I think DDP can work for some people, especially if it is “free”. We are DVC so pay full price for the Dining Plan if we choose to use it. We were there the week of New Years and I kept track of everything. We did not do DDP, I did buy Tables in Wonderland even though we were there on New Year’s Eve and Day which are blacked out. We had 6 adults and one child, 8 nights. I did have discounted gift cards from Sam’s, but since I would have used them either way I did not include the discount in my analysis.
8 nights for 6 adults and 1 child:
Deluxe DDP : $5,899.92
Regular DDP : $3829.52
Actual food costs: $2,981.67+150(TiW)= $3131.67
We did eat most breakfasts in the room, a full kitchen allows us to do that. Just frozen breakfast sandwiches, cereal, etc. I don’t like to cook on vacation! I spent $122 at Publix for food for the week and brought cases of water and some snacks with us. We ate at TS restaurants 8 times and QS 6 times, so pretty close to what we would have gotten credits for on the regular Dining Plan. We ate at Tusker House (breakfast), Crystal Palace (breakfast), SciFi (lunch), Turf Club (dinner), Rose & Crown (dinner), Biergarten (lunch), Skippers Canteen (lunch), and Be Our Guest (dinner) for our Table Service. We also had one large snack/appetizers at the Nomad Lounge which I don’t believe is on the Dining Plans. We also had in the range of 83 snacks. We did not go hungry by any sense of the word and we had no restrictions on what our kids ordered (three of our “adults” are teenagers). We also had an alcoholic beverage (or two) a day for each of the three adults of legal age. Several of our TS meals involved having two appetizers instead of an entree. For us the DDP really doesn’t make financial sense. The regular plan would still be $697.85 more than we actually paid, the Deluxe an astounding $2,768.25 more. On either plan, we would have had another 30 or so snack credits to use up at the end. I just don’t need that many Rice Krispie treats!
The one time we did use the dining plan was back when appetizers, dessert, and tip was included. I also had 2 still in the “child” category which is where I think the greatest plan savings is. We thought it was overly restrictive and did not fit with our eating patterns. My son had a stomach bug in the middle of that trip so we had to shuffle ADR’s around and ended up keeping some I would have canceled if we were paying OOP and trying to find last minute locations at the end of the trip when we had unexpected credits left from the meals we had to skip when he was sick.