice plan was what we considered simply because we didn't want to plan our trip around food this time which was what it felt like last time. The time before that was back in '09 when we got it but it was all so different back then. I just couldn't get over how expesive it was when I ran numbers. Hubs likes it to feel all inclusive. The less he has to pull out the wallet the better lol. We have cash we set aside for dining ( he's a cash guy and we diving our cash per day...what doesn't get used rolls over). We do have one adr for dinner that we have a separate amount set aside for because we know roughly how much it will be. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one not seeing the value in the quick service and possibly any dining plan. Ahhh...the good ole days when a deal was really a deal lol

 

[Andrew M]

As long as you do the math and plan out your meals properly, it is fairly easy to save money with both the Regular (1 QS, 1 TS) and the Deluxe (3 TS), especially if you have kids and enjoy sit-down restaurants. We've done both and come out ahead both times. However I don't think we'd ever do the Deluxe again, it was just way too much food. And you could probably argue we wouldn't have spent so much on food if we didn't have the dining plan and felt obligated to in the first place.

As for the regular dining plan, as long as you have kids under 10, one character meal per day alone covers the entire cost of their plan, so you're basically getting a quick service meal and 2 snacks for each kid/day for free. Then use those snacks at Epcot for Food & Wine at $6-8 each and you're really coming out ahead.

The quick service plan is alot harder to 'win' financially, but it theoretically can be done. However even if you break even or lose a couple bucks, there can be value in the 'all inclusive' feeling the dining plan gives. Being able to order anything you feel like and not worrying about the cost is nice in general, but especially while on vacation.

 

[nickys]

A question I’m hoping someone can answer. Coming from the U.K., we can’t buy Disney gift cards here, and Disney won’t mail them to us either ( tried that ).

So if we came over and had our dining money saved, can we buy a gift card and load it using a debit card? I know they don’t let you buy them with a magic band (found that one out on Christmas Eve, around 6pm on Main St - ended up going to the Contemporary shop later).

I quite like the idea of being able to use one card just for dining, which is feasible since we’d likely be eating any TS meals all together.

We’ve done the dining plan twice. The first time it was included in the package for our first onsite stay at the BC. I made the mistake of trying to “save” the credits for breakfast at Cape May for the last day, only to find two of them didn’t want to get up!! So we wasted those credits and had snack and QS credits left over too.

The second time was just last trip, for the first 3 nights of a split stay from 23rd to 26th Dec. We booked BOG breakfast for 24th, CP for dinner, CM on 25th and Ohana breakfast on 26th. Easily made it worthwhile. Now normally we wouldn’t do anything like that but I didn’t want to be stuck over Christmas without knowing where we were going to eat! Adding up the plans over NYE (from the 30th to 2nd) it didn’t add up. We were heading offsite for one day and the meals we booked didn’t make it viable, even though we had ADRs booked for 30th, 31st and HDDR for the 1st.

 

[Tuvalu]

A question I’m hoping someone can answer. Coming from the U.K., we can’t buy Disney gift cards here, and Disney won’t mail them to us either ( tried that ).

So if we came over and had our dining money saved, can we buy a gift card and load it using a debit card? I know they don’t let you buy them with a magic band (found that one out on Christmas Eve, around 6pm on Main St - ended up going to the Contemporary shop later).

I quite like the idea of being able to use one card just for dining, which is feasible since we’d likely be eating any TS meals all together.

We’ve done the dining plan twice. The first time it was included in the package for our first onsite stay at the BC. I made the mistake of trying to “save” the credits for breakfast at Cape May for the last day, only to find two of them didn’t want to get up!! So we wasted those credits and had snack and QS credits left over too.

The second time was just last trip, for the first 3 nights of a split stay from 23rd to 26th Dec. We booked BOG breakfast for 24th, CP for dinner, CM on 25th and Ohana breakfast on 26th. Easily made it worthwhile. Now normally we wouldn’t do anything like that but I didn’t want to be stuck over Christmas without knowing where we were going to eat! Adding up the plans over NYE (from the 30th to 2nd) it didn’t add up. We were heading offsite for one day and the meals we booked didn’t make it viable, even though we had ADRs booked for 30th, 31st and HDDR for the 1st.

I buy Disney gift cards with a credit card, I don’t see why you couldn’t use a debit card to purchase one.

 

[Shouldigo12]

Just a tip for those on the dining plan: if you find yourself with an extra TS credit, room service is a very fun way to use that up.

 

[larryz]

Of course, my dining plan is worth it!