DDE vs DP vs Room Discount

[bigds01]

I am totally befuddled. We are going during Thanksgiving to the Poly. I am paying for 3 rooms that will have 6 adults and 3 kids. I am debating whether my annual pass room discount/dde is better to give up for the DP. I am not sure if the math works.

Also, has anyone had any experience about getting the rate discount over thanksgiving? The answer may help drive whether I even buy the annual pass.

Thanks

 

[thunderbird1]

When we (2 adults, 2 kids) did the analysis a couple of years ago, we decided that unless we could get the DP free, it didn't make financial sense. The AP room discount was around $50/night, and the cost to us of the DP would have been around $100. Given that I'm a vegetarian (and so usually eat the cheapest thing on the menu), we could eat really well for less (much less with the DDE) than $150 a day. Now with the DP being free in August/September, it does make sense to us to give up the room discount. We can easily eat WAY more than $50 a day on the DP.

Having said that, I don't know that you could get AP discounts over the holiday. Possibly, if you check in before the official beginning of the holiday season, since they usually base your entire stay's rate on the rate in effect at check-in. We've stayed over Christmas (peak/holiday season) both in 2004 and in 2005 at great AP rates because we were able to check in on December 19 or 20.

Hope I helped a little, and didn't totally confuse you.

 

[DWDreams]

I just posted my comparison for this under another thread - doing the math or something like that as title. I completely agree with last post that it really only makes sense to give up discounted room if you are getting the DP for free.

 

[bookworm61]

Not to confuse you further, but we are booking through AAA for the discount and going to add the DDP as well. I understand from these boards that that is only way to get a discount and a package. Hope I am correct!!

 

[kcashner]

Remember that the DDE isn't good on certain holidays. We ran the numbers for one room, and it came out almost exactly the same. The difference is that we got more food on the DDP--more than we needed actually. However, I had the peace of mind of not worrying about food $ on the trip.

 

[bigds01]

My problem is that everyday we will have a ts breakfast and a ts dinner. I don't the DP works if you are doing two ts a day.

 

[kcashner]

The only way that the DDP works when you are doing 2 TS per day is if you do a character breakfast and pay OOP (of course, the DDE will apply to that). You then use the CS for lunch and the TS on DDP for dinner.

If you are not planning on the CS, you will probably do better to just do the DDE. My sis and family do the sit down breakfast and big dinner, no lunch at all....so the DDE works better for them.

We did several dinners on DDP where the bill for 2 adults was in the $110-115 range including the tax and tip. Since we paid $38 each for the plan, this still represented a savings IF we would really have ordered all the food we got on the plan. Reality is that we would not have ordered 2 appetizers, 2 entrees, and 2 desserts if we had been paying OOP.

I won't get into the issue of using credits that were purchased at the child's rate to order meals for adults and paying OOP for kids. You also have to look at who has AP and how many park tickets you will need. Remember that you will have to purchase at least a one day park pass for each person on the DDP. This one gets really complex!!!

It might help to look at each room separately--room rate with AP discount vs. rack rate to get DDP, need for park ticket or not, cost of planned meals vs. cost of DDP and any planned OOP.