The title of this thread is how in 2012 the dining plan prices have reached outrageous levels, yet people keep posting that 'gosh, when we added up our receipts in past years its always saved us money'.
The entire point of this thread is to point out that STARTING in 2012, the dining plan needs to be looked at much closer, because most people will lose money by buying this plan.
Even adding receipts is quite misleading. You also get people who say, "I'm pricing out this combination and it still looks cheaper than OOP..." -- But the combination they price out, is almost always based around the dining plan. CS for lunch every day, TS for dinner every night, with desserts at every meal, etc.
How I encourage people to look at it, is like this:
Design your IDEAL dining scenario-- considering the type of food, the location, the times... everything *except* price.
Some wise-guy will now say "Ok, Victoria's & Albert's every night" -- But again, being realistic -- At most, I'd only want to eat at V&A for 1 night. Having nothing to do with price, I wouldn't want to devote that much time to dinner every night, and I wouldn't want that type of food every night.
So I look at exactly what I would want to eat, if the dining plan didn't exist, and if money was 100% irrelevant.
THEN -- I calculate the price of my perfect ideal, with and without the various dining plans. And only if the price really outpaces my budget, then I scale back.
The reality is --- My personal ideal is more expensive than the basic DDP... but the DDP doesn't save any money on it. The DxDP saves me a few dollars, as long as both my kids are Disney children. Not much of savings, but barely enough to make it worthwhile.
But truthfully, if people designed their ideal dining schedule -- without basing it around the dining plan -- then I think it's pretty rare that the DDP would turn out to look like a savings.
After all --- using as an example, a 5 day/5 night trip --- If you weren't designing a plan around the DDP -- You might end up with 7 TS meals, and 4 CS meals... as an example. And it would be pretty hard for the DDP to save you money under such a scenario. (You'd have to pay for 2 TS meals OOP, and you would have to waste 1 of your CS credits). Or you might end up wanting just a sushi roll at California Grill (for around $23, a total waste of 2-credits).
When people price out their plan -- if they already have a DDP in the back of their mind as they design their plan, it's no surprise that it looks like they will save money.
For people who truly want a ton of character meals and steak and dessert every day-- the basic DDP can still be a legitimate savings.
For people who want a ton of TS and signatures (myself included)-- The DxDP may or may not legitimately be a savings, and needs to be priced out.